ODE FOR THE HIGH-KNOWERS.

Half of Mankind’s woe comes from the fact that, several thousand years ago, somewhere in the Middle East, peoples through their language conceived spirituality OR MYSTICISM….

-Not as a quest for meaning, hope or liberation with the concepts that go with it (distinction opposition or difference between matter and spirit, ethics, personal discipline, philanthropy, life after life, meditation, quest for the grail, practices...).

-But as a gigantic and protean law (DIN) that should govern the daily life of men with all that it implies. Obligations or prohibitions that everyone must respect day and night.

Violations or contraventions of this multitude of prohibitions when they are not followed literally. Judgments when one or more of these laws are violated.

Convictions for the guilty.

Dismissals or acquittals for the innocent. CALLED RIGHTEOUS PERSONS.

THIS CONFUSION BETWEEN THE NUMINOUS AND THE RELIGIOUS, THEN BETWEEN THE SACREDNESS AND THE SECULAR , MAKES OUR LIFE A MISERY FOR 4000 YEARS VIA ISRAEL AND ESPECIALLY THE NEW ISRAEL THAT CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM WANT TO BE.

The principle of our Ollotouta was given us, long time ago already, by our master to all in the domain; the great Gaelic bard, founder of the modern Free-thought, who is usually evoked under the anglicized name of John Toland. There cannot be, by definition, things contrary to Reason in Holy Scriptures really emanating from the divine one.

If there are, then it is, either error, or lies!

Either there is no mystery, or then it is in any way a divine revelation! There is no happy medium...

We do not admit other orthodoxy that only the one of Truth because, wherever it can be in the world, must also stand, we are completely convinced of it, God's Church, and not that one of such or such a human faction … We are consequently for showing no mercy to the error on any pretext that can be, each time we will have the possibility or occasion to expound it in its true colors.

1696. Christianity not mysterious.

1702. Vindicius Liberus. Response of John Toland to the detractors of his "Christianity not mysterious."

1704. Letters to Serena containing the origin of idolatry and reasons of heathenism, the history of the soul's immortality doctrine among the heathens, etc. (Version Baron d’Holbach, a German philosopher).

1705. The true Socinianism * as an example of fair debate on matters of theology *.To which is prefixed Indifference in disputes, recommended by a pantheist to an orthodox friend.

1709. Adeisdaemon or the man without superstition. Jewish origins.

1712. Letter against popery, and particularly against admitting the authority of the Fathers or Councils in religious controversies, by Sophia Charlotte of Prussia.

1714. Defense of the Jews, victims of the anti-Semite prejudices, and a plea for their naturalization. 1718. The destiny of Rome, of the popes, and the famous prophecy of St Malachy, archbishop of Armagh, in the thirteenth century.

Nazarenus or the Jewish, gentile, and Mahometan Christianity (version Baron d’Holbach), containing:

I.The history of the ancient gospel of Barnabas, and the modern apocryphal gospel of the Mahometans, attributed to the same apostle.

II.The original plan of Christianity occasionally explained in the history of the Nazarenes, solving at the same time various controversies about this divine (but so highly perverted) institution.

III.The relation of an Irish manuscript of the four gospels as likewise a summary of the ancient Irish Christianity and what the realty of the keldees (an order half-lay, half-religious) was, against the last two bishops of Worcester.

1720. Pantheisticon, sive formula celebrandae sodalitatis socraticae. Tetradymus.

I. Hodegus. The pillar of cloud and fire that guided the Israelites in the wilderness was not miraculous but, as faithfully related in Exodus, a practice equally known by other nations, and in those countries, not only useful, but even necessary.

Il. Clidophorus.

III. Hypatia or the history of the most beautiful, most virtuous, and most accomplished lady, who was stoned to death by the clergy of Alexandria, to gratify the pride, the emulation and even the cruelty, of Archbishop Cyril, commonly, but very undeservedly, styled Saint Cyril.

1726. Critical history of the Celtic religion, containing an account of the druids, or the priests and judges, of the vates, or the diviners and physicians, and finally of the bards, or the poets; of the ancient Britons, Irish or Scots. In plus with the story of Abaris the Hyperborean, priest of the sun. A specimen of the Armorican language (Breton, Irish, Latin, dictionary).

1726. An account of Jordano Bruno's book, about the infinity of the universe and the innumerable worlds, translated from the Italian editing.

1751. The Pantheisticon or the form of celebrating the Socratic-society. London S. Paterson. Translation of the book published in 1720.

"Druidism" is an independent review (independent of any religious or political association) and which has only one purpose: theoretical or fundamental research about what is neo-paganism. The double question, to which this review of theoretical studies tries to answer, could be summarized as follows: "What could be or what should be a current neo-druidism, modern and contemporary?”

"Druidism" is a neo-pagan review, strictly neo-pagan, and heir to all genuine (that is to say non- Christian) movements which have succeeded one another for 2000 years, the indirect heir, but the heir, nevertheless!

Regarding our reference tradition or our intellectual connection, let us underline that if the "poets" of Domnall mac Muirchertach Ua Néill still had imbas forosnai, teimn laegda and dichetal do chennaib 1) in their repertory (cf. the conclusion of the tale of the plunder of the castle of Maelmilscothach, of Urard Mac Coise, a poet who died in the 11th century), they may have been Christians for several generations. It is true that these practices (imbas forosnai, teimn ...) were formally forbidden by the Church, but who knows, there may have been accommodations similar to those of astrologers or alchemists in the Middle Ages.

Anyway our "Druidism" is also a will; the will to get closer, at the maximum, to ancient druidism, such as it was (scientifically speaking). The will also to modernize this druidism, a total return to ancient druidism being excluded (it would be anyway impossible).

Examples of modernization of this pagan druidism.

—Giving up to lay associations of the cultural side (medicine, poetry, mathematics, etc.). Principle of separation of Church and State.

—Specialization on the contrary, in Celtic, or pagan in general, spirituality history of religion, philosophy and metapsychics (known today as parapsychology).

—Use in some cases of the current vocabulary (Church, religion, baptism, and so on).

A golden mean, of course, is to be found between a total return to ancient druidism (fundamentalism) and a too revolutionary radical modernization (no longer sagum).

The Celtic PAA (pantheistic agnostic atheist) having agreed to be the defense lawyer of ancient Celtic

paganism and to sign jointly this small library *, of which he is only the collector, druid Hesunertus (Peter DeLaCrau), does not consider himself as the author of this collective work. But as the spokesperson for the team which composed it. For other sources of this essay on druidism, see the thanks in the bibliography.

* Socinians, since that's how they were named later, wished more than all to restore the true Christianity that teaches the Bible. They considered that the Reformation had made disappear only a part of corruption and formalism, present in the Churches, while leaving intact the bad substance: non- biblical teachings (that is very questionable in fact).

** This little camminus is nevertheless important for young people ... from 7 to 77 years old! Mantalon siron esi.

1) Do ratath tra do Mael Milscothach iartain cech ni dobrethaigsid suide sin etir ecnaide 7 fileda 7 brithemna la taeb ogaisic a crech 7 is amlaidsin ro ordaigset do tabairt a cach ollamain ina einech 7 ina sa[ru]gad acht cotissad de imus forosnad [di]chetal do chollaib cend 7 tenm laida .i. comenclainn fri rig Temrach do acht co ti de intreide sin FINIT.

INTRODUCTION.

For ancient druids, as d’Arbois de Jubainville had clearly seen, the anthropomorphic gods are neither good nor perfect. They do not really impose an ethical code that they themselves are far from following. The main thing for men is to try to understand their designs and to please them with offerings and sacrifices. This does not imply that the ancient Celtic society did not have moral rules but that it had an ethical code not imposed by the gods, in conformity with the social contract of the time and which, obeying the power and drawing from the sources of the popular wisdom, regulated life in groups according to a law which, though not completely natural (rectu adgenias), was nevertheless the subject of a consensus.

Judeo-Christians and atheists annotated much on this deeply immoral or amoral nature of the druidic paganism. The specialists in the study of the religions like Judaism Hinduism Christianity Zoroastrianism or Islam….Deduced that its gods or goddesses were ambivalent, at the same time angels and demons. In every case beyond the simplistic and silly Manicheism opposing the good to the evil.

The fact remains that we have at least in this field an example of a druidic god more sensitive to the thoughts as to the actions than to the commercial value of their sacrifices or offerings, of the faithful of his worship, it is the god Grannus in the temple of Grand (Upper Germania, or Belgium, for the Romans).

Grannus was the moral or ethical god (let us say the god of the moral beauty, of the beauty of the gesture) par excellence because according to Cassius Dio (Book LXXVIII chapter XV)

speaking about the Roman Emperor Caracalla.

“This showed most clearly that they regarded, not his votive offerings or his sacrifices, but only his purposes and his deeds. He received no help from Apollo Grannus, nor yet from Aesculapius or Serapis, in spite of his many supplications and his unwearying persistence. For even while abroad he sent to them prayers, sacrifices and votive offerings, and many couriers ran hither and thither every day carrying something of this kind; he also went to them himself, hoping to prevail by appearing in person, and did all that devotees are wont to do but he obtained nothing that contributed to health.”

We take over the expression readily used in the TR. No. 14, p. 16: The ethical sense of these “pagans” was more demanding than that of our modern Christians… who exonerate themselves a little too easily and as almost in advance of every fault or any responsibility. Following the example of Saul of Tarsus who declared: “The good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want.” In other words: “It is not my fault! ” Easy to say! The pagan ones could be eaten away all their lives by the remorse in the event of a serious fault against ethics or in case of responsibility in any affair, to see the example of Lailoken/Merlin after the battle of Arderryd. The Catholics like Rhydderch Hael, will confess themselves, with hell’s fear in their heart, repent “sincerely,” and leave absolved from every sin, in short, ready to start again.

In the druidic thought, such as we find it again through various later Celtic texts, compensation was more urgent than a sanction. This means by no means that a compensation exempted from repression in all the cases. Let us say only here that these sanctions were customizable, as that seems to go without saying in an ethical context of generalized relativism.

What brings us straightly to the sense of “JUSTICE,” as an equity or a mental attitude, and not in the meaning of legal procedure.

Indeed, if the requirement of Justice is a categorical imperative as an aspect of the Truth requirement; the determination of its contents could not be automatic. To state it, man needs this mental faculty which is called “to have common sense” or more familiarly “some gumption.” It is also necessary to act knowingly: therefore, no hasty judgment!

When we think that enthusiasm, sudden passions, were in the Celtic character, it is necessary to think that druids had much to do in order to make things calm down , and to instill to their flocks some moderation in the mentalities. Diodorus and Strabo besides, underlined their moderating role in the conflicts: the druids interposed themselves between the adversaries, who came to blows with bladed weapons, often through unwise surge. With the result that the druids attached a very particular

importance to justice, a major element of the “ druidic magisterium.” As for them, the title of “most just of men” was not overrated.

Current morality is of Christian inspiration (Christianity without Christ) and we see what that produces every day for decades (genocides, never-ending wars…). “To love foreigners or enemies undoubtedly form a major psychological impossibility for whoever is normal. To try to respect them or at least to understand them is already much.” Such is the lesson of the druid of Lucian.

The Christian ideal is in reality, in the final analysis, intrinsically against nature. Being impossible to respect at 100% by the masses (permanent sacrifice of the self, refusal of the self-defense, chastity, virginity…) it can lead only to a generalized, permanent and masochist, shaming, or to frightening negative effects. So let us try another thing! A Little more within reach!

“The Celts readily take in charge the cause of the one who is oppressed. They have indeed at the highest degree, the sense of the equity, of the law and of the honor. They can suffer that man breaks the sworn faith.the reputation of justice of some of their tribes, like the Volcae Tectosages who lived beyond the Rhine, extended far” (Albert Grenier).

Druidic ethics is therefore a moral “of the engagement” or of the humanitarian intervention before the word is invented. To the Greek child of Victor Hugo, an ancient Celt would never have sent candles or drugs, but… powder and bullets! Even better, he would have intervened directly by his sides, what do besides still, today, in ex-Yugoslavia, young people left to fight with Croats or Muslims against Serbs” (Peter DeLaCrau. April 1993).

FROM ANIMALS TO MEN.

The term "ethology,” according to a usual dictionary, designates the “study of animals in their natural environment.” A more concise and more general definition would be "behavioral science" or even "biological study of behavior" and under natural conditions or minimized experimental constraints, which distinguishes it, for example, from the animal psychology.

Preliminary clarification. We are not saying that man is an animal, we are saying that man IS ALSO AN ANIMAL; AT LEAST THROUGH HIS BODY.

The apes (abanas) were known of the Celts according to the lexicon of Hesychius of Alexandria (6th century).

One can therefore wonder why the Galatian dikastes had seen fit to use or retain such a term. Certainly not for the sole pleasure of annoying the creationists of the Judeo-Islamic-Christian Necronomicon who attribute any morality any ethics to the divine will of the demiurge of this world, according to them.

As if long before humans already, animals themselves did not follow specific rules regarding behavior...

The male pigeon takes its turn of sitting during the daytime; the female sits during the night. This behavior trait was taken up by Lorenz to argue in favor of the taxonomic interest of behavior traits. About horsing time the mares huddle closer together are continually switching their tails, their neigh is abnormal in sound. The stallion recognizes by the scent the mares that form his company. Each stallion has assigned to him about thirty mares.When a strange stallion approaches, he huddles his mares into a close ring, runs round them, then advances to the encounter of the newcomer… (Aristotle History of animals.)

To return to the dictionary of Hesychius our opinion is that the Galatians, astute observers of nature, had made before the letter some Julien Jean Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751): "From animals to man the transition is not violent. "

Because These Galatians were also good hunters according to Arrian and his book on the subject, but hunters were by definition the first specialists in animal behavior.

One of these great hunters was besides a contemporary of the author of the monumental Natural history, General and particular, Buffon, and opposed his own approach to that of the great naturalist as for the observation of animals. It is Charles-Georges Leroy (1723-1789), lieutenant of the royal hunts in the parks of Versailles and Marly.

From 1768 he advocated observations in nature and opposed the "school of woods" to the "reasoning" conducted in offices, which lead to mistakes. A passionate critic of the "mechanism" of the action of animals, a heritage of Descartes and that Buffon adopts, he lends animals the ability to judge, a capacity to adapt behavior after trial and mistake. He emphasizes the social relationships ("exchange of help") useful to the species. He recommends regular daily observations on several subjects. He is indeed aware of individual variability. For him too, the "animals" can innovate and the new behavior become hereditary. Of course everything is not in the same vein in Leroy (he ascribes to wolves an "articulated language"), his "methodological" concerns and his observations anticipate nevertheless those of modern ethology.

But our purpose is not here to retrace in an exhaustive way the rise and the development of the ethology which would necessarily start from the inevitable Aristotle quoted above until the first Nobel Prizes in the field, Karl Lorenz, Niko Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch. The word ethology is, of course, modern but the science it designates today had precursors.

In the manner of what has happened in other fields of the life sciences, knowledge of animal behavior has long mixed fantastic stories and fanciful "explanations.” A Frederick II, emperor of Germany in the Middle Ages, appears isolated in his century of gullibility. In the middle of the 13th century, phenomena that do not seem so difficult to grasp, such as the migration of swallows, are ignored. If they disappear during the bad season, it is because they hibernate in the hollow of the trees. As for the barnacle geese which arrive in summer, they come from the Far North where they are born and grow on the trees from shells which attached to them. What today's designations still remind us of: in

English, the shells are some barnacles, and the goose in question the barnacle goose. However, Frederick II, passionate about falconry, author of an "Art of Hunting with Birds" (De Arte Venandi cum Avibus, 1250) had pronounced for the migration of swifts and doubted the alleged origin of the barnacle geese. These erroneous beliefs nevertheless persisted still several centuries ……

When the "new anthropology" was born, and well before the new wave of field primatology research, Japanese researchers were already interested in the behavior of primates. As Itani (1985) emphasizes it, Japan, ruined by the war, did not have considerable resources to devote to research. However, in Japan, there are monkeys (Macaca fuscata), and all you need is a pair of binoculars, a notebook and a pencil to work.

In 1947, Kinji Imanishi had not yet gone to the south of Kyushu in order to observe monkeys, but wild horses. The presence of a troop of macaques on the same site makes him change the subject of his studies. But it is the troops of Koshima, then of Takasakiyama, which will be studied in depth, from 1952, by many researchers.

To facilitate observation, they place food on the beach. All the troop comes here, what makes possible the identification of each of the subjects which compose it. The discovery of the appearance, of the propagation, of the methods of propagation of a new behavior is quite surprising. The first takes place in Koshima where a young female takes the habit of washing sweet potatoes to clean them of the sand which sticks to them. She is imitated by her playmates, then by their mothers (Kawamura, 1954). Today, all of the Koshima macaques wash their potatoes before eating them. This example is not the only one showing that innovation can originate in a macaque troop, that it can pass from a generation to another generation, and the Japanese speak of "subhuman culture,” "of subculture" ( a word already used by Yerkes in 1943), "preculture" or "protoculture.”

The impetus given by the first "ethologists,” amateurs or experienced scientists, has today led to the delimitation of a vast field of research, occupied by hundreds of researchers with abundant works. Of course, the legitimacy of the extrapolations from animals to human beings has raised a debate which has prompted many meetings and books, and which is not closed. It continues to fuel harsh

controversies which join ancient discussions on the part of the nature and of the nurture, of nature and culture, and oppose the proponents of biological reductionism with those of cultural reductionism. The essential problem still being to be able to distinguish homologies and analogies of the behavior in interspecific comparisons.

Anyway, these discussions did not slow down the research but only focused them on specific points, whether it is territoriality, mother-young relationships, food gathering, sexual behavior, etc. Works have multiplied and primatology has taken over the anthropology departments.

One of the consequences was the evolution of the concept of hominization. There have been successive attempts to define criteria using anatomical features, the use of the tool, the symbolism implied by human language ..., without any of them appear decisive today.

The fact remains that it was through behavioral variations that the structural organic changes that led to Man could have been inferred. So the Great Apes - were they also current terms of their own evolution - remain favored witnesses in an attempt to reconstruct a human paleoethology.

Human ethology is the biological study of human behavior. In recent years, ethology has played a major role in sociobiology and evolutionary psychology. This last discipline, recent, combines ethology, primatology, anthropology and other fields in order to study the modern human behavior in comparison with the ancestral human behavior.

DRUIDIC ANTHROPOLOGY.

Former druids knew several myths dealing with the procreation of the World, but none placed mankind at the center of the process. In these accounts, emphasis was rather on the primordial moment of the emergence from the nothingness and of the hatching of the cosmic serpent egg.

In this context, the idea of a first human couple is completely foreign and there is no equivalent to the biblical couple of Adam and Eve as it appears in the Book of Genesis (chaps. 1-3 ). Human beings are not considered according to their individuality but as a species which, like so many others, has its place in the cosmic order.

And unlike Sumerian Hebrew or Egyptian mythologies.

A passage of the Teaching for Merikare (written around -2100}) professes for example that the demiurge or creating god established the universe and the breath of life especially for the human race: "Well tended is mankind—god's cattle, he made sky and earth for their sake, he subdued the water monster, he made breath for their noses to live. They are his images, who came from his body, he shines in the sky for their sake;

he made for them plants and cattle, fowl and fish to feed them.”

The fact remains that a special place has been hard won by mankind as being endowed with the faculties of reasoning and expressing itself. The couple "men-gods" is often mentioned and in Irish tradition men even occupied the land before the gods whom they fought under the Fir Bolg and finally repulsed under the mythical Milesians.

Gods, men and deceased share the same components of the personality and no ontological difference separates them. The difference is not qualitative but quantitative. The gods are just supermen.

The hierarchy between the gods, men and the deceased is, however, not clearly established. Of course, the gods are superior and the deceased have powers that men do not have; however, the existence, the power and the perenniality of the gods and of the deceased depend fundamentally on the ritual activities which the men dedicate to them in the sanctuaries and the necropolises.

CONCLUSION.

Nature and gods being in deep interdependence, everything fits in the universe (pantheism).

The Celtic man is part of his environment through a complex network of material and immaterial components. These different aspects of the personality are all means of communication which weave links between the sensitive world (earth) and the invisible world (sky and other worlds); between the palpable world of the human beings and the mythical world of the gods and of the deceased

According funeral rituals and legends about the other world, druidism believes in the existence of three different existential fields which coexist.

The most restricted field is that of the earthly life.

The second field is that of the posthumous survival after death. In the other world, the individual continues an even more or less material existence (bellissime body anamone and menman ) and therefore capable of interacting with all the deceased and living members of his family even with other men (combennones).

Finally, the third existential field is that of the immortality of the only anamone by metamorphic melting in the cosmic cauldron of the Pariollon.

This anthropology underlies most of the funeral beliefs, legends and rituals. Reflection of a pre- philosophical globalizing holistic thought which transcends unifies our modern concepts of religion, communions of "saints" and morality.

THE CELTIC MAN, THE GDONIOS.

For many African, Native American or Polynesian contemporary ethnic groups, nothing is more foreign than the simple opposition between body and soul. On the African continent, the traditional representations of the human person are very diverse. Depending on the tribes approached, human beings are made up of three to eight components. Among the Douala and the Ewondo in Cameroon, man is made up of the body, the heart, the breath and the shadow, four elements. For the Yoruba of Nigeria, man has material elements (body, shadow, inside the body), perishable immaterial elements (spirit, intelligence) and imperishable immaterial elements: the heart, the divine breath and the olori "the lord of the head ,” the latter reincarnating in a descendant. That is to say 8 elements.

In a very general way, the African man is characterized by the multiplicity of his components. This fact can lead to problems of disharmony, dispersion and lack of unity. These elements are constantly in unstable balance and, therefore, very sensitive to external attacks such as the evil eye or the bewitchment. This ability to split can, however, also be an advantage as when an individual, far from his family, appears to his loved ones thanks to his (human or animal) “double” during a dream or a mystical trip.

This capacity for duplication can unfortunately also prove to be very harmful, as when an apparition aims to harm others for a criminal purpose. There are many dangers and many enemies. Besides the bad sorcerers, there are also angry ancestors, wandering genies, dangerous dead, wrathful gods, etc.

These invisible attacks require appropriate protection. A victim can thus approach a soothsayer in order to unmask the bad sorcerer to punish him or, failing that, to protect himself by objects and amulets charged with good magic. If the damage is done, a cure is possible. Religious rites thus restore harmony between the different components of the personality. Other ceremonials make possible invoking the divine powers to strengthen the person, still others make contact possible with divine forces capable of fighting the occult forces. Through his components, the African individual is integrated into a very complex network of dependencies. He participates in a lineage of living and deceased ancestors; by an invisible twin, he can be attached to a place in the bush; his intimate essence can manifest itself in his shadow, a plant or a sacred animal. The individual thus merges with the present and the past, with the visible and the invisible, the natural and the supernatural.

For the former druids, the composition of the human being also went beyond the simple duality between body and soul which is the simplistic design of Judeo-Christian origin currently prevailing in our societies. Each individual had in him 7 or 8 material or immaterial components which integrated it in the earthly sphere of the sensitive and in the intangible sphere of the gods and ancestors.

During the earthly life, these various components of the individual form a unit. At the time of death, these different elements dissociate; each going to different regions of the world. The cluto or fame remains for example on earth and the ancestor worship aims to bring them together in order to secure their survival.

After death, thanks to his ethereal components, the Celtic man (not spiritually Semitic therefore if we believe Pope Pius XI in 1938) could therefore hope for a posthumous survival in the tomb and an almost immortal existence with the supernatural powers which regulate cosmic phenomena.

The druids did not establish a canonical list of the various components of the human being. In addition, they didn’t dissert much about them to define them. But a careful analysis of the vocabulary nevertheless makes possible to reconstruct it.

KICOS.

The kicos or physical body, subject to the decay of old age, is made unalterable after death by the luan laith lon laith lon gaile en blaith (or xvarnah in Zoroastrianism), which makes bodies bellisamos for men bellissama for women. The root bellissam designates both the body and its representations in painted or sculpted images.

MENMAN.

The menman or brain is the seat of personality, memory and awareness. ANATLO.

The vital breath or anatl is a spiritual energy which is born at the same time as the human being. The anatl survives after death thanks to the ancestor worship. This anatl, improperly translated by soul, is a spiritual principle which takes flight after the death of the deceased. This component represents the energy of movement and change inherent in each individual.

ANAMON.

The soul or anamone is more than a component, it is a state of the being, that of the Blessed Dead (Meldus) who has reached the status of higher spiritual power, bright and efficient.

SEBODDU.

Current neo-druidism adds to these components of the human being the seboddu, in Gaelic siabraid, siabhradh, shwt for the Egyptians.

According to the Ancient Egyptians, the Shadow is indeed a full component of the human personality. After death, a deceased person is complete only if he has it. The purpose of these magic formulas is to make possible the opening of the tomb and the safe exit of the deceased from the underground world. The main danger mentioned comes from the guardian genies charged with eliminating the enemies of Osiris. The deceased proclaims, of course, not to be part of this bad tribe and to have the right to come and go as he sees fit. This text is generally accompanied by an illustration where the Shadow, black and naked, is standing in front of the tomb.

Irish siabraid are perceived as supernatural beings, sometimes beneficent spirits , sometimes harmful spirits who inhabit hereafter and necropolises such as ghosts and demons of current beliefs. Siabraid have the opportunity to act in the world of the living. The seboddu of the deceased watches over the good entirety of the tomb and does not hesitate to punish the looters and thieves who crack the whip in the cemeteries.

ANMAN AND CLUTO.

The name and the fame, anman and cluto, also form a primordial part of the being. Without a name there is no longer being. The name is an essential component of the being for the simple reason that the name makes it possible to call someone and therefore to have a means of acting on him. In the field of occultism, an individual is vulnerable through his name. The practice of magic deplored by Pliny (the defixions like the lead tablet of Chamalieres in France) is based on the beneficial or evil use of the name of the targeted person. In bewitchment rituals, the symbolic destruction of the name amounts to destroying the very being of his owner. On the contrary, if a magician is unable to name an individual, he can expect nothing from his ritual. Each god often has an infinite number of names, but his real name, his secret name, is hidden from everyone. The name is not just an abstract entity. We can materialize it by writing it and make it disappear by erasing it.

MELDUS.

The meldus is in a way the antithesis of the seboddu, the opposite of the shadow of human beings, the meldus is their luminous double BUT ASSIGNED TO THE OTHER WORLD, with some exceptions (apparitions are possible).

Meldus is indeed the form taken by a living whole who has successfully passed to the afterlife and who has escaped the second death (reincarnation on earth in bacuceus or seboddu.

In the druidic thought, indeed death is not an end but a passage leading from one existence to another. Like the living, the deceased have basic needs to satisfy: eating, drinking or dressing but in the framework of a body that has become very different. The corresponding adjective is bellissamos for men and bellissama for women.

The Meldus is therefore a resplendent being associated with the sunlight and the brilliance of stars. It is a dead man who has regained all his capacities for action and who has even got new ones, thus becoming a higher spiritual power. The Gaelic formulas in blaith, lon gaile, lon laith, luan laith WHICH ARE ASSOCIATED WITH ONE OF ITS CONTRARY STATES OF BEING,THE RIASTRADES, ALSO

PARADOXICALLY MEAN "light, shine, sun beam.” They also designate the notions of fame, efficiency, utility and excellence because the last term, LATIS, is undoubtedly a word meaning hero or champion. The others are more doubtful (bird? Moon?)

THE CELTIC WOMAN.

The sacredness it is also the woman. It is therefore necessary for us to mention here the first characteristic of the Celtic society: the woman, as well it is true as more half of human beings are women . Among Celts, the social structures were those of all the Indo-European peoples, the first rank was reserved for the man (it was a patriarchal society). However, by studying the texts, we realize that the status of the Celtic woman was more advantageous compared to some other societies of the same time. The Celtic woman was not the equal one of the man (the Celts did not invent the parity…), but her stats was probably less bad than in the rest of the ancient world.

The Celtic woman was relatively independent, she could have own goods: jewels, cattle… If the land property was collective among Celts, the individual movable property, itself, was allowed. The woman could use of her personal goods in her own way, she kept them in the event of marriage and could take them back in the event of separation. The marriage was a flexible institution, result of a contract of which the length was not necessarily definitive. In theory, the wife chose her husband freely, and when it is it her who had more goods than her husband, it is it her who directed all the business of the household without requiring the opinion of her spouse. If the fortune of the man and the wife was on an equal footing, the husband could not manage the goods without referring to his wife about them.

While marrying, the wife never entered the family of her husband, she still belonged to her family of origin; and the price that the husband paid for the purchase of his future wife was only a compensation given to the family of this one for the fact of removing her from it. In the event of separation, the wife came back in her original family. If the man decided to divorce from his wife, he was to be based on serious reasons, if not, he was to pay her very high compensations. The wife could separate from her husband in the event of ill treatments, she could then take back her own goods and her share of the goods acquired during the marriage. The divorce could also be carried out by mutual assent, the separation was not related to any culpability, it was simply a contract which ceased.

Apart from the marriage, there existed a kind of concubinage regulated by very strict habits. A man could take a concubine, but if he was married, he could do it only with the agreement of his legitimate wife.

At the time of our ancestors, the Celtic women were not wimps. They have nothing to be ashamed of in comparison to their husbands, these well-built men, with a mustache and hairy, whose History has handed down to us the image.

The Celtic woman was not only a housewife in charge of the cooking of wild boars and of the chilling of the fresh….. cervoise ale …, she was a boss lady endowed with multiple talents.

Ammianus Marcellinus. (Roman History. Book XV, chapter XII, 1). “Nec enim eorum quemquam adhibita uxore rixantem, multo fortiore and glauca, peregrinorum ferre poterit globus, tum maxime cum illa inflata cervice suffrendens ponderansque niveas ulnas et vastas admixtis calcibus emittere coeperit pugnos ut catapultas tortilibus nervis excussas”. “A whole troop of foreigners would not be able to withstand a single continental Celt if he called his wife to his assistance, who is usually very strong when she is in a mad rage; especially when, swelling her neck, gnashing her teeth, and brandishing her sallow arms of enormous size, she begins to strike blows mingled with kicks, as if they were so many missiles sent from the string of a catapult.”

The Celtic wife was, in the society, much more important than the Roman wife. Their statuses were also very different. The one played an essential social and political role, the other was only the second sex dedicated to the subordinate tasks of the domestic life.

On the admission of the women in the councils, we have for example the account of Plutarch.

“Before the Celts crossed over the Alps and settled in that part of Italy which is now their home, a dire and persistent factional discord broke out among them which went on and on to the point of civil war. The women, however, put themselves between the armed forces, and, taking up the controversies, arbitrated and decided them with such irreproachable fairness that a wondrous friendship of all towards all was brought about between both tribes-states and families. As the result of this, they

continued to consult with the women in regard to war and peace, and to decide through them any disputed …” (Plutarch, virtues of women, VI).

There also exist she-warriors in the myth of the hesus/Cuchulainn, but no troops of women armed for the fight. We always deal with exceptional leaders such Boudicca in Great Britain.

Boadicea, or Boudicca, Boudicca (+ 30 + 61), wife of Prasutagus, is a queen of the Romano-British people of the Iceni, present in the area which is today Norfolk in the North-East of the Roman province of Great Britain, in the 1st century of our era. In his will and in accordance with the Roman law, King Prasutagus bequeaths half of his vassal kingdom to the Empire, towards + 60. But, after continual humiliations on behalf of the Roman administrators (our sources explain it is the rape of her two daughters and her own scourging) Boudicca takes up arms.

Cassius Dio. Roman History. Book LXII. When she had finished speaking, she [Boudicca] employed a species of divination, letting a hare escape from the fold of her dress; and since it ran on what they considered the auspicious side, the whole multitude shouted with pleasure, and Bunduica , raising her hand towards heaven, said: "I thank thee, Andrasta, and call upon thee as woman speaking to woman; for I rule over no burden-bearing Egyptians as did Nitocris, nor over-trafficking Assyrians as did Semiramis (for we have by now gained thus much learning from the Romans!), much less over the Romans themselves as did Messalina once and afterwards Agrippina and now Nero (who, though in name a man, is in fact a woman, as is proved by his singing, lyre-playing and beautification of his person); nay, those over whom I rule are [great] British, men that know not how to till the soil or ply a trade, but are thoroughly versed in the art of war and hold all things in common, even children and wives, so that the latter possess the same valor as the men. As the queen, then, of such men and of such women, I supplicate and pray thee for victory, preservation of life, and liberty against men insolent, unjust, insatiable, impious— if, indeed, we ought to term those people men who bathe in warm water, eat artificial dainties, drink unmixed wine, anoint themselves with myrrh, sleep on soft couches with boys for bedfellows— boys past their prime at that— and are slaves to a lyre player and a poor one too. Wherefore may this Mistress Domitia Nero reign no longer over me or over you men; let the wench sing and lord it over Romans, for they surely deserve to be the slaves of such a woman after having submitted to her so long. But for us, divine Mistress, be thou alone ever our leader."

With her army, she destroys the colony of Camulodunum, as its recent imperial sanctuary, the municipium of Verulamium and the town of Londinium (London).

The Roman general Suetonius Paulinus ends up gaining the victory in 61. Boudicca commits suicide with poison.

Editor’s note.

The revolt of Boudicca is seen still nowadays as a symbol of the resistance of the populations against the Roman invader; she is regarded as the British and female counterpart of the French Vercingetorix. A statue which represents her, holding up a sword and driving a chariot, stands in London, close to Westminster Bridge.

The Celtic woman thus takes part in the public affairs whereas the Roman one does, on the other hand, has no legitimate place within the framework of the organization of the Roman Empire. Romans are even astonished that, among the Celts, as in most peoples gathered under the term “barbarians,” the roles are “reversed.” In fact, when, after Caesar, the Roman armies started the conquest of Great Britain, some Celtic tribes they met were often directed by women.

From where comes the enviable place of the Celtic woman in the society? It is possible that the Celts were influenced by the pre-Celtic populations which they have acculturated or conquered (the Atectai). It would seem indeed that these pre-Celtic populations were with strong matriarchal tendencies, contrary to the Indo-European peoples which followed.

In short, everyone agrees to say that the situation of the Celtic woman was notably better than in Rome, and much more than in the medieval Christian society which followed. Monogamy being the rule among Celts, except for the very great figures (as in every Indo-European society), her status, on

the Continent, as in Ireland, was little different from that of the man; she could indeed be the owner of her lands, and could even sometimes be a soldier. Moreover it was not a question of “purity” at the time of the weddings. Certain famous Celtic women were even queens, and a good one at that. If the Celtic woman therefore holds well, a favorable position, in the society where she lived, her status was then degraded rather appreciably, and she will have to even wait for centuries in order to reconquer her rights.

We can nevertheless consider that the Western woman of today has approximately the same matrimonial rights as the Celtic woman. End of the Editor’s note.

THE CELTIC WIFE.

The Irish legal texts that we have show women invested with the capacity to sue through seizure of personal or real property (what, in a society without state without prison without police force do not forget it, is of the most extreme importance). A special procedure exists for them: it is perfectly distinct from the procedure that men follow in order to practice either the seizures of a personal property or the seizures of real property. Two texts claim even to teach us by whom this female procedure was invented.

When the king and the noblemen walk in the territory of the tribe-State, they are entitled to make themselves accompanied by an entourage , whose importance depends on their dignity. The number of the people who form the entourage of a king of tuath is of twelve, according to the Crith gablach whose list continues as follows: aire-forgill, nine people; aire-tuise, eight; aire-ard, seven; aire-desa, six; bo-aire, three. No entourage is envisaged for the midboth or commoner who therefore visits his friends all alone.

BUT, UNLIKE THE GENERALLY ACCEPTED IDEAS THE CELTIC WOMAN IN THIS SYSTEM WITHOUT BEING AS MUCH WORTH AS A MAN

WAS MUCH MORE WORTH NEVERTHELESS THAT THE HALF OF A MAN AS IN ISLAMIC LAND

(humor).

That is seen in the importance of the entourage according to the Senchus Mor even if the texts we have are different in the detail of figures (on the other hand the hierarchical order remains).

The wives are therefore theoretically entitled to only half of the entourage which accompanies their husband. But in fact they take a little more than this half.

According to the Crith gablach, this half of the twelve people who accompany the king is equal to nine and nine people therefore make up the entourage of the queen. For the wife of the aire-forgill, half of nine is seven; for the wife of the aire-tuise, half of eight is six; for the wife of the aire-ard, half of seven is five and so on.

In this system, which is also that of the Senchus Mor and of its gloss, the entourage of the wife of the aire-forgill is equal the party of aire-tuise, and, consequently, ten is the half of twelve. We go down thus to the wife of the boaire, whose entourage is that of the oc aire, two people, while the boaire makes himself accompanied by three people, consequently in this case two is half of three.

What we may think of these calculations (their authors seem to be really annoyed with the figures) a nobody being always equal to zero, it is clear that the wife of the last of the men was theoretically, like her husband, at least in Ireland, reduced to go alone in the territory of the tuath, where the queen and the wives of the aire caught everyone’s eye by their entourage, when the attraction of their beauty was missing.

D’Arbois de Jubainville wrote strange things in connection with the Celtic woman. He compares the Galatian worship of the virgin Artemis or more exactly of the Celtic goddess who hides behind this name, with that of the Roman vestals.

The ideal makes the greatness of the peoples, and the Celts have of the married woman an ideal equivalent to those that Greece and Rome offer in antiquity. This ideal is missing among Semites. The distinction that the Greco-Roman world draws between the free woman and the slave woman makes, gives to the first one a self-respect that the Semitic woman did not know in antiquity. We may compare on this subject two equally legendary accounts, one Roman, the other Jew.

Here the Roman tale according to Plutarch: Atepomarus, king of the Galatians, making war with the Romans, says that he would not withdraw as much as the Romans would not have given their wives up to him. The Romans, having received from their female slaves the offer to replace their she owners, sent these women to the Galatians, and soon the tired barbarians fell asleep.

One of the slaves, named Retana, who had imagined this stratagem, used a fig tree as a ladder, went up on the enclosing wall and went to warn the consuls who, making sally, had no difficulty to overcome the Galatians.

Here is how Aristides of Miletus had to arrange the story of Judith to make of it an acceptable account in the Roman world of the first century before our era.

Judith has been widowed for three years four months; her husband left her gold, money, male and female slaves, herds and fields; she is very pious and of a remarkable beauty; off she goes accompanied by one female slave to find the enemy general in his tent, spends four days with him and, the last day, after having made him drunk, she kills him; once back home, she is enveloped with a universal consideration; in Rome, in Greece, she had been extremely compromised. The theory of the marriage among Celts is indeed the same one as among Greeks and Romans.

LADIES FIRST! (CHIVALROUS MIND CONTINUATION.)

Under the influence of the Church which encouraged the lords to make peace (God truce), the manners are softened. Less turned towards the Crusades and the defense of their fiefdom, the lords are accustomed to the court life. Then, little by little, manners are also subject to the influence of the more delicate female universe. At the instigation of high-ranking women, like Eleanor of Aquitaine, initially wife of the king France, then wife of the king of England, are established courts of love where the artists sing the, idealized, perfect, inaccessible, woman. Rising from the Latin word domina, soon imposes itself the French word dame, title given to the woman and underlining her character of a boss lady. Overlady, the woman is indeed so in love.

The fact of being a good knight does not stop with power and courage, but also comprises the courtesy, as much for the engagements (to let the enemy get back on his feet , to fight on equal terms, etc.) than for the courteousness towards the ladies in the court.

As from the 11th century in the south of France (troubadours) , and from the 12th century in north (trouveres), the feudal society adds a new value to the chivalrous ideal: the love service, which puts the love concerns in the center of the life. The imaginary court of King Arthur in the romances of the Round Table becomes the ideal model of the real courts : not only the knight is brave, but, moreover, he has a desire of being pleasant; because the women are present, the knight must adopt elegant attitudes, delicate remarks. In the love service, to appeal to his lady, the knight tries to bring to their perfection the chivalrous and courteous qualities: he must control his desires, to deserve through a hard discipline the love of his lady. This ideal is well that of the courtiers.

Indeed, the word “courteous” means in the beginning, “of the court.” The courtesy indicates a way of being, the whole of the attitude, of the manners of the seigniorial court in which the chivalrous values are modified by the presence of the ladies. The courtly love is a code that the knight must follow.

The Lady.

The courteous lover is charmed by the lady, a woman endowed with an exceptional beauty and with exceptional merits, accomplished, but who is married. In the Middle Ages, there exists a strong tension between love and marriage. You are not married for love then: you are married by interest, to perpetuate the family, to be allied with a clan. The marriage is a matter of reason, and often decided in advance by the parents of the spouses.

Whereas marriage is accessible to everybody , true love, as for it, is felt only by the noble hearts (it is at least the point of view of the authors of the courteous current). The noble love is neither banal nor common. It is neither easy nor interested, even if it is generally felt a woman of a higher status. This difference between the social statuses makes the woman inaccessible, raises her on the level of the deities to adore.

The courtly love.

If the sex act is the love confirmation, the nobility of feelings invite to make it sublime. Not letting himself dominated by his fleshly desires, the courteous lover will get the heart of his lady by showing to her an impressed by delicacy and reserve love. His passion must lead him to go beyond his desire for the lady in order to feel for her a refined, deep, true, love, a love transposed on a higher level. This “spiritual” love - it is called fin' amor in Provencal language, what means “perfect love” or “made sublime love” - is characterized by the pleasure caused by the manifestation of the divine one in the other. The fin' amor is rare and, as it was already mentioned, incompatible with marriage. This feeling encourages the knight to surpass himself in order to rise on the level of his lady: the noble heart is the ideal to be reached for the man.

The courteous lover.

The courteous lover is a heroic warrior. He is strong, skillful, but, especially, loyal towards his overlord. His heart nobleness makes him a frank, polite and subtle man. The physical strength developed in the epic texts still exists, but it is now channeled in the tournaments, pitched battles where the knight defends the colors or even the honor of his lady. The valiancy of the knight is therefore still required, but it finds from now on an expression in love. In Fact, love becomes the source of any valiancy and any generosity.

The courteous lover is completely subjected and devoted to his lady: self-denial, obedience and discretion are his watchwords. To deserve the love of his lady (who shows coldness and whims), in order to prove the intensity and the constancy of his love, the knight will have to yield to the “service of love,” i.e., he will have to subject to the habits and customs of the waiting time and to leave victorious a series of ordeals often fixed by his mistress. But that matters little for him: when the noble heart is in love, nothing else is important. The achieved feats, the suffering, will increase his stature morally.

Harshly tested , the knight in love must even find joy in the suffering and the separation. The ordeals, evidence of his moral perfection, will enable him to win the heart of his beloved and to get a reward. When he loves, the courteous knight pays homage to his lady, she becomes the suzerain of his heart: he subjects himself to her blindly. The loyalty to the lady comes before that to the overlord: he must show a total obedience, an unfailing fidelity. This submission thus brings, for the knight, the conflict which opposes his love to his honor. To give up his honor for love represents the biggest sacrifice that he can make.

Joys of love.

After the discipline, the waiting time, the ordeals, the sacrifice of his honor, the knight can finally to give in to the sensual pleasure. Indeed, the troubadours, idealist but so realistic, saw the sex act – thus deserved - as the love sacrament . The vulgarity of sexuality moves aside in front the imposed discipline. An unrestrained passion, which does not move back in front of the scandal, is shocking. The consequences are disastrous for the lovers: the lady loses her honor, component essential to her perfection and… to her title, whereas the value of the knight is ignored, it is neither admitted nor celebrated.

However, it may be that this act of love never occurs, and that the favors of the lady, never granted, only kept beautiful dreams going on, caused intense hopes, inspired generous acts. This complex state of mind created by this waiting and this effort is what is called the “joy of love” in Provencal language.

If the courteous literature - which often fits within a marvelous world, peopled by supernatural elements, some mysterious and fantastic characters (magi, fairies, dwarves and giants, etc.) - thus presents the pleasant plays of love; the fact remains that this love, sometimes depicted in a melancholic way, is sometimes subjected to the vicissitudes of the destiny. There we come across the topic of the unhappy love, of the frustrated love which runs up against obstacles, which sometimes breaks on pitfalls, but which remains nevertheless victorious, because courtly love, beyond death itself, is an eternal feeling.

REMINDER ON ETHOLOGY AND RECTU ADGENIAS OR NATURAL LAW.

We tend to say that, when men behave “well,” it is because of the civilization or of the religion. And when they behave “badly,” nature is blamed. We kill each other because we are like animals.

However the truth, it is that “the good” sides of the human nature, just like the “evil” ones, we share them with the other animals. Henry Lizeray besides (The found again national tradition page 13) very rightly questioned that the war is the necessary natural state of Mankind as Jordanes says in connection with the Goths who would worship Mars only that is to say the war god.

In his excellent and stimulating “Primates and philosophers,” Frans De Waal examines the question of the origin of morality by considering the behavior of our closer cousins. De Waal disseminated his discoveries in a series of popularizing works which had great success, as Our inner ape and The ape and the sushi master….. Empathy, collaboration, equity and reciprocity, to worry about the wellbeing of the others, seem to be a specifically human feature. But the primatologist Frans De Waal studied the behavior of the primates and of other mammals.

Not to mention the case of the bonobos, he realized for example that the chimpanzees reconcile themselves systematically after a brawl. And his conclusions are most instructive for the human relations. Because there it is no longer simply a question of winning or losing, but of preserving, beyond the conflict, an invaluable, revealing of social and emotional needs which take precedence over the competition, relation.

The ethology is the study of the behavior of the various animal species. At the theoretical level, the ethology can be connected with the biology of behavior and especially with the biology of the interaction within species. Scientists such as Darwin, Heinroth, Fabre, Whitman, Von Uexkull, marked this vast study domain. Human ethology, centered on the study of the individual behaviors, is a part of it.

The principle of the ethology being to use a biological prospect to explain the behavior, this science is also called “biology of behavior.”

The recent evolution of this biological discipline is marked by the long-term scientific studies on the animal behaviors, of which the three more notorious consecrated the ethology by the Nobel Prize of biology in 1973. They are the work carried out especially in the second third of the 20th century by the German Karl von Frisch, the Austrian Konrad Lorenz (1903-1989) and the Netherlander Nikolaas Tinbergen (1907-1988).

The word ethology means etymologically “study of manners.” The first contributions which it is possible to add to the heritage of this science date from the 17th century. The name is used only in 1854 by Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1805-1861).

This field includes especially the study of the animal behavior such as it can be observed in the wild animal in natural environment, in the wild animal in captivity, the domestic animal in natural environment and the domestic animal in captivity.

The human ethology leaves the investigation field of the specialists in the animal instinct to describe the individual and collective behavior. It is necessary to include in this category the behavioral study of the human beings and the relations man-animal.

Three publications, one American, other Canadian and the third French recently broadened our knowledge about our cousins the apes.

A team of Canadians revealed that the primates could break nuts 4,300 years ago.

An American study reveals that they are the female chimpanzees who make weapons to drive out: for lack of muscles, they in a way carried out a “brainstorming.”

In 2007 finally, the French review Sciences et Avenir made a report about the work of Sabrina Krief, who is interested since 1999 in the self-medication of apes starting from medicinal herbs.

The American review devoted its number to an observation of a group of chimpanzees living in their natural environment, in the south-east of Senegal. An international team of American and British researchers delivered in it the report of their observations and revealed the chimpanzee is able to make a weapon specifically intended to catch and kill prey, such as for example pieces of wood sharpened to hunt small vertebrates, such lemurs and tarsiers (rat-sized small mammals). The weapon is made either by a female, or by young individual member of the group. The male does not use this weapon.

In conclusion, the researchers deduced that the females had to be creative to solve a problem which the males had settled thanks to their muscles. The anthropologists of the American State University of Iowa and of the British University of Cambridge explain that this craft industry is specifically produced to compensate for the fact that the females have neither the strength nor the time to compete with the males in hunting.

But if the manufacturing of the weapons is only due to the females, it is well there the only new information, because previous works undertaken by specialists in the animal behavior already revealed that certain primates, such as for example the chimpanzee, are able to solve small problems by using their intelligence. So, the chimpanzee uses brushwood from which he plucks the leaves off when he wants to extract termites or ants from their nests. He can also use objects out of stone or wood, to break nuts, and this since prehistory.

Indeed, according to the Canadian researchers, who studied the fossilized remainders of broken nuts, the primates used melon-sized stones i.e., too large to be used by a man, to open the very hard shell of the nut Panda oleosa. This know-how, according to them, goes in the direction of an additional confirmation as for the communal origin of both (animal and human) species. Humans and apes would have inherited certain know-how of a common ancestor.”

In addition to fishing and hunting, our cousins the chimpanzees can also manufacture kinds of flip- flops (!) starting from brushwood to protect the arch of their foot and to climb without pain the tree trunks, as well as soft small cushions made of dry leaves to isolate themselves from the wet ground.

The primatologists highlighted some different handing down of this knowledge between groups of chimpanzees so much so that specialists begin to speak of culture in what is relating to them. We thought that the civilization and especially the technology were exclusively pertaining the field of mankind but it is not the case, underlines Julio Mercader who continues, to break the shell of a nut in order to extract the edible part from it is more complicated than it appears (…) The social handing down of this know-how spends approximately seven years.

In January 2007, the French review Sciences et Avenir gave an account of the work of Sabrina Krief . The latter, university lecturer in the National Museum of natural history, is interested in the “medical culture” of chimpanzees. Observing the food behavior of the Ugandan chimpanzees, she investigated during several years the selective use of the plants by primates. She thus noticed that the chimpanzees swallowed, exceptionally, certain plants for therapeutic uses when they were sick or wounded.

We still know few things about the diseases of apes, but it is certain that they have good medicines within reach (…) whereas they encounter multiple parasites, viruses, microbes and that they are often mutilated by small game traps from poachers. They find plants which can cure them or to keep immunity sufficient to resist the disease and gangrene. But we do not know yet if this knowledge is innate or acquired, Sabrina Krief adds.

These studies interest highly the pharmaceutical laboratories because, insists Sabrina Krief “nature is an important source of biochemical diversity. There exist nearly 500,000 plants on the planet. To date less than 10% were indexed.”

Chimpanzees to keep law and order. The police is not the characteristic of man. Many other animal species have their police officers, in particular our cousins the apes. Actions of policing were thus

reported among the chimpanzees, the bonobos, the mountain gorillas and the orangutans but also in smaller monkeys like certain species of baboons and macaques.

To keep law and order is a crucial issue for the stability of the social groups in which these animals live and by “keeping law and order ,” the ethologists understand "to intervene in an impartial way” (i.e., without supporting somebody) in a conflict between several protagonists.

A behavior of a great interest for the researchers because it could indicate a germ of moral sense pushing certain individuals to play a role of mediator not to inevitably draw from that some personal benefit - on the contrary, there is an unquestionable taking of physical risk to separate fellow creatures who quarrel - but for the common good, in order to preserve the cohesion of the society.

But it is necessary to be sure about it. Although often described, the keeping of law and order among apes was not studied thoroughly and there exist other assumptions only than those of the police officer who only intervenes to restore social peace. Less altruistic reasons could generate such a behavior, as what we can observe among deer, for example, where the dominant males intervene at the time of fights between other males, in order to control the social ascent of future potential rivals. In this case, the “police actions” take place only between males. Another possibility: that the dominant males settle the conflicts between females, in particular with the newcomers into the group, in a way to ensure peace in the harem and to preserve an important reproductive potential. Last assumption: the intervention of individuals rather classified in the bottom of the social scale which would be likely to be the first victims if the conflict degenerated and extended to the whole group.

To solve among all these assumptions, a European team led by Swiss researchers conducted a study on a group of chimpanzees in the zoo of Gossau.

This small community of apes was observed during nearly 600 hours distributed on more than a year. During this period, the group underwent several upheavals (introduction of three new females, the alpha male ousted by a beta male), as many episodes of weakening of the social structure supposed to cause an increase of the conflicts and, at the same time, some interventions of the “police” less rare than usually. The chimpanzees being enough quarrelers, 438 conflicts were listed and 69 of them caused a mediation. Each time, the keeping of law was carried out by one of the two dominant males, even by both in 8 cases. The researchers indexed three main tactics: the first, rather passive, consisted for the “police officer” in approaching sufficiently close to the scene to put an end to the conflict by his only presence, the second to threaten simultaneously the two antagonists and the third to be interposed physically between the adversaries of the moment. On the 69 interventions, 60 were successful, while putting and end to the conflict. A high effectiveness which increased to 100% in the 8 cases where two males acted together.

To supplement their data, the researchers asked f from three other European zoos their observations on the police chimpanzees. Observations which confirmed their suspicions: in all the cases, high- ranking males and females shared the keeping of law and order. A behavior which shows a true concern for the stability of the group. Perhaps is it especially question, for the individuals located high up the social ladder, to preserve their status through the peace of the community, a kind of indirect personal benefit. Unless perhaps that keeping law and order constitutes one of these altruistic behaviors well fixed among apes (to whom the men belong) and which take part in the improvement of the life in a community: a behavior moved by a true interest of the individuals for the resolution of the conflicts of the others, which could be considered, as the authors of the study say it, “as a precursor of human morality”…

But let us return to the works of Frans De Waal.

Men could also see dolphins supporting a wounded companion in order to make him breathing on the surface, some elephants which take care with much gentleness of an old blind female… The empathy perhaps appeared in the evolution before the arrival of the primates: it is characteristic of all the mammals and it rises from the maternal care. When the young express an emotion, that they are in danger or that they are hungry, the female must react immediately, if not the young die. Empathy started thus. That also explains why the empathy is a more female than male characteristic.

There were tens of experiments where we see monkeys refusing to activate a mechanism which distributes food to them when they realize that the system sends electric shocks to their companions. Their sensitivity to the suffering of the others was such as they stopped being fed for twelve days.

Frans De Waal also discovered a behavior of consolation or comfort, among the chimpanzees. After a brawl, the one who lost is comforted by the others, they approach him, take him in their arms, try to calm him.

We are also programmed to be empathic, to echo the emotions of the others. This effect is an automatic reaction over which we have little control. In itself, empathy is neutral. It is often linked with positive behaviors, but it can also be used for negative purposes. For example, when torturers know what is painful for those they torture.

A psychopath has all the cognitive components of empathy: he understands the desires and the intentions of the others… But he is completely indifferent to what happens to them. James Blair, a British researcher, thinks that certain children are deprived of this emotional “resonance.” When they dispute with a brother or a sister, if the other cries, they are not sensitive with his sorrow. While growing up, they learn that they can obtain what they want by striking their brother or by taking a toy from them without there is ever negative consequences since they are not sensitive to the suffering of the others.

A thing is disconcerting in the American policy, it is the continual reference to biology and religion. The American conservatives like to refer to the evolution, but always in the direction which is convenient fort them: “We are made for competition, there is a struggle for survival.” On the other hand, they have many problems with the true Darwinian evolution, it is enough to see the success of creationism.

Conclusion of Frans De Waal.

The mass religions now widespread in the West were born in the desert. In the desert, with what animal the human being can be compared? With the camel? Man and camels are obviously very different. It is therefore very easy to support that we are completely different from animals, that we are not animals, that we have a soul and that the animals do not have soul. When the folklore of our societis is read, the fables for example, we meet there foxes, ravens, storks, rabbits… but no ape.

Whereas the Asian folklore overflows with gibbons, macaques… In India, in China, in Japan, there are all kinds of monkeys. The development of cultures was done there accompanied by primates, it is with this kind of animal that the Asian people compare themselves. As a result, the boundary line is never very clear. When, for the first time in the 19th century, the inhabitants of London saw apes, they were shocked, disgusted even. Disgusted by seeing an orangutan? That is possible only if you have of yourself an idea which excludes the animal. If not, you see an orangutan and you think : if that, it is an animal, then perhaps that I am also an animal.

FIRST GATHERING OF THE MISTLETOE OF GREAT PRINCIPLES.

Nowadays it's all about money, but it hasn't always been that way. There have indeed been societies where the first value was the sense of honor. It is with such bricks or cement that we must build the New Man of tomorrow. With the best of the old!

In societies without organized social coercion (police, prison, etc.) honor and shame were the only possible social control mechanism.

Honor was therefore something that mattered a great deal to the ancient Irish, and this importance was reflected in the way honor was treated in literary texts, or in the treatment of the price of honor in legal texts.

IRISH LITERATURE.

The basic principle being that of reciprocity, honor consisted in behaving with others in accordance with what society expected in this matter, for better or worse.

Setanta Cuchulainn, for example, always adapted his behavior and actions to the adversary and the situation.

He made the choice to have a short life, but to remain forever famous as the very personification of honor (archetype would say Jung).

"Amra bríg can co ra bur acht oenlá & oenadaig ar bith, acht co marat m'airscéla & m'imthechta dimm esi."

But if the ideal was clear, the practice was less so. Cuchulainn himself burns in their house the 150 shrews that lynched the daughter of the king of Norway Derbforgaille, in order to avenge the death of the unfortunate woman and her adopted son Lugaid (aided lugdach ocus Derbfogaille).

EDITOR'S NOTE. The number is, of course, symbolic and as for Derbfogaille it was at the beginning obviously an angel from the other world.

The warriors' code of honor therefore seems quite clear in literature, but it does not reflect the whole social reality. One can even legitimately think that our bards deliberately ignore the dark side of all these exploits.

IRISH LAW.

With the exception of slaves *, in primitive Ireland there were degrees proper to each of the classes composing society (first function second function third function).

Early Irish law scholar Neil MacLeod (Early Irish Law; Status and Currency) believes that such a system, coupled with the notion of collective responsibility, was an important contributor to the maintenance of order in the tribe.

If someone could not pay the blood money he had shed, his family members were required to do so. If someone killed a man of high rank, his entire family could be ruined in one fell swoop.

But the status of a man or woman in such a society - that is, the legal construction determining the height to which that person could guarantee a contract, as well as the compensation to be paid to him in case of injury, or to his family in case of homicide - was only taken into account and respected as long as that person was considered by the community to be properly fulfilling his or her social obligations. Charles-Edwards defines honor as the respect due to those whose conduct was in accordance with the duties of their status.

Charles-Edwards, "Honour and Status in some Irish and Welsh Prose Tales. Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland.

Societies without organized social coercion (police forces, etc.) and therefore "based on honor" imply the existence of a certain consensus on the matter.

All this makes us curiously think of what Gustave Le Bon wrote in his book on crowd psychology. "Whatever has been a ruling power in the world, whether it be ideas or men, has in the main enforced its authority by means of that irresistible force expressed by the word "prestige." The term is one whose meaning is grasped by everybody, but the word is employed in ways too different for it to be easy to define it. Prestige may involve such sentiments as admiration or fear. Occasionally even these sentiments are its basis, but it can perfectly well exist without them. The greatest measure of prestige

is possessed by the dead, by beings, that is, of whom we do not stand in fear—by Alexander, Caesar, Mahomet, and Buddha, for example. On the other hand, there are fictive beings whom we do not admire—the monstrous divinities of the subterranean temples of India, for instance—but who strike us nevertheless as endowed with a great prestige.Prestige in reality is a sort of domination exercised on our mind by an individual, a work, or an idea. This domination paralyzes our critical faculty, and fills our soul with astonishment and respect. The sentiment provoked is inexplicable, like all sentiments, but it would appear to be of the same kind as the fascination to which a magnetized person is subjected. Prestige is the mainspring of all authority. Neither gods, kings, nor women have ever reigned without it.The various kinds of prestige may be grouped under two principal heads: acquired prestige and personal prestige. Acquired prestige is that resulting from name, fortune, and reputation. It may be independent of personal prestige. Personal prestige, on the contrary, is something essentially peculiar to the individual; it may coexist with reputation, glory, and fortune, or be strengthened by them, but it is perfectly capable of existing in their absence.Acquired or artificial prestige is much the most common. The mere fact that an individual occupies a certain position, possesses a certain fortune, or bears certain titles, endows him with prestige, however slight his own personal worth. A soldier in uniform, a judge in his robes, always enjoys prestige. Pascal has very properly noted the necessity for judges of robes and wigs. Without them they would be stripped of half their authority. The most unbending socialist is always somewhat impressed by the sight of a prince or a marquis; and the assumption of such titles makes the robbing of tradesmen an easy matter.”

When the procedures designed to render justice fail, there are only two solutions.

And in case of non-payment, the family members of the victim had the right to exact revenge on the family of the murderer. Or they were outlawed. As for the continent, Caesar speaks of the prohibition of sacrifice. "It is the most serious punishment in their country. Those who incur this prohibition are put among the ungodly and criminals; everyone distances himself from them, flees from their approach and their maintenance, and fears the contagion of the evil they are struck with; all access to justice is denied them; they have no part in any honor."

In concrete terms, this most often meant going into exile. Famous example in history: the Viking Eric the Red discovered America 5 centuries before Christopher Columbus.

THE HUMAN RIGHTS OF FIGHTERS DURING WAR OR THE RIGHTS OF THE ARMED MAN.

The ethics of the second Irish function and more precisely even of a Cuchulainn was the subject of a definitive study conducted in 2004 by David Noel Wilson and to which we can only refer (University of Melbourne).

Its keystone is a kind of fair play that the Irish call fir fer and the English call fair play; which as for us we would perhaps translate into RIGHTS OF ARMED MEN.

The careful study of Irish sagas such as the rustling of Cooley’s cattle or the destruction of the Da Derga hotel makes possible indeed to extract the following 4 main rules or characteristics.

-True warriors only fight with men of the same status and value.

These are, of course, singular fights. For the Celts the battle was only a succession of singular fights. Singular fights that could be public so that everyone could judge their fairness.

N.B. This does not exclude the presence here and there of great strategists (scorched earth policy before Gergovia, etc.).

Choice of weapons. If Ferdiad's case is representative, the choice of weapons is up to the first to arrive. Then there can be an alternation. Note, however, that in this case there will be some cheating on the part of our hero, because he will end up using a supernatural weapon, the gae bolga, or lightning spear, under the pretext that Fer Diad is equipped with a horn or invincible scale armor.

-Lastlly, once the fight is started none of the opponents can be helped by other men of his camp. And ambushes aimed at a lone warrior are very frowned upon. A man named Dubthach suggests making one for Cuchulainn, but Fergus answers him by kicking him in the ass.

The druids probably insisted on these ethical rules in order to limit the damage as they did also in the case of human sacrifices (limited to those condemned to death and only every 5 years according to Diodorus of Sicily Book V 32).

They may even have added another one: the obligation to prevent that there will be an attack. What our Muslim brothers call da'wa. At least that's what one can think of when reading the Pursuit of Diarmat and Grannia (Finn's son warns them) and the Destruction of the Hotel of Da Derga (the defenders are warned by a fire set by the attackers).

* On the Continent, they were mostly prisoners of war, criminals who were unable to pay their debts. But Caesar's words on the matter confuse the issue.

In omni Gallia eorum hominum, qui aliquo sunt numero atque honore, genera sunt duo. Nam plebes paene seruorum habetur loco, quae nihil audet per se, nullo adhibetur consilio.

Everything is in the "paene." And besides, what does "plebs" mean under Caesar's writing?

INDIVIDUAL OPINION OF THE DRUID JOHN MARTIN ON THE SUBJECT.

RECTU ADGENIAS. RECHT AICNID in Ireland. An excellent definition of it was provided to us by the inhabitant of Langres Denis Diderot. Was this because of his proximity of the Matrona’s springs where was at one time founded the druidic Ollotouta by Ronan ab Lug and Gal Crae?? Nobody know it.

The notion of rectu adgenias ultimately refers to the nature “nemet” of the human person. It is on the existence of the pact with the god-or-demons, concluded after the battle for the Talantio also known as 3rd battle of Magos Turadion, that this nature “nemet” of every human person (his sacred inviolability) is based. This pact with the god-or-demons is the sine qua non ( = indispensable) condition which makes every gdonios “nemet” i.e. “living in harmony with the god-or-demons.”

In Celtic country was nemetos every person holder of a knowledge or of a know-how. Nemet was the boaire, nemet the aes dana, nemet the bard, and so on. What leads us to another definition of the rectu adgenias, the one which was proposed by Regis Boyer. “The right that has, by nature, and election, a given individual, to be treated on a certain footing by his own kind, and the legitimacy of his claims to a certain kind of fine for the offenses done against his honor; i.e., against the very strong feeling that he has to take also his part in the sacredness, in the sacred order founded and guaranteed by the higher Powers. Revenge is a sacred right which comes from the very sharp feeling of the unsupportable nature of the sacrilege.” As noibo Patrick himself recognizes it in the Senchus mor: there is strengthening of paganism if an evil deed is avenged (Intud i ngeindtleacht gnim olc mad indechur).

However, to return to Albert Bayet, this one adds that the moral element is also independent of any religious concept in the Irish word dliged, which expresses the idea of duty, law, obligation, debt.

The same applies still in Irish fir which, like Latin verus and German wahr, expresses the idea of justice.

In all these words the moral element seems well released of the religious element.

We noticed aboove that Caesar in order to designate certain Celtic prohibitions employs the word nefas, whose religious value is not doubtful. But he often uses also, when he touches upon Celtic morality, purely moral words: facinus, delictum, noxa, iniuria, maleficium, improbus, prauus, turpe. He seems well to have the feeling that the Celts distinguish like him the purely moral fault from the neglecta religio. Although there is a communal zone, the two elements have each one their own field. It is possible for us besides to prove the relative independence of the moral element in comparison with the religious element: I want to speak about the not immoral but amoral character of the Celtic gods.

One of the best means of subordinating the moral rules to religion is indeed to represent them as enacted by virtuous gods, some gods who like the good and detest the evil. Christianity and before it the salvation religions in the East familiarized us with such a design. If the druids made it prevail in Celtic lands, they would reveal in turn their desire to link the ethics closely with the beliefs.

But precisely, whatever the efforts which were made “to moralize” them, the Celtic deities seem completely indifferent to the distinction of good and evil.

The case of Teutates is not singular. There is none Celtic deity who symbolizes a virtue or recommends it to his faithful. Among the innumerable gods whose name survives in the inscriptions, it is none whose Celtic name designates with certainty a moral attribute. I do not see either a rite, a pertaining to worship practice which requires from the faithful an honest life or a pure heart.

It is therefore a very pure imagination to have attributed to Celts the belief in a remunerating God attentive to the behavior of men as did Mr. Lallemand in his history of charity. All the testimonies arrived to us show us, according to the expression of d’Arbois de Jubainville, some gods indifferent to the justice and the injustice of human acts.

Mr. Jullian, however, put forth the hypothesis that, in the thought of the Celts, the future life would be perhaps reserved for best ones, i.e., to the bravest ones. This assumption is based on a line of verse from the poet Silius who makes a leader harangue his soldiers, by saying what follows :

Nec uos paenitent, populares, fortibus umbris

Hoc mactare caput.

This line of verse proves that the leader believes in the survival of the soul of the brave men. Mr. Jullian admits besides that this future life is simply a double of the present life. It does not represent the reward of devotion, the repair of misfortune, the worship of a god of kindness, the

momentum towards the truth and the sovereign law; it is not the legitimate compensation for the life here below. Indeed, in the texts so often quoted about survival, there is no word arousing the idea of a judgment, even less the idea of a revenge of justice raising the ignored good man and lowering the triumphing malicious one. Good and bad, pure and impure, people, return taken together in the kingdom of Dispater.

Therefore if it is true that the same men teach religion and morality, it does not seem that they worry to link the one with the other closely. The gods the druids serve don’t worry about the virtues, nor the vices, of their worshippers, and the future life that the druids announce accommodates indifferently the good and the malicious ones.

The regular intervention of the religion in the elections would be a fact of high importance, especially if it was established that kings, or vergobretus (vergobretus = president endowed with a strong executive power as in our country) , are designated or crowned by druids. But here still, the text which is mentioned, is not convincing. It is a schism which cuts in two parts the Aeduan people : two vergobretus were elected and have, one and the other, their partisans. Caesar, called by friends, runs, forces Cotus to give up the power and maintains his rival Convictolitavis. To justify this measure he writes in the Commentaries that Cotus was the elected official of a handful of men brought together in secrecy elsewhere and at another time that it was appropriate (Book VII, chapter 33) and that Convictolitavis, on the contrary, had been elected per sacedotes more ciuitatis intermissis magistratibus, i.e., according to a standard translation: by the druids according to the use, with intervention of the magistrates. It is necessary to read, of course, that Convictolitavis was made vergobretus by the druids, like the use has it when there is an interruption in the power of the magistrates, an outgoing vergobretus not being allowed to proclaim elected his own brother the power being thus temporarily suspended, intermissis magistratibus, the adversaries of Cotus have recourse to the arbitration of the druids, not because the druids are accustomed to interfere themselves in elections, but because they are always ready to serve as arbitrator in the event of conflict. Their intervention is exceptional. And, indeed, the Cotus’ case once set apart, we don’t see only once druids giving a nomination to civil or military leaders, nor even to a supreme chief.

The fact is that, just as they are professors, the druids are also judges. And they do not judge as it would be natural to think, the causes which refer to the religious things and the clergy. Their competence is general. They judge , according to Caesar, almost all the public and private disputes. However to judge is to convey into acts the idea that you have about good and evil. If the care to make this conveying is entrusted to the druids, it is, of course, that the common opinion links divine things and morality closely.

That this conclusion is partly legitimate, we should have no doubt about. Among Celts like everywhere else, the religious element and the moral element are not cut of one from the other. Links unite them that we can only foresee, but which on certain points at least, seem solid.

This fact alone appears highly significant. Isn’t it confusing legal activity and priestly activity, the resounding evidence that religion and morality are closely combined ?

But, in order that this evidence is sure, it would be necessary firstly that druidic justice was alone or almost alone to exist in Celtic land; it would be necessary, secondly, that the power of the judges- druids is a power admitted by everybody, having deep roots within the Celtic society.

However a lot is needed so that it is thus. Far from being alone to judge, the druids offer only an auxiliary justice; not that this justice has deep roots, it is a justice newly arrived, which tries to extend and to impose itself and which, in the final analysis, does not reach that point.

A thing is to be united or combined, another one to be mixed up. Relationship is not identity. What I would like to try to show it is that the bonds which link morality and religion among Celts are not particularly many and tightened that they are even on certain points, much looser than people believe.It is not that ethics are absorbed in the dogma or the worship, it appears in the eyes of the impartial observer as a reality already definitely differentiated.

On the first fact, everyone agrees. Beside the druidic jurisdiction, there is a justice of the Tribe-State: the vergobretus of the Aedui has the power of life and death; an assembly of the Senones settles the lot of the king Cavarinus; an assembly chaired by Indutiomarus, sentences Cingetorix; it is before the court of the Tribe-State, exercising its right, applying the law that Orgetorix appears. In all these important lawsuits, druids are not mentioned.

In addition to the justice of the Tribe-State, there is a family justice exercised by the paterfamilias or, on the occasion, by the propinqui; there is the patron's justice exercised by the master over his clients; there is the military justice exercised by the general, a powerful, hard, expeditious, justice. Let us not conclude too quickly from the existence of the druidic courts that justice and law are religious things; because then it would be necessary to conclude from the existence of the secular courts that justice and law are lay things.

Will it be said that the activity of the secular courts is very little compared with that of the druidic courts that it appears only in some exceptional cases? The reading of the Commentaries leaves a very contrary impression. Caesar says vainly in his general considerations that the authority of the druids embraces all the private and public, disagreements, all the crimes, all the murders, all the lawsuits relating to the inheritances and to the land and buildings property, in short all the set of the civil and criminal law, it is vainly that we seek in his account an unspecified trace of this legal activity which, according to him, engulfs everything. At every moment, it is believed that the druid-judges will emerge, and they never appear. Their justice should be everywhere, it is nowhere. Only the secular courts act and Caesar, who notes the facts, does not have a word to be astonished.

The little that Caesar tells us about their justice is adjusted with this assumption: What arises most clearly from the text of the Commentaries, it is that people resort to the jurisdiction of druids only when they are happy to do so. In civil matters, the litigants meet once a year, coming from every area of the country. The word that Caesar uses : conueniunt applies to people who freely come to seek an arbitration. In criminal matters, druids fix the amount of the fine: praemia pœnasque constituunt. That suggests again that they play the role of an arbitrator between parties ready to agree and who do not discuss any more but on a question of figures. Caesar speaks neither about an obligation to present oneself before the druidic courts, nor about instruments of coercion against the recalcitrant ones. As for the execution of the judgments, same absence of constraints. Against the sentenced people who don’t want to give in, one weapon can be used: excommunication. And, undoubtedly, Caesar (echo from the druids) tells us well that this weapon is dreaded, that the excommunicated person is included among the irreligious and villain people . But we may be skeptical: this punishment, supposedly supreme, is never inflicted to somebody during the War of Independence!

… the most serious punishment that we see applied, it is the death: it is by this punishment that the great culprits are struck, those who are considered as traitors; it is with this punishment that are struck those who are guilty of sacrilege, who steal sacred objects. If therefore druids do not go beyond excommunication, it is that they form yet only an additional jurisdiction. The litigants come to them freely: they can neither put them to death nor resort to a physical constraint; a spiritual stigmatization is the only means available to their incipient courts.

Let us also note that the way made for the secular life is not a narrow and humble place. Thanks to the Commentaries, we can follow closely during the few years which play a decisive part in their history but, we could realize it, all that is done then, of great, of important, is done apart from the worship and from the rites.

It is not therefore advisable to dwell upon the objection which has it that religion engulfed everything up to make impossible the existence of an independent ethics. Ethics, within the high classes, among the warriors and the statesmen, has a free hand.

We say well: in the higher classes. In the plebs, there are some reasons to believe that the religion is much more developed and flourishing. On this point, Caesar’s silence is no longer an argument; because, as Mr. Renel remarks it with reason, the Commentaries give us no “information about the life of ordinary people. In addition, when we see, thanks to the patient work of the modern scholarship, little gods and small goddesses, demons, spirits, Lares, Sylvani , Mothers and Ladies abounding in Celtic lands, when we meet them almost at every step standing on the threshold of the domains, perched on the stones, nestled in the wood, emerging from water, it is well necessary to admit that all these powers have their worshippers; and, since the chiefs who lead the country do not worry about them, we are still obliged to suppose that these worshippers are common people.

But what it is necessary to note, it is that this popular religion, so invasive it is supposed to be, does not seem to have conquered the field of ethics. What the ordinary man requests from these powers which surround him, it is to cure him, to protect him during travel, to dispense to him the fruits of the ground and the material joys; but never, as far as I know, they ask them for a properly moral grace, the force for acting well; much more, it is said nowhere that, to get what you request, it should be asked with a pure heart; it is not even said that the request must be fair. By gifts, by sacrifices, by gestures, people seek to reconcile the favor of the useful deities; but nothing invites to suppose that there is, beside the material rite, a preoccupation pertaining moral order.

About serpent’s egg Pliny tells us that it has a sure virtue to ensure the victory in a lawsuit; he does not add that the effect of this virtue is reserved to the litigant who is right. The same applies to mistletoe: during the sacrifice which accompanies the gathering, people pray the god “to do that this present makes happy the men to whom he sent it,” but they don’t ask him to support the good rather than the malicious people. The not immoral but amoral character that we noted in the great Celtic gods is found, it seems, in the spirit of the popular religion; and, in turn, the plebeian religiosity is not a decisive obstacle for the rise of a differentiated morality. But let us leave on one side the people, about which we are badly informed, and let us stick to established facts.

Celtic language has words which have at the same time a moral and religious value; but it has also words which have an only ethical value.

The druids teach at the same time religion and ethics, but the Celtic gods appear rather indifferent to morality.

Law punishes certain crimes against the religion, and has sometimes the druids as interpreters but justice is done by the secular courts with regard to the most important cases.

Finally, the religion, of which it is wrongly said that it engulfs everything, remains in the background in the political life of the ruling class.

What to conclude from all that, if not that ethics, while having on more than one point links which attach it to religion, is already clearly differentiated, lives of a distinct life.

So insufficient that are the accounts arrived to us, they make it possible to answer a question: in the higher classes of the ancient Celtic society (the only ones that the texts let to us foresee, morality, as early as we go back, is definitely distinct from religion, and if it is on certain points, united with the religion, it is not absorbed by it.

The examination of the facts therefore brings us back to the conclusion announced higher: religion and ethics are perhaps united in Celtic lands on certain points but this partial union has nothing of a confusion. Only an erroneous idea of the role of druids could make believe that our forefathers were still on the level where the notion of good and evil hardly starts to be different from the notion of sacredness. In Fact, differentiation was already very clear.

FOREWORD FOR THE READER.

THE FOLLOWING CHAPTERS ARE ALSO EXTRACTED FROM THE VOLUME I OF THE HISTORY OF MORALITY BY ALBERT BAYET (1930).

Morality it is the distinction of good and evil. Considered from the sociological angle (man can consider it from others) it is the distinction between good and evil being expressed through social facts

.....

Throughout this study we will run up against the generally accepted racist idea that the Celts are barbarians. At every possible opportunity indeed the historians depict to us an ethology of violence and war, drunk with the worship of unleashed strength: the Celt does not imagine a higher and purer festival than the battle, the bloody communion with his gods; he kills, cuts the throat of his enemies, massacres with the feeling to excite in this way what there is best in him; when the fight is finished, he bathes the altars with the blood of the human victims; he does not prevent more from perishing than from killing; he is mad of suicide and puts his pride in the fact of risking, fighting naked; in the political life, he hates discipline, tramples underfoot joyfully the State authority, goes without reflection into craziest adventures, ignores the trick, even the simple calculation. In short we would be there in the presence of a moral of “children,” some ingenuous louts who, opposite the Roman civilization represent at least half-savagery.

Everything changes and morality do not escape this law either. It is wanted absolute, it is relative. It varies from one country to another it evolves within the same country. What is approved by the Greeks is condemned by the Celts; what is condemned by the ancient Celts is approved by the men of today. Murders, robberies, incest of which the simple idea offends us, were virtuous actions. There was morality prescribing a father to kill his son, a son to kill his father or to give him up to the torturer, a soldier to kill casualties, a judge to torture defendants, a scientist to hide the truth, a wife to prostitute herself. On the contrary, it was a crime to eat hare or to appear publicly with his young son. And this very day in certain areas of the world it is almost a crime to eat pig but it is allowed to kill somebody who changes religion (cf the lot of apostates in Islamic lands)…

The morality of our ancestors is difficult to reconstruct. There exist nevertheless exploitable undeniable facts. There are the legal facts, codes and jurisprudences, which translate into precepts and acts the vigorous realities and sometimes even some subtle reactions. There are the manners in which is reflected more once what the law lets pass ; there are arts, there is the literature. There are the languages for example, these social creations which cannot inform us about the underlying life of the groups, the languages which record and the definite concepts and the obscure feelings, as well as the delicate variety of reprobations and aversions; there are arts, there is the literature, unrivaled mirror, because it reflects as effortlessly the thinnest nuances, because it is the least systematic and most living image.

It will be important nevertheless in all this study of the morality of the former druidism of our ancestors not to mistake about the nature of certain facts. Caesar writes that the Celts do not let themselves approached publicly by their children before those reached the age of the military service i.e., when they are 14 years old (the age of the ritual known as virolaxton). It is a disgrace for them that a very young son stands publicly before his father: suos liberos, nisi cum adoleuerunt, ut munus militiae sustinere possint, palam ad se adire not patiuntur, filiumque puerili atetate in publico in conspectu patris adsistere turpe ducunt.

Of course it was to be different privately, at home, like in the case of the headscarf wearing in Islam. In the case of the Celts seen by Caesar, it is especially a total mistaken about the habit consisting in sending to a boarding family the children, at a relative of the mother in order to complete their training

, which the English-speaking Irishmen call fosterage. From where the importance of the relation uncle nephew in the Celtic tales and legends besides.

The first chapters of our study will be devoted to the relations being able to exist between morality and religion. Is the religion the essential source of morality, can it exist morality known as “republican” i.e., completely independent of the religion?

Let us begin with religion.

It is beyond doubt that the ancient Celts had one or more religions and that these religions were expressed by gestures and rites. All the questions is to know if among them the religious element was

invading to the point of penetrating everywhere, covering the whole life and, consequently, of absorbing morality?

The modern scholarship drew up a long list of the circumstances in which a Celt cannot do without the religion: at the time of the birth, it is the ablution rite (amphidromia in Greece) ; at the time of engagement, it is “the sharing of the cup”; in the event of disease, it is the immolation of a human victim; the day before travel, it is the examination of omens; when a host is accommodated, crowns are offered to him, when he is left, they celebrate a sacrifice; in the event of an election, druids intervene; in the lawsuits, we see animal and sacred rivers taking part ; hunting, war, are accompanied by religious rites. And this list is inevitably very incomplete, because of the small number of the texts come to us.

The war is, of course, the opportunity of certain religious acts. The warriors try to obtain omens before the fight; they promise to their “Mars” a share of the spoils. The clusters of devoted spoils that Caesar sees with his own eyes are therefore made by objects they chose in order to dedicate them to these gods (but they do not represent the whole of what was taken from the enemy of course).

Celts also immolate victims to their war gods or demons. But do these facts, we find in so many countries, make it possible to say that the war “exacerbates the piety” of the Celts? C. Jullian wrote: “Through certain signs; the gods announced that they sent defeat and that they wanted the submission to the enemy. But what? He puts forwards all in all that by seeing Roman machines, the Atuatuci believe their enemies helped by the gods and surrender, and that, in addition, the inhabitants of Uxellodunum capitulate by seeing the spring which supplies them drying up, because they believe; to feel “the will of gods.” Let us admit that the facts are exact: they prove only that the Celts believe in the possibility of a divine intervention in the war things. I go further: they prove almost that these kinds of interventions are, in their eyes, exceptional; because, finally, we do not count the tribe-States which surrender to Caesar and, in this crowd, there are only two of them to claim a religious reason.

Do ethics appear in Celtic lands as being incorporated in religion? Are there good and evil only the two aspects of the sacredness? Are the good deeds simply those the gods like or command, the evil ones those of which they are offended?

The study of the facts suggests a conclusion infinitely more nuanced.

It goes without saying that ancient Celts do not even foresee what we call nowadays an independent or secular morality. And perhaps, there are, on certain points, a union, and even a rather close union, between the religious element and the moral element. But their morality is already well differentiated from the religion, and, if it is linked with it, we cannot even say that, as a whole it is subjugated to it.

The union of morality and religion appears, first of all, in the vocabulary.......So the Irish language has

the word cain which designates the law with a value at the same time religious and legal, and of which the root is found in the Latin castus (= what is in order, in keeping with the rule).

The criminal law gives evidence going in the same direction as the vocabulary. Offenses to gods are regarded by the ancient Celts as crimes and punished as such. The text of Caesar concerning the taboo surrounding the war spoils is enough to prove it. Those who touch the spoils offered to the gods are tortured and killed: people don’t hesitate to punish the sacrilege or the blasphemy as severely as the other offenses. History vicissitudes make that we do not know other offenses to the gods which is the object of a penal repression. But we don't think that the religious crime about which Caesar speaks is alone to be thus struck.

Nevertheless, beside the words which show us the religious element and the moral element confused, there are others which show us the moral element isolated and independent.

They are for example the words or stem recto, rectu, to which Irish recht (= law) and Latin rectus correspond. The meaning is moral and not religious : what is correct, what is right, what is just.

GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF CELTIC ETHOLOGY.

The morality of pity occupies a rather broad place. According to the Commentaries, the Celts would have words to indicate gentleness, leniency, humanity. Because we see the Atuatuci begging Caesar to act pro sua clementia ac mansuetudine; The Bellovaci too call on his clemency and his humanity: pro sua clementia atque humanitate.

The Celts complain readily about the cruelty of those who oppress them, and they call many times on the pity of the Romans. Shortly after the arrival of Caesar, Diviciacus “in tear,” entreats the Roman leader to save Dumnorix his brother; then they are the delegates of the Tribe-States who throw themselves at Caesar’s feet while crying and denounce the cruelty of Ariovistus, while insisting on the particularly pitiful condition of the Sequani; when the legions move against Bratuspantium, the children and the women ask for peace passis manibus suo munere; in Gergovia, the bare-breasted women, beseech the Roman soldiers. We may wonder, of course, if Caesar does not exaggerate, if all these calls for compassion are as clear as he affirms it. But he is less suspect when he shows the inhabitants of Avaricum begging Vercingetorix not to burn their city and this one letting himself touched by their prayers and “a feeling of pity towards the people” precibus ipsorum et misericordia uulgi. In the same way, during the siege of Avaricum, when men give up defending the city and try to escape, the mothers hurry to the squares and throw themselves in tears at their feet.

The idea of moral obligation, of duty, is not unfamiliar to the Celts. In Ireland it is expressed in the Celtic stem dliged. On the Continent, Caesar, when he makes Celts speak, conveys it either by the latin dus participle, or by the verbs debere, necess est.......Caesar also uses the word officium. Of

course that does not prove that there is a Celtic word which is the equivalent of the Latin officium, but that proves that by calling on the idea that the word officium expresses, Caesar knows that he will be understood by a man like Indutiomarus.

The conception which equates good and nice appears in the speech of Critognatus: when he that besieged Celts set an example to kill and eat old men rather than to surrender, he adds: if this example were not already set, I would estimate nice, pulcherrimum, that we set it ourselves.

The idea of law is familiar to the Celts. What Critognatus reproaches mainly the Romans, it is that they want to steal from the Tribe-State their rights and their laws: iura, leges. One of the most terrible effects of druidic excommunication, it is that people deny “ their right” to excommunicated persons: neque iis petentibus ius redditur.

When the Aeduans accommodate the Boians on their land, they admit them with equal rights: in parem iuris libertatisque condicionem. The notion of infringement of the law, of injuria is naturally as common as the idea of ius: the Aeduan Litaviccus, when he is turned against Rome, invites his fellow citizens to avenge the attacks their rights underwent: suas iniurias persequantur.

From the notion of law man passes easily to the idea of justice. It is also familiar to Celts. The Volcae Tectosages have a high reputation for justice: summam iustitiae opinionem; the king of the Suessiones, Galba, is chosen by his allies for supreme leader propter iustitiam; the Aeduan Convictolitavis, in his fight against Cotus, states to have for him iustissimam causam. The Romans are not unaware of that the Celts are capable of justice feeling , because Cicero speaks to them about the iustitia of Caesar.

GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF THE LAW.

The principle is that of the individual responsibility. Although clients are forced to follow their chief or their father in his decisions, it is not seen that, when the hour of the punishment is come, they are associated with him. When Orgetorix is put on trial among Helvetians, his clients solidarize themselves with him publicly in vain, they are not sued; his death puts an end to the criminal proceedings and life is left to his children. We do not see the least idea of family responsibility playing at the time when measures are taken against Acco and Litaviccus. When Celtillus is killed for having

aspired to kingship, neither Gobannitio nor Vercingetorix are struck. When the latter becomes general- in-chief and resorts to severe measures to make discipline respect, he does not ordain collective punishments; he strikes the hesitant ones, not their families.

Not only does the notion of individual responsibility exist but theoretically guarantees are given to the defendant. One of the reproaches put forwards precisely by Litaviccus in order to decide the Aeduans to give up the Roman cause, it is that Caesar made defendants killed without enabling them to defend themselves: indicta caused.

There exist nevertheless some traces of collective responsibility. Manners admit that hostages are demanded and given, and it is normal that these hostages are killed for an act to which they are not part. The seizing of the goods, admitted by the laws, is a punishment which strikes the family of the sentenced person as much as the sentenced himself.

We do not know all the distinctions exactly that the Celts do between the various breaches of duty. But what we foresee of the law is enough to prove that these distinctions exist. The legislation about which Caesar speaks is not part of these simple legislations that we find among other peoples and which admit for all the offenses the same capital punishment. There are crimes punished by a simple death, others by tortures and death, others by mutilations, others by seizing, others by exile. The fine naturally can vary ad infinitum. Slight faults are punished either by a warning, or by gestures such as that of the usher cutting off from the trouble maker a piece of his coat. Finally, there are actions which, without forming a statutory offense, are not less blamed : the fact of showing oneself publicly with his young child dishonors a father, but it does not seem an unspecified punishment is added to this dishonor. In the same way the man who would give up a guilty brother to his unhappy fate would not expose himself to a legal sanction, but he would have to take into account, according to Diviciacus , the public opinion existimatio vulgi, and he would become a subject of aversion.

A remark of Caesar shows us the druids fixing the amount of the fine. Praemia poenasque. This shows us therefore that the notions of arbitration and compensation already succeeded the notion of sheer revenge. The punishment is regarded as a substitute for revenge.

On the other hand, it can also have an exemplary value.

When Vercingetorix makes the ears cut or one eye blinded to certain culprits, Caesar notes that he acts so in order to make the victim is an example and the severity of the punishment undergone strikes others with terror.

With regard to the ethology relating to the homicide, we will see the druids engaging in the fight against a tradition which shocks them and courageously trying to make a new principle prevailing.

ANCIENT CELTIC ETHOLOGY AND ANIMAL LIFE.

Wild Boar, horse, bear, mule, bull, snake, crane, raven, doe, stag, sheep, etc. These animals are therefore sometimes worshipped , they play a part in the divinatory practices, give their name to tribes, are reproduced on coins and ensigns; we will find them combined with gods on the low-reliefs: that proves, of course, that they have a religious nature but that proves in no degree that they are all former totems. To prove it, it would be necessary to establish that in an unspecified time they were taboo for the Celts. Apart from the case of hares of hens and geese in Great Britain, this evidence is missing.

In the account of Caesar indeed, the Bretons who live in the lower part of Great Britain, believe that it is prohibited by the religious law to eat hare, hen and goose, and they, however, breed some of them, as domestic animals: leporem et anserem et gallinam gustare fas not putant; haec tamen alunt animi uoluptatisque causa.

Mr. Solomon Reinach, who sought with a clever ardor all the remains of totemism in the Celtic world, makes notice rightly that this sentence by Caesar is from a man who sees the foreign things through his ideas and his experience of a Roman. It is because he saw in Italy great lords raising in their parks luxury animals animi uoluptatisque causa that he imagines the Bretons breeding hens, hares, geese “for the pleasure.”

But, in this fancy explanation we recognize at first glance one of the essential components of totemism:

certain animals neither are killed, nor eaten, but men raise specimens of them and provide care to them.

Conclusion of Albert Bayet.

We should not nevertheless exaggerate the totemistic nature of the former druidism. So insufficient that are the testimonies arrived to us, they make it possible to answer this question: in the upper classes of Celtic society (the only ones that the texts let to us foresee), morality, as early we go back, is definitely distinct from totemism, and, if it on certain points, it is united with religion, it is not absorbed by it.

ANCIENT CELTIC ETHOLOGY AND HUMAN LIFE.

Foreword: the matter of this study is not to judge BUT TO KNOW. Let us the established facts speak without too much whispering them what they have to say: they answer us that there were human sacrifices, but that these sacrifices were from time immemorial very rare. The Celts, like other peoples, offered human blood to their deities, and it is there a feature of their religious morality it is necessary to notice carefully but nothing encourages us to think that they are more prodigal of this blood than the Greeks or the Romans.

Ancient Celtic morality condemns and punishes generally murder. If the ethology admits it in certain cases, these cases are rare and these exceptional indulgences cause already protests at the druidic time.

We know from a sure source indeed that murder is punished and that the repression of the murder is the subject of special cares.

According to most historians, the contempt of the life, a superb and brutal contempt would be one of the salient features of Celtic morality. The Celts, Michelet says, break and destroy everything, and never a nation paid so little attention to the life of its members. Same idea among the modern ones. The Celtic people is “bloody”; it does not prevent more “perishing than killing”; it contempts death.” Its gods are like it: they need corpses, “many corpses”; what they like more, it is the human life and the accesses of their residence are “a dreadful and varied torture garden.”

However, as soon as we stick to the well-established facts, we see disappear, little by little, the savage and striking image of our ancestors that Michelet traced; we see the legend of the thirsty of human blood gods to grow blurred little by little. Celtic ethics, at the time when we can grasp it, has nothing of a destruction morality. It is generally hostile to murder.

I believe, as for me, that there is an enormous part of exaggeration. The Celts, like other people, like the Romans, like the Greeks, sometimes immolated human victims. But these immolations were always very few. A hostile legend, seizing skillfully exact facts, represented the gods and their druids as eager for murder beings; and modern criticism, always ready to see in our forefathers some “savages,” was not sufficiently careful with this legend.

In fact, the human sacrifices are rare.

It is what I would like to try to prove by studying successively the former Celts then those that Caesar knew.

Strange thing, these are the first that you would imagine fondest of victims; and yet only a kind of human sacrifice is signaled among them, the sacrifice of a warlike nature. On the other hand, it is imagined that before, during and after the fight, the victims fall per hundreds.

HUMAN SACRIFICES IN WAR TIME.

“Before the battle, the chiefs sought in the entrails of the victims the expression of the anger or of the favor of their sovereign master; and, if they judged him infuriated against them, they offered to him, as victims, their wives and their children, like Moab to its god Baal”

The fact strikes, awakens in us the idea of appalling hecatombs. But, to establish this use, we have all in all only an account by Justin. At the time to fight the battle against Antigone, who marches on them with all his forces, some Celts immolate victims (Justin does not say human victims), Finding the omens unfavorable, they hope “that the anger of the gods might be calmed by the slaughter of their kindred ”; they therefore butcher their wives and children. After which, they go to the fight , “as if, therefore, they had purchased life and victory by their crime.”

Specialists underline that this testimony is particularly sure, because Justin follows in his account Trogue-Pompey , an author of Celtic origin, and because the idea of repurchase expressed by the word redemissent is commonly implied in the sacrificial rites. But initially the fact reported by Justin is unique. However what the history preserved from the former Celts, it is especially the memory of their military feats: how to explain that during all other Celtic expeditions we never see the victims falling before the fight?

It is not all. These Celts who massacre wives and children go at once after into an unequal fight where they are killed to the last. Is it bold to suppose that, if they kill theirs, it is precisely because they envisage the inevitable defeat and want to spare them the slavery horrors?

Another interesting account is that of Diodorus. Diodorus, who also declares that the Celts immolate their prisoners, quotes a precise fact: a victorious Galatian general chooses, among his prisoners, those who are most handsome and strongest; he makes them crowned with flowers and offers them in sacrifice to the gods; the others are massacred.

This time, we are well in the presence of a sacrifice. But, what is remarkable, it is that the Galatian king does not offer to the gods all his prisoners. Although decided to kill them all, he takes from them only some ones as victims. Therefore we cannot say that religion asks the Celts to immolate all their prisoners.

Will it be said that in the final analysis the massacre is not less general? It is true. But, far from telling the story of the Galatian general as a normal story, a natural feature in a Celt, Diodorus signals it as a feature, “of utter arrogance .” Let us add that here still it is a unique fact. Not only Diodorus himself reports to us no other example, but the ancient writers observe the same silence.

Much more, Livy shows us twice some Celts taking along captive enemies, instead of massacring them.

From the fact that Henry V after Agincourt made all his French prisoners have their throat cut, who would dare to conclude that the English habit was then to massacre all their prisoners? What it is necessary for us therefore to admit in all criticism it is that once a Galatian king, who massacred all his prisoners, chose some of them to offer them, as victims, to the gods. Did he immolate thus thousand, hundred, or ten? We will never know! Let us take care to blame whole nations for the crime of some private individuals.

It is vainly objected that the Galatian leader offers a “sacrifice” that there is therefore here a normal rite, a regular institution. Who tells us that there is not on the contrary a very exceptional measure, dictated by circumstances that Diodorus, as a good Greek, omits to indicate us? In the battle of the Metaurus, Polybius shows us the Romans cutting the throat of the sleeping Celts as people cut the throat of victims. Who of us will conclude from it that the Roman religion required that all the enemies have to be immolated in order to offer them to the gods?

Given the current state of knowledge, nothing proves that former Celts were used to immolate the war prisoners, nothing proves that before the battle they dedicate regularly to their gods human victims. There are most probably among them some human sacrifices. But all lead us to believe that these sacrifices are rare.

Vercingetorix, admittedly, orders executions at the time when he prepares the fight against Caesar. But it is said nowhere that these executions are sacrifices. From the fact that an energetic leader who feels his power still badly strengthened decides to intimidate through some examples treacherous and half-hearted people, it does not follow that the gods ask for en masse victims at the time of the campaign starting.

It remains the sentence of Caesar. But who can think seriously, to take it literally? If each combatant, at the time to expose himself to the hazards of war, immolated a victim or vowed to immolate one, the great wars would be the signal of dreadful hecatombs. It is, by thousands that victims would fall. If the tribe-State, making it a point of honor, added their sacrifices to those of the private individuals, we wonder how the druids could be enough for so many immolations. It would be unexplainable that Caesar never mentioned massacre so terrible and so useful to his cause. However, he does not say a word about them. After having written the general and horrific sentence of book VI, he signals no sacrifice in the beginning a war. It is therefore quite obvious that this sentence is only a general and tendentious assertion. Caesar heard that, sometimes; in the event of exceptional danger, it can happen that a warrior or a tribe-State immolates a human victim. Of course, he accommodates this rumor, perhaps risen from two or three exceptional examples: but he forgets that his account remains contradicted by the facts.

The existence of the sacrifices after the battle is not established better. “They cut the throat, Mr. Jullian says, of all the enemies, as victims, either in the fight, or after the battle.” But, here still, two texts only.

One is that of Diodorus of which it was a question above, the Celts use prisoners as victims. The other text is a sentence of Caesar: animalia immolant.

Here is therefore a Roman general, concerned, we know it, to justify in the eyes of his fellow citizens this war of conquest and who, seeing , after each fight, the Celts massacring all their prisoners, forgets

each time to signal the fact. Will it be objected that the thing goes without saying? But in this case, when Titurius overcome starts negotiations with Ambiorix by asking him to spare his life and that of his men, why Caesar does to have no word in order to be astonished by this surprising naivety? How Titurius himself who is not a newcomer in this country, is he unaware of what supposedly he should have seen twenty times with his own eyes, what all the readers of the Commentaries are supposed to know? Finally, here are in these same commentaries Romans made prisoners by the Celts, working for them, obeying them : how Caesar does not to show his surprise they survived in this country where the gods claim all the prisoners? How he does to write without a word of astonishment that the rebel Aeduans make their prisoners some slaves, romanos in seruitutem abstrahi.

Caesar indeed tells us, in book VI, that little before the time of the War of Independence, paulo supra hanc memoriam, they still burned with the master the slaves and the clients who people knew they have been dear to him.

The chronological indication is a little vague. But finally we do not risk being mistaken seriously by supposing that these immolations still take place in the beginning of the 1st century before our era. Of course, they do not disappear in one day; they are the privilege of some great families; a struggle is necessary to make them giving upon them. This fight takes place, in all probability, during the 1st century. However, it is in the beginning of the same century, that the druids start to have a serious influence. It is therefore quite probable that it is themselves who get little by little the suppression of the homicidal use. On this point, not only they fought, but they fought victoriously.

Remain the sacrifices to the gods. They are rare, we saw it, even with the primordial druids. Are they rarer at the time of ancient druids? Undoubtedly we could plead the fact that Caesar himself does not seem to have seen one of them with his own eyes. But the original role of the druids does not consist, according to us, in having decreased the number, already relatively low, of the immolations. What they wanted, it is to substitute for the religious idea of the human sacrifice, the at the same time religious and moral idea of the ritual execution of the prisoners under sentence of death.

Among the three writers who signal their monopoly as regards immolation, two, Caesar and Diodorus, a lot to them also the use to immolate criminals. Being given the small number of the texts, this coincidence is already remarkable. But there is more, the chapter by Caesar suggests invincibly the idea that this design of the culprit victim is a properly druidic thing.

Undoubtedly, the text says : “They consider that the oblation of such as have been taken in theft, or in robbery, or any other offense, is more acceptable to the immortal gods.”

Grammatically, the druids are not designated. But, as Caesar, a little higher, says about them that they are the ministers of sacrifices that they interpret the religiones, that they know quid Dii uelint, it follows obviously that the doctrines in question are, in his thought, taught by them. Caesar still says, at the same place, that when the criminal resources are missing, they fall back even on innocents etiam ad innocentium supplicia descendunt. The etiam and the descendunt show that at the druidic time the execution of innocent is the last resort. However the druids resign themselves to it when it is impossible to do differently. But from which comes this impossibility itself, if not from the fact the use which wants, in such or such exceptional case, one, two or three victims, is former to the doctrines which want only executions of culprits. The use is pre-druidic, the doctrine is druidic.

As a result, the famous sentences which speak about the druidic monopoly as regards sacrifice take a new aspect. When we read in the ancient authors: “The Celts do not have the right to offer human sacrifices without resorting to the ministry of the druids, of the philosophers” we should not translate: “these philosophers, these druids, all proud and happy to pour blood, claim and get the privilege to cut the throat of all the victims.” It is necessary to say to oneself, “the druids jealously supervise all the sacrifices, sacrificia publica ac priuata procurant, they claim their control; and, without claiming to strike the victims while not having condemned them themselves, they endeavor to prevent that people strike them apart from them, because they are anxious to be sure that people immolate only culprits and even, some culprits regularly sentenced to death.” In other words, wanting to make an ethical concept prevail over the religious idea, they change the ritual of sacrifices into a Penal Code admitting capital punishment.

We do not claim the ancient druids distinguished themselves as sociology does today between the religious element and the ethical element. The ritual execution of a culprit, it was for them at the same time some morality and some religion. But if the theories of the former druids on this point as on as many others remain to us hopelessly inaccessible, for lack of having got a hand on one their libraries, more than one fact encourages us to think that it is well their own morality which pushes them to act against the human sacrifices. If they try to remove these kinds of immolation, it is that they are generally very hostile to murder. They do not live in the Nemi woods to serve Diana Nemorense like the Latins of the 6th century before our era (cf. Frazer and his golden bough).

STATUS CONCLUSION ABOUT HUMAN SACRIFICES.

That there were some of them, I do not doubt it. The Cels immolated men, as the Greeks immolated some ones, as the Romans immolated some of them. But it appears to me about certain these sacrifices from time immemorial were very rare and that at the time of Caesar, people tended to remove them.

To establish the frequency of the human sacrifices in peace times, some specialists plead that the Celts immolate men at least in four cases:

1° When a man falls ill or is in danger;

2° In the event of public danger (and for this reason it is necessary that the victims were numerous); 3° In order to get good harvests ;

4° At the time of the Carnutian Convention (and there they offer to the gods enormous holocausts of human beings.

Lastly, last evidence of the large number of the human sacrifices: each god has his preferences on the matter. Esus required that his victims were hanging from a tree; the god of the lightning Taran liked the stakes; in honor of Teutates they asphyxiated the wretches by reversing them in a tank full of water. The sentenced to death persons were locked up anyhow with animals in a colossal wood, hay, wicker man , and they set this mass of flesh on fire. Others perished by crucifixion, pierced with arrows or a sword stroke. The accesses of the residence of a Celtic god were a garden of appalling and varied torture.

All these accumulated facts gives the impression well of a particularly disrespectful of the human life morality. But they all are rather badly established.

In the event of public danger the Tribe-State sacrifices innumerable human victims. Here still one testimony, that of Caesar and here still it is not corroborated by the reading of the Commentaries. During the independence war, the tribe-States in question had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to immolate victims to save themselves from a public danger. However, at the most critical times, we do not see them resorting to this bloody rite.

Strabo writes that the ancient druids judged the murder cases and that, when they were numerous, they saw there a sign of abundance for harvests. Undoubtedly because of the number of prisoners under sentence of death who can be offered to the gods on this occasion.

Let us remind nevertheless that the ancient druids, simple arbitrators, sentenced nobody to death and were satisfied to fix the amount of the fines. If there was a plethora of prisoners under sentence of death that was to be due to the activity of the secular courts.

Therefore let us note simply that the Celts of the time saw a relationship between the number of the criminal cases judged in the country and the beauty of harvests.

Caesar, Strabo, Diodorus, and Lucan (or more exactly his scholiast), evoke human sacrifices through fire.

The four texts are in disagreement on important points. Three of them speak about the object which remained famous, of the container. Diodorus, on the other hand, did not allude about it. From the first three texts, one says: the wicker men are out of braided wood, and from the word simulacra specialists generally conclude that these wicker men represent…men. The second says they are colossi out of hay and wood; the third: they are wooden containers.

Let us go to the victims, same diversity. According to Caesar and the scholiast of Lucan they are only human victims. According to Strabo, they are domestic animals, wild animals and men. According to Diodorus, they are men and animals taken in war. The mixture of men and animals is therefore attested by two authors out of four.

Lastly, to whom are intended the sacrifices, Strabo says nothing about that, nor Caesar. The scholiast of Lucan speaks about Taran. Diodorus appears to accept sacrifices of a warlike nature. On the other hand, the famous survivals so often observed in the modern time are celebrated on the Saint John's day, which would make believe they are sacrifices accompanying a sun festival; and, in this case, we would think of Belenus rather than of Taran or of an unspecified Mars.

It is seen that thick shades wrap most famous of the druidic human sacrifices. Through so much of darkness, can we foresee an answer to the question which worries us: were the immolations of burned victims numerous? We do not know if the wicker men, colossi or containers, are lit one or more time a year, or once every five years, or at the time of the wars. We do not know if they light several of them

at the same time. The very darkness and the contradictions of the texts call nevertheless for a note: if these immolations were current things, the Ancients would have known them better. The uncertainty of the writers is explained by the scarcity of the facts. As these facts are striking by themselves, historians and travelers believe themselves bound to speak about them; but none of them had ever had the opportunity to observe something, none of them had had under his eyes the precise account of an eyewitness, because these kinds of immolations were extremely rare.

It is there our conclusion, not only with regard to the wicker men, but for the whole of the human sacrifices.

That there were some of them at the historical time, it is certain. But the legend, a hostile legend, excessively increased the number of them, and it is this legend which one follows today when one speaks about hecatombs and enormous holocausts.

Do we want to be convinced about that? Let’s be applied to the Romans the methods which are applied with the Celts: as of the moment that we will be satisfied for them, as for our forefathers, with arbitrary generalizations, we will find them quite as fond of human sacrifices. Mr. Bertrand outlined a demonstration of this kind it is easy to supplement it.

Specialists tell us: the Celts believe that the life of a man in danger can be repurchased only by the life of another. But, in Rome, when Caligula is sick, som citizens, according to Suetonius, vow to commit suicide and kill themselves to get the recovery of the prince.

Specialists tell us: in the event of public danger, the Tribe-State makes human victims immolated (and nobody mentions an example of these immolations). But, in Rome, human victims are immolated when terrible events are feared, and there are formulas intended to accompany the immolations of this kind in the event of public terror.

Specialists tell us: to get good harvests, the Celts sacrifice men (and to come to this conclusion it is necessary to rack a text by Strabo). But, in Rome, precise accounts prove that Liber Pater, Dis Pater, Latinus, the Lars, receive human victims intended to excite their vivifying power, to make bunches and harvests matured.

Specialist tell us:Hesus requires hangings, Taran stakes, Teutates asphyxiated victims (and they do not manage to establish that).- But, in Rome, Liber Pater requires hangings, the Gods Manes to whom Curtius sacrifices himself require a death by asphyxiation, Volcanus Thybris deaths by immersion.

Let us suppose that enemies formerly grouped all these facts, that they have initially drawn from them a general theory, then a saying intended to roam the world, we would undoubtedly conclude from it today that the religious morality of the Romans poured blood like water. And yet this conclusion would be misleading, first because man would join together facts going back to very different times, then and especially because these facts are perhaps rare, exceptional, and that by presenting them as common facts, man would betray reality: another thing is to immolate some human victims in extraordinary circumstances, another thing to organize on fixed dates, for periodic events some terrific hecatombs. This optical mistake that, thanks to the large number of texts, we avoided concerning Romans, we committed it with regard to Celts. From some exceptional facts, that the Ancients were already wrong to group learnedly, we drew a theory even more erudite, and even falser.

And yet we have to pay attention here: the accounts which make known to us in Rome the human sacrifices come from the Romans themselves; on the contrary, those which make known them to us in Celtic land come tom us from their enemies.

It is with his head full with these prejudices that Caesar will enter Celtic land. Will he see with his eyes one human sacrifice? Whatever his desire to lower his adversaries, nowhere he says it nor he implies it. It is therefore that these human sacrifices are extremely rare: because if it was different he would see them to be performed at every moment in his own troops, partly Celtic. But, if it does not go as far as to invent from scratch scenes which he never saw, Caesar does not intend either to push impartiality up to destroy the old legend which can justify in the eyes of the general public his campaign. Arrived to the passage in which he gives a general description of the manners of our forefathers, he therefore takes over piously the old lie; he does not omit the picturesque features of them.

LET US SUMMARIZE!

The ancient Celtic-druidic ethology admits some human sacrifices.

But, in spite of the small number of texts come to us, we can regard as about certain that these sacrifices, as early as we go back into the past, are very little numerous.

As soon as we leave the general sentences, dictated by racism (by the hatred and the fear of the barbarian) we seek vainly these sacrifices which, according to the Ancients, were to bloody Celtica.

Not only the sacrifices are very few; but, in the druidic world , there is an attempt to remove them, either by abolishing them purely and simply, or by substituting them the ritual execution of the criminal prisoners under sentence of death.

We know one example, among Scordisci, of a drink offering of human blood. We know only two kinds of duels which seem approved. We know that the murder is punished and that the suppression of murders is the subject of special care.

The druids gave a very special attention to the suppression of murders. But the same applied including in the countries where there did not exist druids since Strabo tells us that, among Galatians, the murder cases were subjected to a special court made up of three hundred members and sitting in a special place called drunemeton. Translator note. The Galatians actually had equivalents of these druids, called dikastes in Greek. The drunemeton should rather be a kind of high court reserved for high-level political affairs.

Is the murderer always punished with death? When he appears before the druids, never. But before the ordinary jurisdictions, it goes sometimes differently. A text very often quoted from Nicholas of Damascus says that death punishes the murder of a foreigner, but that the murder of a citizen is only punished by exile.

Mr. Jullian conjectures with probability that the murders punished by the exile are those caused by brawls.

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.

The ancient Celtic ethology, we saw it, admits capital punishment. It is possible that capital punishment punished a larger number of crimes that those of which we have just seen the list. But we know that below capital punishment, there are the mutilations (amputation of one hand as in the Muslim penal code?) , the exile, the seizing of the goods, and finally the fine. Nothing invites to believe that the supreme punishment was lavished.

N.B. Jullian affirms that the adultery of the wife was punished with death. But the text of Caesar which he quotes does not speak about adulteresses; it aims those who are suspected of having killed or makes killed their husband.

Let us notice finally that the druids make a point of honor of playing a political role of mediator, make a point of judging murder cases, return no capital sentences.

The druidic courts pronounce no capital sentences. We saw higher, that they probably do not have the right to do it and that, arbitrators between the parties who voluntarily come to them, they limit themselves to fix the compensation: praemia poenasque. But we can suppose that the druids also feel reluctant for bloodshedding ; because, when they excommunicate a sentenced person who refuses to obey; they do not try to make him killed : Caesar says that people move away the excommunicated person, that his manner is fled, that justice and honors are denied to him; he does not say that he is slaughtered. Of course people try to force him to obedience, they do not try to remove him. If therefore the druids are interested in the murder cases, it is not with the ulterior motive of getting prisoners under sentence of death who will be offered as victims to gods, it is to prevent that the violence of the powerful men remain unpunished.

Not only the human sacrifices seem very rare, as well among the former Celts, as among those of the time of Caesar, but we can wonder whether the druids, in the first century before our era, were not removing them gradually.

THE DUELS.

The same legend which makes Celts appalling immolators of men make them, of course, some duel lovers always ready to confront with anybody.

There is still an exaggeration.

Let us put aside the texts which show us the Celts aggressive without we are able to distinguish if it is a question of private fight or simply of war; let us leave those in which it is a question of single combats in the battlefields; the only duels about which we have some information are the legal duel,

the duel at the end of a feast, the duel for the allocation of the best meat piece, the duel between druids candidates for the supreme power.

Concerning the latter, it seems to me that skepticism imposes itself. According to Caesar, when the primate of the druids dies, either he has as a successor the one whose titles impose themselves, or, if there is doubt, the druids vote: “Sometimes they even contend for the presidency with arms”: nonnunquam etiam armis de principatu contendunt”. Can we conclude from this sentence that the candidates fought and that the sword decided on the principate of the druids as among Latin people it decided on the priestly kingship in Nemi.

It is simpler to suppose than the partisans of the various candidates, druids or laymen, sometimes come to blows. In every case the words nonnunquam etiam are enough to prove that it is neither a rite nor an institution reflecting ancient druidic morality. The fights in question are irregular things. In the Merovingian time, it also happens nonnunquam that people fight for a bishopric. But these combats are not recommended by the morality of the Church.

The duels at the end of the meals are signaled by Posidonius and Diodorus: “The Celts, Posidonius says, sometimes have single combats at their entertainments. For being collected in arms, they go through the exercise, and make feints at, and sometimes they even go so far as to wound one another. And being irritated by this, if the bystanders do not stop them, they will proceed even to kill one another”.

And Diodorus: ” It is the custom of the Celts, even during the course of the meal, to seize upon any trivial matter as an occasion for keen disputations and then to challenge one another to single combat, without any regard for their lives.”

This practice is perhaps less widespread than Diodorus seems to believe it because Caesar says no word about it.

In any case the sentences which are previous prove clearly that they are not there duels envisaged and authorized by Celtic morality. What the fashion admits or requires, they are faked fights. Some spectacle all in all. It happens that the irascible character of some of them and too alcoholic a meal make these faked fights degenerating into true fights. But the only fact that the assistants intervene to separate the fighters, proves enough that a bloody duel is rejected by morality.

We have no detail on the legal duel of the ancient continental Celts but it is codified in the medieval Irish law. We will return to it.

The duel for the best portion of the meat served at the time of the banquets, or hero's portion , is signaled by Posidonius and there is no reason to be wary of his account. “ In olden times," he continues, "there was a custom that a hind quarter of pork was put on the table, the bravest man took it; but if anyone else laid claim to it, then the two rose up to fight, till one of them was slain.”

This text is clear!

Now do we have the right to conclude from this mark of honor that two guests who coveted the best piece marched one against the other with a sword in their hand?

It is through such arbitrary generalizations that an inaccurate idea of ancient Celtic morality is given. This kind of duel, of which Posidonus declares that it took place “in olden times” is the only one that ancient Celtic morality has, so far as we know, allowed.

THE SUICIDE.

“It was the same bravados against the enemy, the same contempt of death, the same madness of suicide”; their beliefs about the future life “did that the Celts lost nothing from their indifference to death. They always treated it as the time of a geminated existence. The suicide was a change earlier carried out and nothing more. We cannot say that it was among Celts an act absolutely spontaneous: they always committed suicide for a reason, excess of generosity, military defeat, death of a patron or of a close relation, supernatural event; but the slightest incident was enough to make them believe that the gods did not oppose their death, and they left joyfully. The innocent ones that they intended for the solemn holocausts were not always to regret being chosen as victims, nor the clients of a deceased person to accompany him in the grave.”

THERE IS IN THIS PICTURE A PART OF TRUTH.

The first type of suicide which we can say with self-confidence that it is approved or prescribed is the suicide of those who want to follow in death a relative or a chief. We cannot conclude much from the

legends like that which shows us Celtiberus committing suicide after the death out of his brother or from isolated examples as that the Aquitanian Piso gives. But the institution of the soldurii reveals us the existence of obligatory suicides. The soldurii are warriors linked to their chief by a moral bond.

They “are devoted to him,” share his life and his dangers, and, if he dies a violent death, either they get killed or they kill themselves. In living memory, Caesar writes, no one of them was seen refusing to die, once dead the one to whom he had devoted himself. Polybius shows us the faithful ones of the king Aneroeste making themselves struck on the battlefield by their chief who then strikes himself. In addition, Pomponius Mela writes that certain Celts hurry joyfully on the pyre of theirs uelut una uicturi. They are undoubtedly these clients and slaves cherished by f their master that Caesar shows us immolated in the funeral of the greats. Are these suicides prescribed like those of the soldurii? We cannot affirm it. But, related to the funerary rites, they are in any case highly approved, at least until the druidic time.

The second type of suicide, approved by Celtic morality, is the suicide of those who do not want to survive a defeat. Of course specialists saw in these suicides a sacrifice more or less required by religion. But it is in vain that we seek in the account of the death of Brennus “the irreligious person” the shadow of a religious concern or a ritual element.

Some explain these kinds of suicides by the religious beliefs relating the other life. The warriors see in the suicide a means “of living again, free and armed , in the abode of the Dead.”

This assumption eliminated, the simplest explanation is that the texts give: the Celts kill themselves to avoid the shame to survive a defeat, as do it, in such a case, the Jews in Massada, the Romans and many others. As collective suicides Appian shows us the defeated Senones cutting each other’s throat furiously, Polybius some Gaesati getting killed by the Romans, Livy some Galatians pouncing on each other and increasing their wounds to have a more glorious end, Cassius Dio some Veneti killing themselves on their ships not to be taken alive. Lastly, we can suppose that the casualties whose Brennus orders the massacre, after his failure in Delphi, agree to die rather than to be taken. Strabo adds that the Celts are not satisfied to kill themselves; they pull their wives and their children down in death.

Other approved or prescribed suicides, seem more difficult to explain. Those evoked by Aelianus, Nicholas of Damascus, Aristotle, Ephorus.

These texts make known to us not one use, but two.

First use: the Celts remain in their houses tossed by the waves.

Second use: they wait for the sea or march against it until they are submerged.

This use which so extremely astonished the Ancients is perhaps the ultimate echo of a kind of voluntary sacrifice. Nevertheless let us notice that, if the assumption is rather probable, others remain possible. The men who advance in the sea are perhaps originally some druids responsible for stopping it by ritual gestures, and the weapon movements which Aelianus signals can have had a magic value.

There is finally the type of suicide publicly and after having distributed his wealth, evoked by Posidonius.

There existed therefore four three types of allowed or prescribed suicide:

suicide after the death of a relative or of a chief;

suicide after a defeat;

suicide of religious order;

suicide publicly after having distributed the wealth received in gifts to his.

Nevertheless nothing proves that suicide rate was particularly high among Celts. Let us consider the suicides of those who want to perish with their walls or their houses. Where is it seen that the soldiers of the war of independence make a point of honor to perish THUS on the walls of which they have the custody? The facts reported by Aelianus are therefore, at least at that time, rare facts and whose scarcity even made the celebrity. Lastly, it should also be well believed that the suicides publicly after having distributed the wealth received in gifts to his are not either frequent things because Posidonius is the one to speak about them.

It is therefore erroneous to allot to the ancient Celts a simplistic morality approving all the suicides indistinctly. They did not have an ethology exalting the suicide itself and pushing men to commit suicide without special reason, for the sake of it.

Specialists allot them vainly a superb contempt of life, although if it is necessary in addition to show them always quick to sacrifice the life of others to save theirs. If the ancient Celts are not completely deprived of any respect for the life of others, they are not more always ready to sacrifice theirs at the drop of a hat. The list of the suicides approved among them is not longer than that of the suicides admitted by the Roman law.

ANCIENT CELTIC ETHOLOGY AND BODY.

The former druidism admits that the victims of human sacrifice placed in the famous wicker men are placed there alive; we do not have any evidence that the former druids tried to soften this use except for the fact of having recourse for that to prisoners under sentence of death instead of innocent ones. The secular law too admits death by fire. It is the punishment which is inflicted to the traitors, to the tyrants, to the wives responsible for the death of their husband and, in some case, to those who commit serious transgressions against the military discipline. The greatest figures are exposed like the others to this torment; it is that which is reserved among the Helvetians for the very powerful Orgetorix.

During the battle against Merula, the Boians chiefs, according to Livy, strike the cowards with blows of javelins. But we do not know if these chiefs give way to a fit of indignation or if the corporal punishments are usual in the Celtic armies.

We do not know more if the blows or other punishments reaching the body play a part in the education of the children such as the parents or the former druids conceive it. We are unaware of if the masters maltreat their slaves.

On the other hand, a fact struck already the Ancients, it is the practice which had certain Celts to cut the head of their DEAD enemies (and not to cut the throat of them alive as the fanatics of Allah do today).

Did this rite have initially a magic meaning, a religious interest? It is very possible. Mr. Renel points out that in Polynesia and Malaysia,people fix the heads they can get on the roof of the hut, and the enemies of formerly become thus some guards and guardians. But nothing says that the Celts who nail heads in their residence have an idea of this kind. It is extremely possible that they want simply to spread out the evidence of their bravery. In every case at the time of Posidonius the use is highly approved by morality, and nobody is offended of such a fate inflicted to the body of the enemy since it would appear unworthy quite to the contrary to give back or sell against his weight of gold a head

that you have thus brought back in your home.

FUNERAL.

The early Christians were indifferent to the lot of the body after death. But we cannot allot to the Celts, whose funeral is sometimes sumptuous, such an unworthy ethology.

ANTHROPOPHAGY.

Does Celtic morality admit cannibalism?

The traces of anthropophagy are in the Celtic world rare and not very sure. So sometimes in besieged cities, our forefathers eat human flesh, it is not that their morality authorizes that in theory. It is by the effect of a heroic despair which pushes them to acts that themselves find horrible.

Ammianus, in a description where there are, of course, very old features, signals the care the Celts take of their body: tersi tamen pari diligentia cuncti et mundi. The snowy whiteness that Timagenes allocates to the arms of the women, the radiance of the flesh of the warriors that several historians signal, are explained partly by this care of cleanliness. Women; according to Pliny, wash their face with beer scum to preserve the whiteness of their complexion. Celtiberians, according to Diodorus, wash their teeth with urine. A kind of “toothpaste” which undoubtedly was to make teeth whiter.

According to a text of Aretaeus of Cappadocia ( Treatise on the causes, symptoms and cure of acute and chronic diseases) signaled by Belloguet, the Celts soap their linen. Ammianus writes, following Timagenes, that in these regions and mainly among the Aquitanians, nobody, was this a woman, was it in extreme poverty, is seen wearing like elsewhere sordid rags.

We don’t count the texts which show us the Celts concerned with clothing elegance, eager for bright colors, gold and purple. Strabo shows us the magistrates covered with gilded clothing. The slaves are distinguished from the free men by colored livery. Perhaps those of their master.

And elegance is probably appropriate when the warrior goes to war: richly engraved shields, gilded and silver-plated belts, gold armor, golden plumed helmets, coral ornaments, necklaces, bracelets, sparkle on the battlefields.

OBESITY.

“Ephorus, in his account, makes Celtica so excessive in its size that he assigns to the regions of Celtic most of the regions, as far as Cadiz, of what we now call Iberia; further, he declares that the people are fond of the Hellenes, and specifies many things about them that do not fit the facts of today. The following, also, is a thing peculiar to them: they endeavor not to grow fat or pot-bellied, and any young man who exceeds the standard measure of a certain girdle, is punished. So much for Transalpine Celtica ” (Strabo. Geography. Book IV, IV, 6).

ALCOHOL CONSUMPTION

Our ancestors having often been blamed for being utter drunkards, it is important to assess the situation about this subject, without denying for as much that there was like everywhere in the world besides, frequent cases of public or private intoxication. But there was also sacred intoxication, particularly before battles.

It is therefore important to distinguish when it is necessary.

The use of wine in the religious practices of the end of the Iron Age forms an archeological reality well tangible. Common thread and “indicator" idea of these practices, the amphoras fell within a symbolic system equating , by metonymy, the container with its contents, the product with the effects it generates. The close analogy of treatment which links these deposits with other categories of atebertas (of offerings) informs us about their systematic presence on the great sanctuaries of the country. The wine was emphasized there, through rituals copied on those which were inflicted to the other offerings. By the voluntary injuries of which they are the subjects, the cremation rituals, the meticulous selection of the parts and of the burying places,as very organized deposits, the amphoras are changed into true consecration objects.

Their contents were consumed at the time of big feasts, described in a detailed way in the ancient texts and materialized by these thousands of amphora shards as well as thousands of bones accumulated in large enclosure ditches, or within the enclosure of sanctuaries. Their mode of putting down demonstrates the simultaneous consumption, by a large community, of big quantities of food and drink: hectoliters of wine and/or beer, choice cuts taken from young pigs or young sheep, cereals… These feasts implemented specific accessories, utensils of cooking and metal vases, reserved for the collective rather than domestic sphere. Some of them, like the cauldrons, had a liturgical function. Cut out and cooking of the meats, solemn mixing of drinks. The joint practice of meal and sacrifice was accompanied with precise rites, performed prior to the act of consumption, or at the time of its conclusion.

The drink offerings of wine offered in honor of the deities or late represent a practice as central there as in the Greco-Roman liturgy. Atebertas or offerings of filled amphoras, laid down or precipitated into the bottom of cavities as offering to the earth or partial drink offerings; this practice profits, on the sanctuaries, from concrete archeological clues. Pits, drains and pipes, intended to channel a liquid in the ground, combined with large quantities of amphoras, find a direct equivalent in the bothroi (sacrificial sets made up of a pit and an altar) known in the sanctuaries of archaic Greece. And in the ancient Arab world (see our essay against Islam volume I).

The same devices are integrated into the lay out of certain burials, where they are used for the food of the late, post mortem.

Feasts and drinking were accompanied by other handling inflicted to the leftovers and accessories of the banquet, ruled by ritual standards strictly observed, hundreds of kilometers away.

The breaking of the amphoras, using weapons, or tools, form the most recognizable stage of it. The state of extreme fragmentation of certain deposits indicates a will of systematic destruction, which is connected with the ritual breaking inflicted to the atebertas or metal offerings found in the sanctuaries. Shards of amphoras and parts of armament often show in them the same traces of blade mark or impact. This sacrificial gesture aimed at consecrating the feast leftovers, definitively destroying the

whole of the used goods and accessories, for the exclusive use of the deities and/or the organizers of the festival.

The amphoras cutting off through “cracking open,” demonstrated by the discovery of clogged neck or marks of blade actions, suggest a rite of symbolic beheading of the container. The separation and the meticulous selection of the bellies and necks can be interpreted in the light of the rites of dismemberment of corpses, known in the North sanctuaries. This parallel is supported by the joined drop-off, in certain sanctuaries, of elements of necks and skulls or on the contrary, of a beheaded body surrounded by crack opened amphoras. Probably inspired by the amphora anthropoid shape, this practice betrays the more general bond which links, among Celts, superior value of the skull but also alcohol effects (sawed skulls or helmets used as drinking cups).

The cremation of amphoras, demonstrated by some shards carbonized even distorted under the effect of a very violent fire, is also equated with a form of sacrificial destruction. It refers to the idea of purification and evaporation of the product, by analogy with the wine immolated with the incense of the Greco-Roman altars, or poured on the pyres with still glowing embers, in honor of celestial deities.

The burial of the deposits in natural or artificial depths, dry holes, pits, or ditches, forms the last stage of the ritual, through which the consumed goods are definitely put away from the non-religious world. These cavities arranged in the sanctuaries in order to accommodate the leftovers of the pertaining to worship activity were also intended for the underground deities residing in the ground; just like the immersion of the amphoras and the utensils of the banquet in rivers, wells, or at the bottom of natural cavities. These deposits are often organized (alignments, circular or ternary arrangement, containers laid out in line and/or top to tail, amphoras reconstituted starting from disparate fragments), which betrays a will of staging, of protection, or of symbolic separation.

This operation took on, in certain cases, an ostentatious and purely symbolic dimension. In the burials or in their accesses, in the sanctuaries as in certain votive heaps, the laying down of complete amphoras is generally accompanied by a mass of residual shards, sometimes taken from domestic dumps. They proceed from an abundance symbolic system aiming at underlining the wealth of the late or of the community. A simple shard is enough to convey the image of the contents (pars pro toto); some of them, equipped with a dedication engraved with a nail, recut in the shape of a statuette, of a token,of amulets, could play a more active part in the ritual.

These rituals were performed on various scales. Inside the enclosure of great confederal sanctuaries, as on small rural place of worship, in full nature or within palisaded enclosures of various sizes (from the vastest ones, copied on the model of the Viereckschanzen, to most modest, attached to the dwelling); even within the domestic space.

Certain places of worship concentrating in their enclosure considerable quantities of wine, seem to be dedicated specifically to this use. This activity called on well-identified drinking offering devices, dry holes, pits, and other “hollow altars,” furnished with amphoras, metal crockery, and ceramics, used at the time of the festivities or of the practice of the worship. The journey of the amphoras within the sacred space obeys constants: their opening, followed by drink offering, was done inside or near the shrines; the consumption of wine, in vast spaces or monumental galleries arranged around; their remains were buried or relegated in the periphery of the pertaining to worship surface, along the enclosing wall.

These “drink offering sanctuaries” place themselves in the margin of the field of identification of the traditional sanctuaries, primarily centered on the warlike aspect, limited in their spreading to the Northern and Western fringes of the country. Their activity appears often centered on fertility worships, materialized by the deposit of amphoras, grinding stones, and agricultural tools. A clear cultural caesura separates, in this respect, the areas located on both sides of the valley of the Loire and of the Seine rivers. Limited a long time in Aquitaine, these sanctuaries extended in fact to the whole Center- east and South-west .The deposit of wine amphoras in “offering” pits, particularly, covers a reality communal to the whole of the Western Celtic domain, proportional to the regional importation volume. It materializes the meeting of practices of the kind drink offering centered around the symbolic system of the wine, known in the Mediterranean world since the 8th c. before our era, on the one hand; a tradition of burying crockery and atebertas or food offerings maintained in the temperate zone since the Bronze Age, on the other hand; where the indigenous drinks, like ale, probably held the first place (another oblation which dominated in the most important ceremonies, was also that of sacred mead, drink with exciting virtues, of rather mysterious nature. These practices extend to a vast series of

trenched enclosures with quadrangular plan, characterized by their position isolated but also the absence of dwelling structures and domestic furniture. The considerable quantities of amphoras which they delivered, often combined with armaments, metal crockery, and other prestige goods, designate some of them as spaces reserved for festive assemblies of religious, political and legal, nature. These “banquet enclosures” show, following the example of the sanctuaries, clear scale differences, according to the importance of the demonstrations which proceeded there or the guest’s number.

Vastest of them join the first interpretation of the Viereckschanzen in south Germany, as spaces of gathering with festive and religious vocation. These enclosure structures are the protohistoric equivalent of the “theaters” which were used according to Posidonius, as a framework for the Celtic feasts; they were perhaps, regarding their function, previous to these Romano-British or Gallo-Roman spectacle buildings dedicated to the Community gatherings and/or to the practice of worship. Their frontier position underlines their probable role in the definition of the alliances, in the settlement of the territorial conflicts.

Some monumental buildings designed for social and/or religious purpose, seem to have fulfilled the same function: the temples and some large wooden porticos which constitute the installation of certain sanctuaries, are identified as spaces reserved for banquets. Used as background for the assemblies of benches which furnish the funerary rooms of the elite, their plan is inspired, in certain cases, from that of the southernmost estiatoria (refectories).

The reproduction of these practices in the private sphere is illustrated through small enclosures designated for festive and/or pertaining to worship purposes, more or less incorporated into the dwelling; reduced version of the large enclosures and of the public sanctuaries, they were adjusted to demonstrations staged at the level of the family, of the clan, or of the agrarian community in the broad sense, chaired by an elite competent for the practice of private worship. Certain votive deposits in pit or dry holes, composed of amphoras, armaments, human remains and/or metal crockery, buried in the domestic space, demonstrate the existence of drinking offering rites performed in the middle of the dwelling, following the example of the “lararia” of the Roman epoch.

The practice of the feast and of the drink offerings within a funerary framework is illustrated through the omnipresence of wine and of amphoras on the incineration or burial sites of this period; the border with the pertaining to worship field is not always easy to highlight. The use of the wine in the funeral banquet and the extinction of the funeral pyre form objective realities demonstrated on certain funerary sites; it is probable that the putting down of amphoras in the graves or in their periphery had multiple and complex functions.

A previous form of wine use for funerary purposes is the laying down of containers broken then incinerated, sacrificed to the deities, in the image of those which are present on the contemporary sanctuaries. This ritual proximity is also expressed through the space bond which links, in certain cases, sanctuaries and aristocratic burials furnished with wine offerings. Framework of drinking offerings regularly carried out in honor of the late and of the deities, these structures are connected directly with the temples dedicated to a hero, known in the Greek world.

The deities honored by these practices took forms as various as the rites and the contexts which were dedicated to them. The underground offering of amphoras and crockery perhaps refers to the good Suqellus Dagda Gurgunt, central figure of the druidic Panth-eon or pleroma joining together “chthonian” dimension and cauldron ideology,combined with the amphora, barrel and goblet pattern. Texts, as archeology, let foresee a large variety of figures which makes only more obvious the absence of Dionysus, wine god-or-demon of whom the worship never really took root in Celtic land; except the particular case of the island of the Namnetes where maenads lived, according to Strabo (Geography, Book IV, Chapter IV, 6) and Dionysius Periegetes (in his description of the inhabited (earth), as some others. But in fact this Dionysius was the interpretatio graeca of a Celtic god-or- demon in connection with sexuality. Our matter not being here to deal with the discussed problem of the Celtic Tantrism or of the adultery of the wife of Partholon, we will not say more about that.

The use of the wine in the funeral ritual must be considered from a double point of view: drinking offerings for the dead and putting down of wine offerings refer as well to the concept of post mortem food as to that of sacrifice. The presence of broken then incinerated amphoras in the image of the sanctuary deposits, implies they were addressed as well to the late as to the deities responsible for his soul/mind. Some discoveries suggest that the wine could be used, as in Greece, to wash the bones of the late one.

The history of wine consumption in the pre-Roman time betrays long phases of discontinuity as well as many regional disparities. It breaks up into two distinct phases.

The first, in final Hallstatt, the second at the end of the Iron Age, two periods marked by deep social and political changes. It draws its source from a thousand-year-old tradition of festive practices calling on local fermented drinks (mead, ale), suitable for the whole of the antiquated civilizations in the European Bronze Age.

This tradition encounters, in the 6th century before our era, a first attempt at opening to the banquet rites of the Greek type. The wine makes a very limited appearance north of the Alps. Its consumption is placed , right from the start, within the framework of the religious demonstrations chaired by the aristocracy, in the graves as in the sanctuaries. It remains related to a very transitory form of “princely” power, whose decline starts as of the 5th century before our era.

A long phase of return to local drinks follows it, concomitant with the emergence of a new warlike and priestly class, which results in the foundation of the great sanctuaries in the North. The complete lack of amphoras in the 4th and 3rd centuries betrays a voluntary attitude of rejection, preached by a clergy reluctant to the external influences. Drawn aside of the representation modes of elites, the wine gives way to ale, consumed in the warlike assemblies. Its implication in the sacrificial rites, the feasts of alliances and victory extended to an increasingly broad circle of attendees, forms the crucible of the great collective demonstrations which will emerge in the next century.

As in the first Iron Age, it seems possible to distinguish two consumption facies.

The first, known as “hieratic,” specific to the “egalitarian” societies in the South, consists of the ostentatious redistribution of large quantities of wine intended for all the social classes.

The second, known as “hierarchical,” specific to the more elitist societies in the North, preaches the valorization of small quantities of wine sanctified to the extreme, by the means of metal accessories emphasized in the graves.

The regions of the Center and Center-East (Arverni, Aeduans, Segusiavi), where the wine is found in large quantities on the sites of sanctuaries and enclosures dedicated to the practice of the feast, match the first facies. Based on a redistributive and clientelist logic, they showed, with the absence of “rich” burials, little hierarchical societies.

The areas of Eastern Belgium , of the Atlantic and of the North-East; where more restricted quantities of wine concentrate mainly, following the example of the metal crockery, between the hands of a land and military elite, opened to the external commercial and civilizational contributions, match the second facies. The majority of the discoveries relates to the sanctuaries, the burials, and the residences of “aristocratic” nature, where they were highlighted within the framework of a traditional liturgy, initially based on local drinks.

These various facies cover very major cultural, political, and social, oppositions, whose logic exceeds the vision of a people simply divided between “egalitarians” or “elitists,” between “traditionalist” or “pro- Roman” parties. Rites of drink and banquets mark the meeting of concepts as opposite as wine ideology (amphoras, kraters, situlas, drinking cups) and beer or mead ideology (buckets, cauldrons, situlas, indigenous drinking vases); banquet of Greek type and archaic feast; banquet enclosures or aristocratic burials… These civilization options have, according to the areas, very clear limits or transition zones, which evolve in the course of time. They are the evidence of a civilizational and historical “shock” echoed by the texts, and whose main emblems, amphora and cauldron, are figured on the coin legends.

The example of the Nervians shows that, where the Italian influences are very little felt , Celtic morality preaches a rather rigorous temperance.

When he gets informed about the manners of the Nervians, it is indeed answered to Caesar that the Nervians do not let wine enter their territory because they think that wine weakens the hearts and slackens courage.

Here therefore a Celtic people which, on this question, as went far as the American laws during the Prohibition time.

We should not judge the rest of the Celts on this example since apart from the case of the Nervians the wine circulates freely, but it would also be crazy to want to stick to the old legend of the inveterate addicted to drink Celts.

Let us stick to the facts: some Celts, being unaware of the effects of the wine, perhaps drink some with excess at holidays at the time of their first incursions in Italy; later, when the merchants from the South start to go up towards the North, there are examples of intoxication and in the rich class and in the

poor class but nowhere we see an entirely become stupid through intoxication people; nowhere we find trace of a morality forgiving with drunkenness.

But the accounts being added to the accounts, it is well understood that the Celts are as a whole a people of utter drunkards.

The reality is very different. If the Celts let themselves allure by the wine in Italy, it is, of course, because most among them do not use to drink of it. If they become drunk it is that, sober usually they can have this new drink badly.

Such is the a little optimistic opinion of Albert Bayet on the subject.

On the other hand, what is certain and there he is completely right to point out it, at the time of the war for independence, Caesar does not signal us once that he deals with drunkards.

CONCLUSION FOR TODAY.

The example of the ancient doctors druids shows us that life and health are invaluable goods. We therefore have to take care of them reasonably by taking account of the needs for others and of the common good. Barack Hussein Obama was right to reflect the installation of a generalized, accessible and of quality, health insurance. At least for our children! Because health, yes, that is expensive!

Some people don’t cease wanting to make us regret it, whereas it would be necessary on the contrary to be delighted with it: we are better treated than before! We live and remain productive longer than ever! Then, of course, health costs billions, but the benefit that each one among us draws from it, and the whole society, go well beyond the only financial question.

Health is expensive and will cost more and more because of the increase of the population and of the life expectancy, but also of the arrival of increasingly sophisticated medical techniques…

Facing this inescapable reality, it is necessary to choose.

Either the politick which consists in making the patients themselves bear the increase of the health expenses as the companies of private insurance do it in this country. And actually, they are primarily the patients who, until now, supported the vain efforts of control of health expenses. Serious, this situation is so in very first place for those who need care. Year after year, plan after plan, the patients are constrained to always pay more. The logic is well known. If the nation accounts are in the red, it is because of the patients. They are themselves who consume too many drugs, doctor visits, hospital stays… Let us force them to limit their demand and the deficit will disappear. The “culprits” must pay! So, the question is no longer to care of the citizens as well as possible, but they are the least expensive possible for the community. Dangerous and unjust, this politics is also completely inoperative.

Or a true minimal medical management, except plastic surgery or of comfort, wanting to oppose the age effects, even also in the event of abortion not justified by solid reasons (rape, incest….). Obama on this point was right to take account of the ethical problems that it raised.

This financing is therefore a true society choice. It deserves a wide-ranging national consensus. This consensus is, however, all the more essential as beyond “the simple” financing, it is the whole of our health care system which requires reflections, discussions and reforms.

But it is necessary to assume this policy instead of continuing to cut in thin slices social protection, through a true “sausage policy,” until one day there is no longer sausage.

So many saint men and so few results! We uns, high-knowers of today, without being like the doctors druids of formerly, we think, of course, that it is advisable to control the health expenses, but while following other tracks, particularly that of the care reorganization. We particularly invite to pass from a logic of care policy to a logic of health policy based on prevention. As we could see it, according to Strabo, quoting Ephorus, certain Celts of the Antiquity already endeavoured not to grow fat or pot- bellied and punished every young man whose plumpness exceeded the measure fixed by a certain girdle.

As for themselves, the neopagans are ready to pay more for their health. But as citizens, not as patients. It is a question of being responsible and not guilty!

We therefore claim “to change software” in order to refound our health social pact. It is a question of making proposals, either to finance our everybody health and to keep it accessible, or for organizing it, to secure the quality of the care, to continue the medical democracy, to consolidate the individual rights of the patients… Let us speak, let us discuss collectively, publicly, about that. The future of our health, our future, is concerned.

We need a health care system (just like for School and University besides) based on the sharing and the solidarity of the richest towards the poorest; not a system based on the individual stampede, other name of selfishness. The community must ensure the financing of it.

That implies from the behalf of the society, conditions of existence making it possible to grow and reach maturity, food and clothing, dwelling, schooling (of druidic type) some work.

ANCIENT CELTIC ETHOLOGY AND SEXUALITY.

What we can start by noting it is that the Celts did not require a future wife that she is virgin because the second husbands are legitimate. In the tale of Plutarch Sinatus finds very natural to marry Camma widow, and Camma, who seeks by all the means to avoid this union, does not think of pleading that a second marriage is an inappropriate thing. The marriages of the mother of Dumnorix, Mr. Jullian remarks it, are numerous: she marries the father of Dumnorix, another chief and, lastly, a Biturigian.

None of the previous texts proves therefore that the Celts attach to virginity or chastity a singular price. Let us add finally that the druids can marry: Diviciacus says that, alone among all Aeduans, he did not give his children as hostages to the Sequani, it is therefore that he has some.

The Christian propagandist Eusebius of Caesarea (Preparation for the Gospel Book VI chapter 10 ) writes that among the Celts young boys take young men as husbands in complete freedom, and because of the law which reigns in their country, they see there no subject of blame.

I do not hesitate, Belloguet writes, to consider these assertions as untrue, if it is not for all the peoples in Celtica, at least for true Celts. The very fertility of Celtic women does not suggest that they were neglected by their husbands; and the legal marriages about which Eusebius speaks, very little probable in former times, appear completely incredible in the 4th century of our era after three hundreds of submission to the Roman domination. Eusebius could echo a lie changing into marriage a pact of friendship between two young men.

Regarding the decency of women, we have contradictory information. Certain texts show us the Celtic warriors as depraved louts. We read in the Anthology the epitaph of three Milsesian virgins who, repelling the criminal passion of the Celts and their brutal ardor, found in Hades a husband and a guard.

On the decency of men also. The emperor Jullian almost contemporary of the bishop of Caesarea, praises the Celts for their chastity and Spartianus informs us that the Celts granted even to this virtue some religious honors at the time of the Antonine. It remains to be explained how so many authors take up in Ephorus a fact whose total inaccuracy would be flagrant.

ANCIENT CELTIC ETHOLOGY AND FAMILY.

MORALITY AND FAMILY.

The pleasant legend of the foundation of Marseilles, the gesture of the daughter of the king handing the bridal cup to the unknown guest, made certain historians saying that the Celtic woman is very free in the choice of her husband but the Greeks were wise to arrange a legend which was flattering for them.

Fidelity is, of course, a duty for the wife.

In the history of Herippe, a Celt is indignant to see his prisoner preferring him to the husband who wants to repurchase her and, in his indignation, he kills the unfaithful wife.

Among Galatians, Khiomara, wife of Ortiagon, is raped by a Roman centurion who took her along as a prisoner. She makes the centurion kill, wraps the head cut in a fold of her dress, and throws it at the feet of her husband. Lastly, the famous Camma remains faithful to her dead husband and likes better to perish herself than to marry the man who, by love for her, made her a widow.

Plutarch. Dialogue on Love (Greek Eroticos). Chapter XXII.

"Although there are plenty of examples of this virtue of constancy, yet to you, that are the festive votaries of the god [of love] , it will not be amiss to relate the story of the Galatian Camma.

She was a woman of most remarkable beauty, and the wife of the tetrarch Sinatus, whom Sinorix, one of the most influential men in Galatia, and desperately in love with Camma, murdered, as he could neither get her by force or persuasion in the lifetime of her husband. Camma found a refuge and comfort in her grief in discharging the functions of hereditary priestess to Artemis, and most of her time she spent in her temple ; though many kings and potentates wooed her, she refused them all. But when Sinorix boldly proposed marriage to her, she did not decline his offer, nor blamed him for what he had done, as though she thought he had only murdered Sinatus out of excessive love for her, and not in sheer villany : he came, therefore, with confidence, and asked her hand. She met him and greeted him and led him to the altar of the goddess, and pledged him in a cup of poisoned mead, drinking half of it herself and giving him the rest. When she saw that he had drunk it up, she shouted aloud for joy, and calling upon the name of her dead husband, said : 'Till this day, dearest husband, I have lived, deprived of you, a life of sorrow: but now take me to yourself with joy, for I have avenged you on the worst of men, as glad to share death with him as life with you.'

Sinorix was removed out of the temple on a litter, and soon after gave up the soul. Camma lived the rest of that day and following night. She is said to have died with a good courage and even with gaiety."

We do not know if the adultery committed by the husband is punished. The excesses which are reproached to the Celtic warriors would suggest that they have no scruple in being unfaithful to their wife at least in war time. But we cannot judge usual morality from the manners of soldiers in the campaign.

On the other hand, a text very often quoted , shows that people are concerned with guaranteeing private means to widows: “ Whatever sums of money the husbands have received in the name of dowry from their wives, making an estimate of it, they add the same amount out of their own estates. An account is kept of all this money conjointly, and the profits are laid by, whichever of them shall have survived [the other]; to that one the portion of both reverts together with the profits of the previous time (cum fructibus superiorum temporum)”.

This text is the subject of a controversy which lasts since the 16th century.It is not easy indeed to decide if the word pecunias designates exclusively an amount of money and the word fructus the interests of this sum, or if it is necessary to understand with the noun pecunia any kind of movables and particularly herds: in this second case, we could wonder whether the reserved fructus represent the product of the sales of these animals or the capital gain of the livestock. There is still to wonder whether the pecunia are transferable and what the fruits of the fruits become.

But what is thought of these problems, a point is beyond doubt: the widow will touch her dowry, a sum equal to this dowry, and some fructus produced by this capital. Nothing proves that, when her husband

lives, she is a joint owner of this capital and that we can, for this reason, regard her as the equal and the partner of her husband. But it is certain that the day after the death of the husband, the succession is debtor of the sum indicated by Caesar and that the surviving wife is personally owner of it, as the husband himself would be if it was the wife who disappeared.

Such an institution has for obvious effect to give to the widowed woman material safety and, consequently, some independence.

As we have had already the opportunity to say it, a widow may remarry. The thing is licit and does not offend the common conscientiousness. In the tale by Plutarch, Sinatus considers completely natural to marry Camma become a widow, and Camma, who tries by all the means to avoid this union of which she has horror, does not even think of pleading that a second marriage is an unpleasant thing. The mother of Dumnorix is married three times and it does not seem that her influence is decreased by that.

Perhaps the widows are freer than the girls in the choice of a husband: in the History of Camma, we see the parents of our heroine applying on her a violent pressure to force her to accept Sinatus but it does not appear that one of these parents has the right to give her a strict order. Caesar says well of the Aeduan Dumnorix that he chose himself the third husband of his mother: matrem conlocasse, but the fact that she takes his advice proves only that she is with him from the political point of view, against Diviacus the elder one, that proves by no means that she is required to obey.

The mother is perhaps required by the ancient Celtic ethology to nourish with the center her children, since Strabo declares that the Celtic women are excellent nurses. Her authority, whatever it is, ends when the son, after the death of the father, becomes head of the family in turn: if we do not have the right to say that Dumnorix marries himself his mother, it is even more obvious than he does not consult her on his own marriage, negotiated directly with the Helvetian Orgetorix.

The father, if he has some rights, has also duties. First of all, it seems that the Celtic ethology of then pushes him to have many children. The worship of matres, matrae, matronae, whose Celtic origin is not doubtful, proves that the Celts honor motherhood.

According to the manners, the father must love his children; We already saw the oath of the cavalrymen of Vercingetorix: ne ad liberos.......aditum habeat. The warrior who swears such an oath

imposes to himself an ordeal, and a rigorous ordeal. It is therefore that he loves his children. In Gergovia, the mothers, wanting to encourage the defenders, hand towards them their children “after the Celtic fashion”: they thus call on the paternal love as with a powerful feeling. In Avaricum, the wives entreat their husbands not to abandon se et communes liberos. Vercingetorix, wanting to get from his the authorization to burn boroughs and cities, makes the point that, if these measures are cruel, it would be crueler to them still to see their children enslaved. Finally, the surest evidence that the paternal love is a common thing, it is the use to require hostages from the defeated people, to require that greats, the chiefs, deliver their children. Ariovistus demands from the Sequani nobilissimi cuiusque liberos and the Sequani live in the terror that their children are maltreated.

The child, as a long time as he is under the manus of the father, owes him respect and obedience, of course. The ancient Celtic ethology also invites him to love his parents; because the oath of the cavalrymen concern not only the wife and the children, but the parentos. The filial devotion appears, at the time of the father’s death, through sumptuous funeral: funera sunt, pro cultu Gallorum, magnifica et sumptuosa, and the son should not hesitate to burn, with the body, all that was dear to the late.

Another now solved point, the ancient Celtic ethology has it that the child who is not yet old enough to bear arms does not have the right to be shown publicly in the presence of his father. Firm proof that the habit to place in a boarding family the children, at a distant relative of the mother, in order to complete their education was then very widespread, what Irishmen call fosterage in English. From where the frequency of the role of nephews and uncles in the Celtic tales and legends.

We do not know if a Celt keeps precise duties with regard to his died forefathers, if he owes them given funerary care. But we know that at least the noble ones piously have the memory of their forefathers. We read in Silius

Ipse tumens atauis Brenni stirpe ferebat. And in Propertius

Virdomari genus hic Rheno iactabat ab ipso.

The poet who accompanies the ambassador of the king Bituitus sings “the birth” of his master. Lastly, the only fact that people distinguish among the nobles the one who is from a very old family: antiquissima familia natum proves that a Celt of the upper classes takes care on the memory of his ancestors.

Last point. Various accounts indicate that morality recommends brotherly love: in the field of the legend, Arar kills himself out of despair, after the death of Celtiberus; Strabo says that Caesar having decided to put to death Adiatorix and Dyteutus, the elder one of his children, the junior, wanting to save Dyteutus, tries to make accept the torturers that it is himself who is the elder one; a touching argument begins between the two brothers; finally, the parents persuade Dyteutus to yield the victory to his junior. When the Aquitanian Piso falls on the battlefield, his brother refuses to survive to him; when the Aeduan Litaviccus wants to involve his fellow citizens in the fight against Rome, he says that his brothers were killed by Caesar and pretends that the pain prevents him from speaking; lastly, when Caesar wants to make Dumnorix executed, Diviciacus begs the Roman leader to save his brother: he admits that Dumnorix is guilty, but he adds sese tamen et amore fraterno et existimatione ulgi commoveri; if Dumnorix is put to death, it is him Diviciacus who will be made responsible for that , and “all sympathies in the country will be diverted from him.”

This solidarity between brothers is not the exception, it is the rule. A fact is enough to prove it: among the Aeduans there are laws which prohibit that two men members of the same family, when the other lives, not only are magistrates, but even accepted in the Senate. The authority of these laws is not always sovereign, since, during a crisis, Valetiacus proclaims vergobretus his own brother and is seen supported by half of the Tribe-State. But the only existence of such a provision shows that political alliance between brothers is regarded as a normal thing. That Diviciacus and Dumnorix, after having been friendly, separate and fight against each other shortly after the arrival of Caesar, it is a fact, but an abnormal fact: generally, the brothers walk together, and this agreement is such a common thing that there are laws to prevent the effects of that.

The ancient Celtic ethology does not unit only the brother: there are bonds between propinqui. The law consecrates them, since, in certain cases, it provides for the meeting of a court made up of “close relations.” The affection does not stop with the agnates because Caesar while speaking about the Aeduan Cotus, speaks about magnae cognationis.

What is the solidity of these bonds between brothers and of these bonds between close relations, it is what we will see by studying the family solidarity.

THE COLLECTIVE FAMILY RESPONSIBILITY.

Let us examine first the group formed by the father the mother and the children, which we call today the mono nuclear family.

Solidarity is not absolute there in that each member is, from the criminal point of view, responsible only for his own acts (in the time of Caesar of course). We already saw that the children of Orgetorix do not undergo the punishment of the paternal crime, that Vercingetorix keeps his status after the judgment and the execution of his father Celtillus. Some texts by Caesar show us that, in the Tribe-State where the royalty is abolished, the heirs to the last monarchs remain considerable characters. Nowhere we see a wife punished or worried for the fault of her husband. But contrary, the criminal law admits in certain cases the seizing of the goods; when it is returned, it is the entire group which suffers from the action made by its chief. It is very probable still that this same group intervenes when the father is murdered; because it can hardly be but itself which claims the fine of which druids fix the amount.

Family solidarity is not either a vain word in the family in the broadest sense of the word, that which corresponds to the cognates and propinqui. Not only the existence of the propinqui court of which we saw higher the competence proves it. It is the very law of the Aeduans itself because we could notice that it prohibits not only the entry in the Senate to two brothers, but to two members of the same family: duo ex una familia.

When a party of the Aeduans decides to attack the Romans, Eporedorix and Viridomarus warn Caesar that there is a serious danger because, once some Aeduans roped in the conflict, their propinqui will not be able to ignore them and will end up in involving the whole State.

Therefore let us not believe the Celt places outside of the family the best of his existence. On the contrary, he lives commonly with it, by it and for it. In times of peace, fathers, sons, brothers, cousins and other close relations, are rather closely united so that the Tribe-State fears this union; family

alliances are a normal means to prepare political alliances. In time of war the soldiers separate from theirs only if the war must be short; they regard this separation as a severe ordeal. At the critical hours, the supreme argument to raise their courage, it is to remind them that they fight for theirs; it is to show them by far their children.

CONCLUSION FOR TODAY.

The king or the State, being today responsible for the wellbeing of the citizens, it is normal that they intervene to direct the demography of the population. The attempts aiming at reducing human sterility, formerly left to the god-or-demons, or to divine Providence, are to be encouraged. The family must be helped or defended by the appropriate social measures. Where the families are not able to fulfill their functions, the other social corps must help them, even to support them. Family is sacred. Life is received from parents, not to honor one’s parents, it is to dishonor oneself. That became, of course, more difficult than before. Quarrels due to Christian individualism, material and financial problems (inheritance) to the indoctrination of the dominant ideology, to new religions… But, become parents in turn, the children make their father and mother too able to become ancestors and to thus carry on the family egregore. The family is the matrix of the human person and the cradle of the society, as opposed to what the Christians following their intellectual guide, the high rabbi Yehoshua Bar Yosef, affirm. This ideology of hatred and exclusion in Christianity is indeed particularly visible in the following passage of the Gospels. Luke 14,26-27 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple.” See also Luke 8, 19-21.

Such a disconcerting hatred towards the family is unexplainable besides, because in a stable monogamist family of moderate Indo-European patriarchal type; based on the love of the couple, the faithfulness, on a without selfishness fertility, but also on the sense of the clannish solidarity (daltachas/altrom); the child has a maximum of opportunities to grow in a balanced way.

In his family, especially if there are brothers and sisters, he will be located thus at his right place, not as the center of all, but as a “ONE” among the others. Borne by his family, he will therefore find more easily his place in the society by respecting the others, and he will be able to discover his history, the history as of his, the family tradition of the clan and the national tradition (or the national narrative).

Thus he will find some help to be structured as a person, to be strengthened, to build projects, uniting thus harmoniously tradition and creativity. The conflicts will be inevitable, but thanks to that he will also learn how to overcome them.

Nevertheless family alone cannot be enough to guarantee the happiness of children.

The family must also accept the military and priestly vocations. Conversely, the civil society and the public authorities, the kings and their barons (the men of the President) have the duty to impulse a positive family policy.

The family itself is a minisociety, of course, but we should not either make it an absolute sufficient in itself. There are things at least as important as the family tie. As reminds it very poetically the Breton anthem of the white ermine sung by Gilles Servat in 1970 , it is also necessary to can leave his home, brother, sister, father, mother, children or land, to defend freedom, nation or truth.

The druidism recommends therefore to his paying homage, honor, respect, and duty of remembrance, to forefathers and ancestors. Follow this piece of advice always brings , in addition to spiritual fruits, some lasting worldly results (peace or prosperity…) The non-observance of this advice involves on the contrary great damage. As far as they can dot it, the grown-up children owe to their parents material and moral assistance, in old age or disease. But the refusal of the fashionable Christian use of intensive medication is by no means an equivalent with the will to give death to them, it is only an acceptance to be unable to prevent it. The decision must be taken by the patient himself, if he has competence and capacity for that, or then by legal entitled persons , in the strictest respect of the legitimate interests of the patient. Attention and care must be granted to the dying persons in order to help them to live this difficult middle of their long life. The body of the deceased persons must particularly be treated with respect and dignity. Burial or cremation of the dead honors who takes care of that. See on this subject the funeral praises like those of Urien, Cadwallon or Cynddylan in Wales, which are death songs of a rare beauty. The autopsy of the corpses can nevertheless be also allowed if the reasons are legitimate (legal investigation, scientific research). The donation of organs after the

death honors whoever agree to do it and in that is completely opposed , with the precepts of the Witnesses of Jehovah/Yahweh and even of the Judaism where to be licit it is necessary beforehand to be sure that the donor is well deceased according to the criteria of the Halacha or Halakha (in other words of the Jewish law).

* The army becomes in this case like a large family.

ANCIENT CELTIC ETHOLOGY AND PROPERTY NOTION.

That the Celts consider property for legitimate, we cannot doubt about since they punish theft. Among them , as among Romans, we see this right concerning buildings, and pieces of furniture.

Is the property individual? For the movables objects, no doubt. We saw, by studying the marriage settlement, that the wife who survives her husband, is personally owner of certain goods.

The herds and the coins are the object of an individual appropriation: a text of Polybius proves it. It is neither bold to suppose that the same applies to weapons, clothing, jewels. But it is much more difficult to know if the Celts admit the personal property of the land.

It undoubtedly appears that there is a time when the personal property is unfamiliar to the Celtic world. Polybius, speaking about the Celts settled in Italy, declares that their life is of an extreme simplicity, that their villages are not surrounded by a wall, and he adds that the fortune of the private individuals (textually: of each one) consisted of herds and gold, because these objects alone can easily, when the circumstances require it, being taken along everywhere and changed of place at will. D’Arbois de Jubainville is right to say that this text is convincing. The Celts came into Italy to get lands in it, they got them. If, shortly after the conquest, the private individuals are owners not of these lands, but only of herds and money, it is obvious that the ground itself belongs to the community: it alone grants fields to plowmen and meadows to stock breeders but these always precarious plots are not part of the fortune of the individuals.

D’Arbois de Jubainville is still right when he says: “If the Celts in Italy had not organized in their favor , in this lately conquered country, the personal property of the ground, it is that they had not brought this idea from their country of origin. How to admit that men leave their native land, because they find their properties too paltry, and that once victorious and settled abroad, they agree to possess nothing

? If the greats themselves, in conquered Italy, are not individually owners of meadows and fields, it is obvious that in Celtic land they would not be more so, it is that on the two sides of the Alps all the ground is ager publicus.

How to believe, if the system of the personal property exists among them, that they so joyfully decide to leave the field inherited from the forefathers? That some adventurous minds resolve to do so , there is nothing more natural. But they are entire nations which set out and which break on the adjoining countries:

A whole crowd starts to move. Of what is it made up? Of poor? Of ordinary people who don't have grounds and despair of ever having some? The legend says nothing such. Livy declares on the contrary that there are huge troops of infantrymen and cavalrymen. Equites are not beggars. They belong to the privileged class. They have enough to live on. If the roots of the individual appropriation bound men to the land, how to explain that hundreds of thousands of Celts are uprooted so joyfully? It is therefore infinitely probable that in the 4th and 3rd centuries, the individual land and buildings property does not exist among Celts

In the 1st century, on the other hand, the personal land property exists among some peoples (among them it is close to the former property of the Tribe-State), but it does not exist yet among all.

Among those who don’t know it, there are the Helvetians. In the year 58 before our era, the Helvetians decide to give up their territory and to go and to settle in a richer and vaster country, the Saintonge (undoubtedly to develop the marsh of the Gulf of Pictones). After three years of arrangements, they set out , not without having burned cities, villages and even remote houses.

However the property right such as we understand it and the attachment of each owner for the plot of land he has would be an insurmountable obstacle to this resolution and to its execution.

Not one of them feels kept, the time of the departure come, by the bonds which attach a man to “his” field and “his” house! At the first call of the State, all set off ! If the Tribe-State so quietly orders the abandonment of the ground, it is that this land is to it, to it only; it is that the Helvetians, from the land point of view, are still at the collectivist stage of the 3rd century.

Shortly after the defeat of Helvetians, the Aeduan people grant some land to Boians. It is not very probable that such a donation is made at the expense of private individuals: who are those who would accept to thus yield their ground to a defeated enemy.

We have to admit that the Tribe-State has a wide enough own domain to make such largesse possible and what is true among the Aeduans is probably similarly true elsewhere. For example, among the Santones.

It appears also undeniable that there is among the Aeduans and among most other Celtic peoples another land and buildings property than that of the State.

Now, are these other lands and buildings individual? We can doubt it. The Celts, unlike the Germans, have what Caesar calls the use of priuati ac separati agri. But it is possible that these “private lands” belong to the family group and not to an individual. What tends to prove it, it is that the rights of the spouses concern exclusively, as Glasson points out it “fungible movable things.” This characteristic, that Caesar signals expressly, is explained especially if it is accepted that the buildings, and particularly the ground, cannot be embezzled from the family capital. It is therefore completely probable that fields, meadows and wood, are regarded as the thing of the family: the father has the administration of them, not the personal property of them.

Where there is personal property, the ius abutendi can go extremely far: in the funeral of a Celt, the objects even the beings which belonged to him and which he loved are burnt; according to Caesar, so to speak, people do die with him all that was dear to him . The feeling of the property is therefore even more than a right to use and misuse: it is colored with affection as for the thing which you appropriate, and the bond is rather strong so that death does not untie it inevitably.

On the other hand, this individual property right must be able sometimes to step aside before the general interest.

The criminal law allows the seizing. And in this case it is undoubtedly the Tribe-State which profits from the confiscation.

It also happens that the Community orders to individuals to destroy their goods: when Vercingetorix decides to practice the scorched earth policy, he declares that it is necessary to be able to sacrifice the material interests of the individuals to the common safety: salutis causa rei familiaris commoda neglegenda. Only the inhabitants of Avaricum protest but they abstain from alluding to their individual interests.

It is not impossible either that, even among peoples who know the individual land private property, there are tenures, conceded land on which the State keeps the eminent domain. Caesar says that the Aeduans, after the defeat of the Helvetians, give lands to Boians, because they wish to keep this people, famous for his valiancy. However although Caesar writes that it is an outright gift, quibus illi agros dederunt, d’Arbois de Jubainville points out rightly that,in the book VII of the Commentaries, the Boians are called stipendarii, i.e., tributary of the Aeduans : Boians therefore pay a royalty for the grounds they “hold” from the Aeduan.

CONCLUSION FOR TODAY.

To distinguish 3 property levels well.

-The small property or individual possession.

The family or medium-sized enterprises.

The nation property.

MONEY.

Celtic cupidity was denounced many times by the ancient writers. All that undoubtedly proves that there were covetous Celts, but not that they were so at an exceptional point. When Plutarch sees in them the most insatiable race which is, he could reflect that the Romans do not without taking spoils, imposing tributes on those they subject and that Caesar himself made in Celtica gold and men roundups such as Celts never made any. What would be perhaps a more serious clue it is the use that the ancient Celts have to be rented as soldiers. Etruscans, Romans, Carthaginians, Iberians, kings and City-States in Greece and Orient, employed Celts as mercenaries: they paid so much for an infantryman, so much for a cavalryman, so much for a chief. The thing was not reciprocal and we do not see Celts appointing Roman mercenaries. It is therefore possible, at a pinch, to conclude from it that our forefathers were more covetous than the Romans. But it is clear that we can just as easily think that they were simply braver, more carefree, of a more adventurous mood.

These people which is said so covetous can embezzle a portion of the spoils to offer it to the gods; if that proves that they imagine their gods avid of wealth (like so many Greek and Roman deities), that

also proves that the rapacity of men yields sometimes to piety. In the account by Appian, the passion for money speaks less higher among Celts than the honor voice, when they refuse the money offered by the Roman Senate after the affair of Clusium. The warriors about whom Posidonius speaks, refuse to give back the skulls of the enemies they killed, even in exchange of their gold weight: they do not have the idea that money comes first. According to Athenaeus, the Scordisci do not let penetrate gold on their territory. If it is possible to quote some facts in support of the legend started by Greeks and Romans, we can quote others which contradict it.

The loan exists among the Celts. Valerius Maximus speaks about the philosophia faeneratoria of the Celts, and Caesar shows us ordinary people crushed by debts: aere alieno premuntur. Often quoted texts declare that the Celts accept sometimes loans refundable in the other world. Pomponius Mela writes negotiorum ratio et exactio differebatur ad inferos, and Valerius Maximus: pecunias mutuas quae his apud inferos redderentur. It should be noticed lastly that the financial businesses are not prohibited to the great figures. Thus the famous Dumnorix is tax farmer of the Aeduans and no one then estimates that he loses caste.

THEFT AND PROBITY.

According to Caesar, capital punishment is inflicted to all those who are taken in furto aut in latrocinio, i.e., all in all to all the thieves. We can doubt it considering what we know of the Irish law. Perhaps they are there only those who steal local or national gods. The one who steals a sacred object indeed is tortured and killed.

The Celts punish therefore the theft. It would be interesting to know how they define it. But our only indication on this point is a sentence of Caesar who, in connection with the acts punished speaks about furtum and latrocinium. We can deduce from it that our forefathers distinguish the simple theft from the robbery.

N.B. The fact of taking in war time the good of an enemy is not regarded as a theft. At every moment , we see the Celts coming back with their arms loaded with spoils; they do not even spare the goods of the gods OF THE OTHER PEOPLES; because, when they march on Delphi, it is, of course, to plunder the sanctuary. They do not even spare the goods of the dead , at least in certain times; because Diodorus shows us Galatians who upset royal burials to take the treasures which are piled up in them.

Does the morality which authorizes theft in time of war also suffer that the passing through foreigner in times of peace is stripped.We already saw Diodorus quoting a legend which shows Heracles traversing the Celtica and abolishing in it the use to kill foreigners, and we suppose, of course, that, if these foreigners are killed, it is to steal them. But we also saw that this use is overshadowed by the Greeks themselves in a remote past: at the historical time, the famous Heraklean way which crosses Celtica is regarded as particularly secure for foreign travelers.

Various texts show us the Celts collecting tolls and customs duties, entry and exit taxes: this regular organization excludes the idea of a morality which would allow stripping foreigners. Other texts show to us markets open to goods coming from all over the Celtic world; others signal the passage of mercatores going from city to city , the existence of a regular traffic with the foreigners and particularly with the Romans: all that is possible only if the goods of the foreigner are protected by ethics and law.

People a little too often consider Celtic ethics through the suspect story of the companions of Brennus using false weight and of Brennus himself throwing his sword in the scale. If the Celts had about probity too rudimentary ideas, the trade relations between them and the neighboring peoples would be impossible, or at least Greek and Roman would echo bitter complaints; however, no ancient writer reproaches the Celtic tradesmen for being insincere in their operations, for trying to mislead their customers. Only Pliny attributes to the inhabitants of Narbonnese frauds in the manufacturing of wine: officinam eius rei fecere tingentes fumo, utinamque non et herbis ac medicaminibus noxiis! But the traders in question are for a long time Romanized. On the contrary, a story told by Parthenius of Nicaea, shows us a Galatian extremely scrupulous with regard to a Greek who is much less so. The

use, signaled higher, to make loans refundable in the other world, shows an already delicate ethic as regards probity, and the very fact that the insolvent debtors are reduced to become almost the slaves of their creditor, proves that the law intervenes to make the contracts respected. Lastly, when the Aeduans complain about Dumnorix who, misusing his credit,

contracts at a low price for the customs and all the rest of the taxes, they show that they can distinguish between what is legally correct and what is really honest.

Venality is probably blamed, at least in the first century. Caesar quotes a precise fact: according to him, the Aeduan Convictolitavis yields to the seductions of the Arvernian gold sollicitatus ab Aruernis pecunia, and betrays the Roman cause. He shares the price of his treason, praemium, with Litaviccus and his brothers. If the thing was well established, it would be important. In the same chapter where he shows Convictolitavis thus corrupted, he attributes to him a very noble very generous speech, in which it is a question only of victory, of national independence, of the Aeduan sovereignty. And to whom Convictolitavis gives this speech? To Litaviccus and his brothers, i.e., to these same ones of whom he has just bought, it is said, the tribe-State! It is difficult to admit that people who were sold, gave to themselves and without laughing a similar language! Who do they think to mislead? If nevertheless they blush about themselves at the point to resort, even when they are without witnesses, to such hypocrisy, it would be the evidence that they feel the infamy of their behavior and, consequently, that ethics condemn venality.

The greats and the Tribe-States are not so easily let bought with money, and they are other motivations which lead the events. Caesar once says well, with a fast and vague word, that Vercingetorix tries to attract to him the chiefs of the tribe-States by presents and promises; but he adds himself that, to lead the negotiations, he chooses those to whom a skillful eloquence or their friendly relations give the most seduction means. As in what regards money, there is not other eloquence than that of the figures, this sentence shows well that it is not a question of buying the leaders.

SEMANTIC REMINDERS.

Semantic reminders about two terms that frequently recur in what is following: PAGUS and TRIBU- ETAT.

ETYMOLOGY PAGUS.

The oldest tribes did not have a fixed territory, and you were by birth, by your mother in reality, an automatic member of this or that tribe, you did not choose it as those who recite as a mantra on this subject want an extract taken out of context from the extreme right-wing thinker that Renan was (to understand it well we must read his 1882 lecture in its entirety and not these three words, and not this reductio ad absurdum: an everyday plebiscite): he used this formula only to legitimize the membership of Alsace and Lorraine in France. And did not forget to mention the necessary condition of a common past, the common possession of a rich legacy of memories. A notion that Maurice Barres took up in his 1903 Amori and Dolori Sacrum: "As for us, to save ourselves from a sterile anarchy, we want to connect with our land and our dead. "If that's not some Renan, what is it?

The modern idea of adoptive or host tribe, voluntarily chosen, had not yet occurred in the mind of nobody. But this tribe had chief priests mores, consequently a justice, applying to its members wherever they were, even refugees in a territory occupied by another tribe. On the other hand, here it was more difficult to subject the members of the tribe to its laws.

But then little by little these tribes endowed themselves with a fixed territory, often delimited by clearly visible natural limits, such as marshes, forests, rivers, THE PAGUS. Pagus is a word of Latin origin, and even Latin quite simply, from the Indo-European * pag, a verbal root meaning something like "fasten" (see the term peg in English) "limit materialized by stakes sunk in the ground ” then by metonymy the ground having been thus delimited by stakes (later by boundary markers). In this case, the natural boundaries therefore ended up being gradually supplemented or clarified by stone boundaries.

The pagus (country) in the modern meaning of the term, it is therefore the human group set up in a political community and having given to itself a State or a territory… at its disposal. The pagus (country or nation) is a reception center on earth where are joined together under a common authority (king, emperor, vergobretus, president, etc.) a certain number of subjects or citizens. The homeland, it is the country of the father (let us say of the parents, of the ancestors, no reason to be a male chauvinist).

TRIBE-STATE.

In Ireland the tribe-state is only rural, towns being an unknown phenomenon there, but elsewhere in the Celtic world will appear as of the 6th century before our era and in relation with the Greek or Etruscan worlds some embryos of cities, like Heuneburg on the Upper Danube (present-day Germany), which housed several thousand people; Vix on the Mount Lassois and the palace of its famous Lady.

A Tribe-State is a true State but which corresponds to the territory of a relatively large tribe. The geographic space is controlled by this tribe which has all the powers of a state and is recognized as such by its neighbors or more distant countries (Rome for example). It has its own bodies of power (assembly, senate, king) mints currency, knows writing (Greek or Etruscan) and fights tooth and nail for its independence.

A second wave of urbanization will change the civilization of the hill forts from the 2nd century before our era (Mont Beuvray, Corent).

ANCIENT CELTIC ETHOLOGY AND SOCIAL ORGANIZATION.

The first cause of inequality in the Celtic society is obviously the strength: the victorious warriors reduce their defeated adversaries to the slave status and the subjection of women is probably due to their lesser strength. But these two features excepted (and we find them in the Greek and Roman societies), the strength does not play a large part. The ancient Celtic society has nothing of a law of the jungle where the fists would be the base of everything. It is enough to remind that the adult and vigorous son remains under the manus of a father, so old he is and that the druids, who are not warriors, are not less equal with the equites.

The second chronological cause of inequality in the ancient Celtic society (the first in the medieval Celtic law) is the knowledge. We saw indeed that to be accepted among the druids, it was essential to have certain knowledge and that this condition was imposed over the noble themselves.

The birth is another cause of inequality. Fortune too. But unlike our days, the latter comes only in fourth position.

The ancient Celtic economy was not completely based on slavery like in the Greek and Roman worlds. There were, of course, slaves but they were primarily some prisoners of war, very few besides being given their heroism and the manners of the time.

Freeing exists but we do not know what the legal status of the freed slave is nor if he preserves, as in Rome, some duties towards his patrons.

In the world of free men, social inequalities are considerable.

Caesar tells us that there are three principal classes: druids, equites (warriors), plebs (lower classes). We will see by studying medieval Irish law that all this requires to be refined.

The first two classes go hand in hand. Undoubtedly the druids have privileges which are peculiar to them: they take part in the wars only voluntarily; they are exempted from taxes, or at least they do not pay it without una cum reliquis; they have even what Caesar calls a kind of general immunity: omnium rerum immunitatem. Perhaps they escape the action of the secular courts. But we cannot say that they have a social superiority compared with equites or warriors. Within the same family, two brothers are, one druid (Diviciacus), the other knight (Dumnorix). Both play in the State a leading role. They move in the same circles. There is not even between them this difference which will separate in the Middle Ages the noble one and the cleric; because if the druid has a religious function and a teaching function that the knight does not have, he is not as the cleric, cut off by the celibacy from the common society.

Let us remind lastly that a passage of the Senchus Mor seems to indicate that these two social classes had quite precise duties towards the others since here what we can read there in connection with their successors in the Ireland of the Early Middle Ages.

There are, the foreword of the Senchus Mor says, four dignitaries of a tribe-State who may be degraded; a false judging king; a stumbling bishop, a fraudulent file (druid), an aire (noble) who doesn’t fulfill his duties (eisindraic); compensation is not due to those.”

An Irish canon, ascribed to St Patrick, is also obviously inspired by this principle: “He who falls with rank, must rise without rank ” (Qui cum gradu cecidit, sine gradu consurgat ).

Speaking about the priestly class, Caesar says the druids. However a lot is needed so that the druids druids alone form the Celtic clergy. There are also the gutuaters, there are the vates.

According to the text of the commentaries, all these druids have no one of the privileges of the druids druids. The gutuaters nevertheless have much of influence since since we see one of them leading a revolt against the Romans, but, attached to a temple, holders of properly local function, they do not have the prestige that the druids druids, high -druids, high-judges and owners of any science, have. There is therefore a whole social hierarchy which goes from the druid druid to the gutuater and from the gutuater to the “subordinate managers of the divine things” to take over the expression used by C. Jullian.

The medieval Irish law shows us nevertheless that there is to be a common principle which guarantees the high and low clerics, a minimum of dignity and of common privileges. They are all nemet.

AMBACTI AND ATECTOI.

Ambacti. And in the circle of the plebeians, who line up under the protection of a patron, in the mass of what specialists call the ambacti or clients, just like later the vassals under the banner of a lord or overlord, a lot is needed so that the most complete equality prevails. There are favored clients.

It goes without saying that these choice clients, so plebeian that they are, are of another social status that town and country workers, and it would be a serious mistake to see in them slaves or even almost slaves. Some of them push their devotion as far as refusing to survive the chief. But in exchange this chief lives with them and guarantees them an existence as luxurious as his own . With respect to the rest of the people, they look like great lords.

These favored clients are not, let notice it well, an exception. Polybius informs us that the Celtic chiefs made a great point, however, of their fellowship (Greek hetairia ): for the man who had the largest number of clients or companions in his wanderings, was looked upon as the most formidable and powerful member of the tribe.A long time after, Caesar still declares that, more one man is considerable through his birth and wealth, more he has around him clients and ambacti. It is well therefore a large percentage of the plebs which rises above the common level.

Atectoi, on the other hand, are humble workers reduced to an almost slave status.

Between these favored people or nemet that were the ambacti and the atectoi it is quite probable that there were middlemen, such the squires, the doryphoroi (spear bearers) and perhaps the poets attached to the person of a noble man.

It should be noticed nevertheless that the slave can leave slavery and that if the poor plebeian is reduced through his very poverty to an almost slavery, the plebeian one which grows rich can aspire to a more honorable status. C. Jullian points out that the plebity was not the indelible mark of a caste like in India and that Viridomarus, who was a cavalryman, chief of the cavalrymen, one of the supreme generals, and who aspired to the first rank in his homeland, was of humble origin, but became equal the noblest men in his country and in Celtica . Viridomarus is indeed the only Celtic great leader about whom Caesar informs us that he is ex humili loco.

A promotion on merit in a way.

ANCIENT CELTIC ETHOLOGY AND POLITICAL LIFE.

Nowhere, in the 1st century, we find trace of a punch regime removing in fact the political law and giving the nation up to the individuals. What made that specialists could be misled there it is that they wanted to see feudal clans where there are quite simply political parties, in the meaning that was understood by the Romans, in the meaning we understand it today. The political life is very active among our forefathers. All the tribe-States, all the cantons and districts, writes Caesar, but we can even say, all the families, are divided into rival projects: the factiones. That these large organizations have a considerable influence on the public life of the Tribe-States, no one can think of being astonished about that. It seems even that the opposition has in fact some power and that people hesitate, at least among the Aeduans, to run up directly against it . But if the parties have as leaders some greats, some principles,they are not less some parties, and their program is not simply to raise up to the supreme power Dumnorix or Diviciacus. Even during the murky time about which Caesar speaks, it is not in the name of their only individual ambition that the leaders of the “factions” become agitated; they offer to those who follow them an action plan, an ideal. Let us accept that Orgetorix really aspires to tyranny: what is sure, it is that he offers to the Helvetian nation a bold and tempting program, and the evidence that his policy is presented by him as in conformity with the general interest, it is that after his death it is taken over, his party therefore has another intention that to bring him to power. In the same way during the intense political struggles which divide the Aeduans, we have by no means the feeling, whatever Caesar tries to insinuate, that it is only a conflict of excited personal ambitions. These are well two parties which confront each other and two programs. It is a conflict of doctrines and not a simple conflict of personal ambitions which causes the fight between the two factiones.

It results from the reading of the commentaries by Caesar that among the Aeduans the love for freedom leads the aristocrats to work out what we would call today a Constitution. It is a question of carrying out the government of the Tribe-State without having to fear personal power. A vergobretus is elected (a president endowed with strong powers). He has theoretically all rights that the king had; regiam potestatem. But if he reigns alone, he rules only with the participation of the aristocracy.

The aristocratic councils are two, the Senate and the assembly of the “people.” The senators (six hundred among the Nervians) are undoubtedly the noblest and richest inhabitants of the Tribe-State but no text says clearly how they are recruited. Even among the Aeduans we do not know if the senatorial dignity is hereditary. The rights of the Senates are wide: among the Lexovians, when the senators refuse to declare war on Romans, the people have no other resource but to massacre them, evidence that, the power of decision, in the case belongs to the Senate.

But in time of war, everything changes. All the powers fall in front of that the armed warriors brought together have, the concilium armatum.

The first act, when a Tribe-State decided to fight, is indeed the convocation of a concilium armatum; so that all the warriors go there without delay. The ancient Celtic ethology has it that they put to death the one who arrives the last, and it is before this assembly that the leaders expound their plans. Caesar says expressly that it is there a lex communis which is found in all the Tribe-States. We see Indutiomarus indeed submitting to an assembly of the kind his plan of attack against the Remi and Labienus. Similarly Vercingetorix submits to the concilium his project of destruction of the towns, villages and farms; he gives an explanation to the multitudo, when some people start to accuse him of treason; he still justifies him after the capture of Avaricum: and they are not any more the principes nor the senators, it is well the crowd of the warriors which, in these cases, approves or condemns. “Such is the nature of my government the Belgian Ambiorix says during a campaign that the people had as much authority over me as I over the people.”

According to Strabo, the “multitude” would have even the power to choose its general, and perhaps that would explain why, during the campaign against the Helvetians, Dumnorix is in charge of the Aeduan cavalry, although he is the determined adversary of the sitting vergobretus.

According to Caesar this vergobretus has the right to life and death. But it could not be of a discretionary power, at least with regard to aristocrats: none of them can be executed indicta causa. Moreover, the powers of the vergobretus are limited in the legal field by the existence of domestic and

military justices and by the possibility of the druidic arbitration. And besides nothing says us that in the court of the Tribe-State, the opinion of the vergobretus is sovereign.

Caesar does not speak to us about the legislative power. But the general spirit of the Constitution suggests that it is also divided: the iura et leges which cut down the power of the supreme magistrate were, of course, voted by assemblies.

The vergobretus Liscus declares that there is among the Aeduans private individuals more powerful than the magistrates: quorum auctoritas apud plebem plurimum ualeat, qui priuatim plus possint quam ipsi magistratus; Lucterius has during some time a great influence on his fellow citizens and, because of his revolutionary aspirations, semper auctor rerum nouarum, he has much authority.

His undertaking genius, his revolutionary tastes, guarantee to him a large influence among the Cadurci. But nothing shows us in him an agitator facing the established powers, and outgoing of the legal actions.

This omnipotence of the greats has an unexpected consequence. It guarantees to the plebeian a certain independence and perhaps even, in a critical time, a certain influence. Speaking about the organization of the factiones, Caesar says: “There is a very old institution which seems to have for purpose to guarantee to every man of the plebs, ex plebe, a protection against more powerful than him: because the leader of the faction defends his men against the undertakings of violence or trick, and, if it sometimes happens to him to act differently, he loses all credit.”

Not only this regime guarantees to the plebeian themselves a certain political freedom; but it can happen that a leader of party rests, in serious circumstances, on the plebeian mass which approves him and which thus intervene indirectly in the public life. It is in this sense, in my opinion, that the story of Correus should be interpreted. Correus and the other principes in favor of the fight against Rome relied on the mass of their plebeian partisans to force the hand of the Senate. What it is necessary to notice it is that the plebs then does not put its power at the service of personal ambitions (which exist on both sides) but at the service of ideas, of programs proposed by a party.

In all that we have seen previously, it was a question only of men. We could wonder everywhere if the women, in spite of their social subordination, do not play sometimes a significant role in politics. A famous text by Plutarch invites to believe it: “Before the Celts crossed over the Alps and settled in that part of Italy which is now their home, a dire and persistent factional discord broke out among them which went on and on to the point of civil war. The women, however, put themselves between the armed forces, and, taking up the controversies, arbitrated and decided them with such irreproachable fairness that a wondrous friendship of all towards all was brought about between both tribes-states and families. As the result of this, they continued to consult with the women in regard to war and peace, and to decide through them any disputed matters in their relations with their allies. In their treaty with Hannibal they wrote the provision that, if the Celts complained against the Carthaginians, the governors and generals of the Carthaginians in Spain should be the judges; and if the Carthaginians complained against the Celts, the judges should be the Celtic women.”

The same history is found in Polyaenus, who declares in even more general terms than “Ever since then, throughout the towns and villages of the Celts, whenever there is a debate about peace, or war, concerning either themselves or their allies, it should be referred to the judgment of the Celtic women.”

But the only fact that we can quote in support of this ethological habit is that which the same Polyaenus reports: Brennos, before undertaking the campaign in Greece would have joined together a large assembly made up of men and women.

Even while accepting that the legend seized an unexpected feature to make a production out of it, the fact would be that at a given time and among certain peoples, women could be taken as referees in some cases of a political nature.

The various peoples met by Caesar use between them the nouns parents or brothers: affines, fratres, propinqui; the inhabitants of Rheims call the Suessiones fratres consanguineosque suos; they say themselves related to the Belgians adfinitatibusque propinquitatibus; The Ambarri are necessarii et consanguinei Aeduorum.

The people of Celtica thus regard themselves all as close relations and brothers. There is connubium between the nobility of all the tribe-States.The Bretons send helps to the Armoricans, the same king rules during some time over the Bretons and some Continental Celts (Commius?)

Two literary facts prove that there is as of old times, a certain feeling of the Celtic unity: the legend of the foundation of Alesia and the legend of Ambicatus.

Diodorus says that Heracles, having gathered troops, moves to Celtica and traverses it wholly, abolishing the contrary to the laws habits. As a stream of volunteers comes to increase his army, he builds a large town, Alesia: “. The Celts up to the present time hold this city in honor, looking upon it as the center and mother-city of all Celtica.”

In addition Livy writes that in the times of Tarquin the elder, the Celtica is subjected to the domination of the Bituriges who give it a king. Ambicatus reigns, powerful through his virtue, his prosperity and that of his people. In his reign, the population increases so much that he wants to relieve his kingdom of such a crushing multitude; therefore he makes his nephews responsible for going and seeking at least new residences: one of them moves towards the Hercynian forests, the other towards Italy.

According to C. Jullian Celtic patriotism appears primarily through a community of memories and aspirations, a religious community, a political community.

Community of memories and aspirations: the Celts preserve until the time of Caesar the memory of the heroic deeds achieved by their forefathers.

Vercingetorix after the capture of Avaricum, exclaims: “I will create a general unanimity throughout the whole of Gaul, the union of which not even the whole earth could withstand.”

In besieged Alesia, Critognatus exclaims, let us imitate our forefathers! And he points out a heroic memory of the fight against the Teutons: this feeling of the glory of the forefathers is another thing than patriotism but it can lead to it.

There is therefore here a form of Celtic patriotism more centered on the ethnos group than on the territory.

Religious community.The principal category of the divinities, that of the teutates, “god of the nation” refers by its name itself to the principle of national agreement and the druids hold a general meeting in the Carnutian country: quae regio totius Galliae media habetur: they imagine therefore their country as something well delimited having at the same time its moral and material unity, since it has a physical umbilicus and a religious leader, the prince of the druids. More still than the civilian leaders, these druids are the champions of the Celtic patriotism. Organized under a common chief, joined together in the center of the country, the druids are the traditional representatives and the guards of the Celtic unity. Professors of morality excite the nobles to fight and die, but this death, they do not wish undoubtedly it occurs on the battlefields of the civilian fights but far away in the glorious war against foreigners. The first duty towards the Tribe-State is indeed the military service.

Although the Celtic troops do not always seem like very disciplined troops, we know that obedience to the leaders is regarded as a duty and that military faults can be severely punished. The leaders themselves do not escape every responsibility since they have to justify themselves in front of their troops.

The second duty towards the State consists in tax paying. The taxes at the time of Caesar are, of course, rather heavy, since it is to withdraw oneself from a so exhausting weight that the plebeians resign themselves to become the slaves of noblemen. The famous story of Dumnorix shows that in certain tribe-state the tax collection is entrusted to individuals : the fast enrichment of the beneficiary of such contracts shows that he does not spare the taxpayers.

As the Tribe-State would lose the bulk of its resources quickly if no one paid the taxes of the common people reduced to the slave status, it is probable that the land taxes that they cannot pay are paid by their patron: it is therefore on the greats that for the largest portion the burden of the public expenditure falls down. But the poor are in no case completely exempted from it, because there are indirect taxes (Latin portoria).

Lastly, the third duty towards the Tribe-state is to deal with the public thing, or as we would say today, to be involved in politics. An ethology imposing this duty is particularly necessary to aristocracies. It seems that in the 1st century it reigns in all its force; we could see already that the political life of the Tribe-States is very intense.

A patriot in the first century prouds himself on having a right and well ruled Tribe-State. Strabo says that the Celts always join the indignation of whoever seems to them the victim of an injustice. The druids, according to him, owe their ascendency to the fact they are considered the most just of men. This sense of equity reacts inevitably on all political morality; we saw already that certain leaders are selected propter iustitiam. The Volcae tectosages have a high reputation of justice: this very reputation proves that the public opinion compares on this point the Tribe-States and grants the prize to those which practice best equity. We read in the Commentaries that certain people seek the patronage of the Aeduans because they realize that their domination can remain righter, aequiore imperio se uti.

We do not know precisely through what this equity appears; perhaps are mixed in it humanity and gentleness , because the peoples are pleased not only with aequiore imperio, but meliore conditione

and the Celts speak with horror of the cruelty of Ariovistus: the Germanic people are in their eyes some barbarians. The clever wisdom of the political constitutions is a matter of glory; a passage of the commentaries speaks about the Tribe-States quae commodius suam rem publicam administrare existimantur: the word existimantur indicates that the opinion compares the various types of political organization.

E PLURIBUS UNUM. THE LOVE FOR FEDERALISM.

What is remarkable, what reveals at the very least an astonishing political ethology, it is that among the tribes states which thus give up a portion or a piece of their freedom, there are some of them which are vigorous and who could do very well without any patronage: the Bellovaci could live without the help of the Aeduans, the Carnuti without the help of the Remi. It is therefore voluntarily that they agree to be clients. Sacrificing a little from their sovereignty, they feel not decreased, they do not fear to be scorned. We see tribes states seeking patronage spontaneously.

The clientship bond is a constraining legal bond implying precise commitments. The tribe-states remain in control of their constitutions, of their civil and penal laws, of their budget; they don’t be shy to change of patron.

There is nevertheless in these commitments very different modes and levels. As C.Jullian makes it noticed, a lot is needed so that the lower classes of the Segusiavi are treated by his patrons like the powerful Bellovaci. Moreover in no case this clientelism is similar even by far to what the Roman imperium will be.

The fact is nevertheless that the Patron State has some rights, extended or restricted, on the client state: this one therefore gives up in this case a portion of its independence.

Let us notice lastly that they are “patriots” in the meaning of then who form the main part of the Pro- Roman Party of then and who give their tribe-States to Caesar. They consider that their tribe-states will increase their force, their greatness, once incorporated within the empire. Their attitude does not involve a total absence of patriotism but a different design of the patriotism compared to ours. It is not the frightening example of a people betraying itself and spreading out in the eyes of the world, with we don’t know what cynical joy, the shame of this treason. It is the consequence of a design of patriotism which orders to seek the safety and the greatness of the tribe state, but which perceive as well this greatness under the Roman patronage as under the Arvernian patronage. United with the great empire, the Aeduans think that their Tribe-State will be stronger, that it will have more clients: they prefer the Romans who are far, to the Sequani, who are next. Others in Celtica reason in the same way. It is because the Celtic ethology does not go beyond this patriotism of tribe state that the impetus towards Rome is strongest.

A Celt wants, of course, that the State Tribe of which he is a member is powerful, considerable, that it is not ignobilis atque humilis, but well magna auctoritate, that it is was distinguished by its potentia, by its dignitas. He likes even that it imposes its power on the neighboring tribes States and develops a kind of hegemony. Such is the hegemony of the Arverni in the time of Celtillus, such is that to which claim, a little before the coming of Caesar, the Sequani and the Aeduans, such is that Orgetorix and his allies try to organize secretly.

But it seems to us nevertheless, Albert Bayet remarks, that before even thinking of dominating the others, patriotism should want the freedom, the independence of the tribe-State. But here the ethology of the continental Celt of then remains particularly incomprehensible.

He, so attentive to safeguard his individual freedom, should be, we think , particularly sensitive when it is a question of common freedom; as for the tribe-States, keen on power, they should require as a minimum the right to make their own decision. But on this decisive point, the common conscientiousness seems vacillating almost everywhere.

Undoubtedly the tribe-States are not always unaware of the price of freedom: and even according to Caesar, they would have only this word in their mouth. In the same way, the inhabitants of the Swiss Valais take up arms because they believe that their country will be annexed to the Roman Province. The Belgian Ambiorix declares that true Celts cannot refuse to march when it is a question of recovering the common freedom.

Among the Aeduans the two rival parties declare themselves over and over again , the champions of freedom: Dumnorix and his friends complain that the Romans want to take freedom from the Aeduans and Dumnorix himself dies armed, not without some panache, while exclaiming that he is free and of

a free country. The Veneti beg their neighbors to save the freedom that they received from their forefathers. After the death of Acco, the Celts seek leaders who galliam in libertatem uindicent and say that better is worth dying on the battlefields than not reconquering the old freedom received from ancestors; lastly, in Alesia besieged, Critognatus denounces the Roman desire to impose an eternal servitude, he shows the Roman province eloquently subjected to the axe of lictors and request from the besieged men to try everything, libertatis causa.

Perhaps a salient feature of the ancient Celtic ethology explains the fact that Caesar was never lacking allies in his war in Celtic territory.

The fights between tribes state are rather usual things so that even the settling of the Romans in the province does not make them cease: it is in the very time when the legions threaten them that the Aeduans enters the war against the Sequani and Arverni. In the first book of the Commentaries, we see the Helvetians attacking the Aeduans; the day before the great coalition, Vercingetorix attacks the Bituriges;

When they see that they will not be leaders of the great coalition, the Aeduans Eporedorix and Viridomarus subordinate themselves only unwillingly to the authority of Vercingetorix. And in the army itself a lot is needed so that all the troops are sure because in Gergovia the defectors flock to the camp of Caesar and all give him the information he wishes. Finally paradox of the paradoxes, the great relief army will leave Alesia after having just started to fight. And shortly after Alesia the Bituriges are attacked by the Carnuti.

A few centuries later, a Aeduan speaker(Eumenius of Autun 311 ????) will even boast in an official oration in the honor of the emperor Constantine, about the fact that it is the leader of the Aeduans who at the time of the war for independence made Caesar and the Roman army crossing the Rhone River

; that they are the Aeduans who gave to the Roman empire the country ranging between the Rhine and the Pyrenees: Romano imperio tradiderunt. This sentence tells the truth. As of his first steps in Celtica, Caesar relies on these allies of the Roman people. Perhaps the Aeduans are not unanimous in this support but the majority is well for Rome.

Moreover as Fustel de Coulange points it out: the number of the legions employed by Caesar varies from four to eleven. But Caesar says himself that he raises two legions in north Italy, two others in the same place, a fifth trans Padum; lastly, two legions that Pompeius lends to him come, also from the Cisalpine. That made on a total of eleven, seven legions of Celtic blood: the army known as Roman is more than half Celtic. But there is better still: beside Cisalpine ones, beside the Celts from the Province, we find in the army of Caesar some Celts from the Gallia Comata. At the time of the campaign against the Helvetians, the Aeduan cavalry is under the command of the proconsul. When he marches against the Belgians, he has with him some Aeduans and some Remi. In the expedition against the Nervians, he has Belgians, Treviri and others. He launches Celts against the Suevi. He takes along cavalry from all the continental Celtica against the Breton islanders; he has Celtic cavalrymen with him when he goes to the help of Q.Cicero. Labienus too has some of them during his operations against the Treviri. And we also find Celtic troops in the campaigns against the Menapii, Eburones, Bituriges, the army of Correus and Commius, the Andes of Dumnacus.

The Aeduan nation agrees to guard the hostages that Caesar got from the overcome tribes. Some Celts in the fields denounce to Romans the hideaway of Ambiorix. Not being able to seize the chief of the Eburones, Caesar organizes an extermination campaign; but, as his legionaries undergo casualties by being ambushed he calls the neighboring tribe-states (Menapii, Treviri, Nervians, Atuatuci, Remi) and offers them to plunder the territory of the Eburones: a huge crowd meets at once. Plundering, however, is accompanied by massacre; because Caesar intends to annihilate “the race and name of Eburones”: but the summoned peoples do not answer less the call of the proconsul, inviting some Celts to exterminate other Celts. Espanactus, amicissimus populi romani, seizes Lucterius and brings him chained to Caesar.

The pro-Roman factio represents in the Province the almost unanimity of the tribe-States, in the norther Celtica the large majority of the tribe-state: and it is for this reason that they are some people of Tolosa, of Carcassonne, of Narbonne, some Allobroges, Aeduans, Treviri, Remi, Carnutes, Senones, Arverni who, breaking with weapons the resistance of the opposing party, give the entire country to Caesar and Rome. And let us not believe that they are a few hundreds adventurers: according to Appian, Caesar has, in the year 49, ten thousand Celtic cavalrymen; at the moment when Vercingetorix locked up in Alesia having launched a supreme draft in the Celtic tribe-states, those had provided him only eight thousand cavalrymen. The Celtica finds more cavalrymen to go to help Caesar than she had found some of them to fight him. In short, Celtica is conquered by herself!

According to our ideas of today all these men were some traitors, but they were not considered thus in their time.

During the reign of Augustus, a troop of twelve hundred men will be enough to guard all these tribes states: it is that above these troops there is something which keeps the union: this something it is the feeling of thousands and thousands of men who estimate that by being incorporated into the empire, they served their tribe-state well.

The same party of foreigners is found in today's European countries. Thousands and thousands of influencers, journalists and politicians, are convinced that by casting their country in the mold of the European Union and by adopting the Globish as their official language, they will have deserved well from their tribe.

ANCIENT CELTIC ETHOLOGY AND RELATIONS WITH FOREIGNERS.

THE WAR.

“The whole race or nation [ Greek phylon] which is now called both "Gallic" and "Galatic" is war-mad, and both high-spirited and quick for battle, although otherwise simple and not ill-mannered: if roused, they come together all at once for the struggle….As for their might, it arises partly from their large physique and partly from their numbers. And on account of their trait of simplicity and straightforwardness, they easily come together in large numbers, because they always share in the vexation of those of their neighbors whom they think wronged…Now although they are all fighters by nature, they are better as cavalry than as infantry; the best cavalry-force the Romans have comes from these people.”

Thus speaks Strabo according to Posidonius.

If this image were faithful, it would be easy to reconstitute the ethology relating to war: it would be morality without nuances, presenting the fight as an ideal, prescribing to men to seek it, to go into it as into a legitimate, necessary, sacred, festival.

Some reports nevertheless.

The organization of the society does not reflect a morality which puts the military activity above all. The preeminence granted to the class of equites proves nothing. What makes the nobleman, it is not the sword, the fact of gambling his life on the battlefields: it is, in addition to the birth, the wealth which makes it possible to have ambacti.

Our ancestors fight neither to impose on others their religious beliefs neither to subject the world to their empire and to organize it in their own way, nor to win an economic control.

In addition their history does not offer an example of a war of the poor against the rich person or of the slaves against the free men. Nevertheless the cases in which the war is licit are numerous and the war of conquest appears legitimate.

But they do not fight as the legend would have it for the only joy of warring. They are very ready for a peaceful division with the populations of whom they invade the territory.

In 186 some transalpine Celts cross the Alps and, without committing act of violence, settle in the territory where the town of Aquileia will be constructed later.

In other circumstances, once victorious, they settle commonly in the conquered land: Insubres, Cenomani, Boii, Senones, form stable and homogeneous political units, the bands settled in Thrace form here a united k, the kingdom of Tylis; those who stop on the Danube are also unified to form the people of the Scordisci; lastly, the Galatians in Asia form three nations.

When the Aeduans find again thanks to Caesar their power of former times , it is by negotiations that they get from the Sequani the restitution of the given hostages as well as the return of their clients. The case of the Helvetians is even more exemplary. We can say that they did everything to avoid the war as Caesar on his side, did everything to make it inevitable. And it is there the most “quarrelsome” people that the Roman proconsul finds on his way when he arrives in the region.

That morality of the Celts always accepted theoretically the legitimacy of the war, it would be therefore vain to show it lengthily.

Two other facts now.

Whatever the reality of the role of the druids, a point in any case is certain: at the time of Caesar, Celtic morality accepts the legitimacy of the war, but it does not consider it at all as a festival to which you must run. The action of the druids is a peaceful action, and we may believe that, masters of the education of the noble young people, they recommend to them at the same time and to scorn death, when the battle is given, and to use weapons only in last resort.

Lastly, it is not the individual courage which is missing to the Celt. In the Roman imperial army, the Celtic soldier will be considered on the contrary as an ideal soldier, resistant, merry, undertaking.

Legend ascribes to the Celts an absolute, even ingenuous, loyalty, on the battlefields. According to Srabo, the Celtic warrior is simple and trickless. As soon as he is annoyed , he marches straightly on the enemy and attacks him frontally without dealing with another thing.

C. Jullian writes still that at the time of Caesar the warrior is only an overgrown child, the war seems to him a collective, immediate and pressing obligation, and not as a series of subterfuges.

But the legend once more adapts badly to the facts. The Celts the history shows us, if they do not equalize the Romans in the art of war, are well careful not to scorn or neglect strategy and tactics. On both sides morality does not require that the adversary is officially warned: it is legitimate to set about him to unexpectedly.

As of the time of the capture of Rome, Livy notices that Brennus acts as skillful general. Pausanias notices similarly that the other Brennus, for a Barbarian, can’t help but find clever tricks. Against Caesar the Helvetians are skillfully on maneuvers: they withdraw on a hill to attract the legionaries and make them taken from the rear by their reserve. The Nervians make the march of Caesar observed and skillfully surprise him in disarray. The Morini and Menapii avoid any pitched battle carefully and harass the enemy, while remaining themselves evasive in their wood and marshes. Ambiorix, attacking the army of Sabinus and Cotta, orders his men to avoid the frightening contact of the legion, to throw their weapons by far, to withdraw everywhere the Romans will make an attack. The Nervians and Eburones, who attack the camp of Q. Cicero, establish surrounding lines, make grappling irons, and mantelets. Vercingetorix extremely skillfully tries to throw Caesar into a panic by organizing a general uprising and by giving him concerns on the safety of the Province. In Alesia even he conceives an imposing plan when he seeks to bring, by the levy en masse, a formidable relief army and to thus catch the legions in a vice.

INTERNATIONAL LAW.

Theoretically and according to the behavior of Finn at the time of the battle of Gabhra, the beginning of the hostilities of an offensive war must be preceded by a declaration of war in due form. Made by heralds at the time, made by ambassadors later.

The person of the ambassadors is regarded as inviolable, and that as of the ancient time: the fit of fury of Britomaris who, to avenge his died father, makes two Roman ambassadors put to death, is signaled as an exceptional fact. During the long campaign of Caesar in Celtica, a campaign especially made of negotiations, it occurs only once that two ambassadors are mistreated: The Veneti , Esuvii and Coriosolites, arrest and retain captive envoys from Caesar, in order to get the restitution of the hostages whom they had to give up. But Caesar himself declares that they are aware of committing a crime (and he avenges himself atrociously by making all the Venetian senators perish). Celtic ethology therefore prescribes the respect of ambassadors well. Conversely, it does not accept that the aforementioned ambassadors leave their role. It is because some envoys from Rome change themselves unduly into Clusinian fighters that the made indignant Celts of Brennus will precipitate onto the Capitol.

The respect of the treaties is well prescribed by the ancient Celtic ethology. The evidence of it is that the parties often bind themselves by an oath and an exchange of hostages. It is obvious that the treaties of this kind must theoretically be respected. I do not insist on the disloyalty attributed to Brennus throwing his sword in the scale. We feel too much that the anecdote was imagined after the event to justify the abrupt offensive come back of the Romans who, even in the account by Livy , looks as treason.

This famous Uae Uictebo ( Vae victis) gives to the Celts a reputation of insolent winners, but Livy represents them nowhere as cutters of the throat regarding women and children. With regard to Italy, the historians signal no excess similar to those about which Pausanias speaks for Greece. There are positive facts whose convincing value is still larger: the Celts surely not exterminate the Ligurian populations nor the populations in the north of Italy. They are only reduced to the status of Atectai i.e., of people placed under their protectorate.

And in the fights between Celtic tribe-states, we see the winners imposing to the defeated giving up hostages, land transfers, tributes: but we never see a people trying to destroy another one.

It is therefore probable that Celtic morality about the question of the right of the winners is a rather moderate rather flexible, morality. But the documents come to us don’t make us able to reach these nuances.

Let us notice lastly to finish on this point that the Celts are as little xenophobic as possible. They have in no degree the contempt or the hatred for the foreigner. The welcoming cordiality for the foreigner is rather sharp so that, as of before the annexation, The Aeduans and Arverni declare themselves readily, “of the same blood as the Romans.”

Even when there is not hospitium, the ancient Celtic ethology orders the respect of the foreigner. We already saw the text of Nicholas of Damascus declaring that the murder of a foreigner is, in the

Celtic tribe-states, punished more severely than the murder of a citizen. The Greek legend which has it that Heracles abolished in Celtica the use to kill foreigners proves that at the historical time the Greeks circulate in the area without any fear. What is sure also it is that in normal time the Roman or other traders move in the country without being worried.

The only trouble to which they expose themselves is to be too well accommodated, too surrounded, too keenly questioned.

This absence of every for the foreigner is still attested to us by the facility itself with which the Celts adapt to the social or ethnic backgrounds in which the hazard of conquest throw them : see the case of the Atectai. In Asia they rather quickly accept the Greek language and with it Hellenism. We see a Celtic-Greek civilization rise. The Cisalpine and the Province is with an extraordinary speed opening up to the Roman influences.

The conclusion imposes itself: Caesar misleads his readers by representing the Celts as a keen on battle people.

But it is enough to read his account to realize that he deals with peoples who are not fond of war. I do not speak about those who give of themselves for him without fighting: these do it, we saw it, because they believe to thus serve the interest of their tribe-States. But where the party hostile to the Romans prevails , we remain confounded to see at what point it is reluctant to an armed resistance. The Bellovaci announce bombastically that they will direct the whole of the operations against Rome; but, hardly the Romans march on Bratuspantium, and all the elders leave the town holding out their hands towards Caesar. The Ambiani committed to provide ten thousand men; as soon as the legions approach, they make surrender completely. Indutiomarus raises an army against the Romans: but, seeing his son-in-law, Cingetorix, united with the Romans, he hastens to surrender.

Therefore let us not trust too much the interested and contradictory declarations of Caesar. It is not by a general depreciation of the characters that the Celtic ethology is done less quarrelsome. It is, in all likelihood, because the world of the leaders learned how to know the price of peace and the efficacy of the diplomatic negotiations. If, during the stay of Caesar in the country , it is spoken more than it is fought , it is that the chiefs know that a well carried out conversation can have as much result than a well-fought battle.

As mentioned above, it is not the individual courage which was missing to the Celt. In the Roman imperial army, the Celtic soldier will be considered on the contrary as an ideal, resistant, merry, undertaking, soldier.

HOSPITALITY.

According to Diodorus the Celts are hospitable and invite readily the foreigners around their table. Regarding the hospitality rites , we have a precise text: in the Alps, some mountain dwellers come ahead of Annibal by wearing wreaths, what is, Polybius declares , a sign of friendship among almost all Barbarians.

Morality teaches the respect of the hospitality bond . This link, at the time of Caesar, binds sometimes two peoples, sometimes two individuals, sometimes an individual and a people. Thus there is hospitium between the Aeduans and the Romans; the hospitium links Ambiorix with the nation of the Menapii and Caesar estimates that this union is strong enough to cause a military alliance; same bond still between Commius and the Bellovaci; at the time of the great coalition, the Bellovaci, although decided to abstain from, grant to Commius a help of two thousand men pro eius hospitio.

The bonds between individuals do not seem less solid. Only once we see Ambiorix misusing the hospitium which bounds him with Titurius in order to set a trap to him and to cause his defeat. On the other hand, the beaten Bituriges take refuge in the neighboring Tribe-States priuatis hospitiis confisi.

Procillus, host of Caesar, serves him with such a devotion that the proconsul gives up once, to speak about him, the cold tone which he takes in his Commentariues.

Sometimes the hospitium prevails over the fraternity which units theoretically the men of the same homeland when Dumnorix tries to assemble the Helvetians against Rome, Caesar is informed about that by his hosts.

ANCIENT CELTIC ETHICS AND TRUTH.

It is one of the originalities of the Celtic ethology, in the druidic time, to have put very high respect of the things of the spirit.

At the time of Caesar, the status of the druids is, in the public regard, equal to that of the knights. They are magno honore, and the consideration which envelops them results in important privileges: exemption from the military service, from the tax and from every other burden.

Theologists, physicists, philosophers, jurists, the ancient druids are therefore scholars, and it is for this reason that they are honored. There is there a fact that it is necessary to retain: we are not in the presence of old-style druids who believe to know everything because there is no science out of that of the divine things; we are in the presence of a clergy which adds to its religious function a function of study and teaching.

That singular privileges are attached to the possession of the science, it is the indisputable evidence that Celtic ethology in the last two centuries of independence, teaches the respect of the things of the spirit. It is by one of the salient features of their organization, by the formation of a privileged class, that the Celts of the druidic time prove their respect for intelligence and their love for knowledge.

In Rome, in the same time, a man can, without any prior study, fulfill the highest priestly functions: he would laugh if one asked him to learn astronomy or physics; on the contrary, the corps of the scientists enjoys no consideration, and the most learned professor can be very well a slave.

There is a teaching reserved to the future druids and to them only. But, below this high culture, there is of one which is dispensed to the noble young people. Pomponius Mela says clearly that the druids teach young people who belong to the aristocracy: docent multa nobilissimos gentis.

The people even has its intellectual curiosities. It is on the lookout for news, it wants to know. “It is indeed a regular habit of the Gauls Caesar writes, to compel travelers to halt, even against their will, and to ascertain what each of them may have heard or learned upon every subject; and in the towns the common folk surrounds traders, compelling them to declare from what districts they come and what they have learned there.” Elsewhere; we see soldiers, by their chattering, spreading panic in an army. But indiscretion and chattering despite everything are moderated by the sense of courtesy: when they receive foreigners around their table, the Celts wait to question them, until the meal is finished.

In the same way and still according to the Commentaries, the Celts in general curiously observe all what they see being done and imitate it skillfully.

There are several manners of respecting truth we have said.

The first consists in fleeing lies and hypocrisy, to remain faithful to the given word.

The second consists in studying to know the truth of the things, to encourage the study by honoring those who are devoted to it.

The Celtic ethology shows that they stepped onto one and the other way.

But the question is not there. The question is to know if morality admits or condemns lies and disloyalty. Is any assumption prohibited to us on this point? I do not believe it. Undoubtedly we don’t know if the criminal law punishes lies and cheating. But we know that the Celts readily bind themselves by oaths.

We grasp one exception to this moral obligation clearly to tell the truth.

First it is allowed to mislead in time of war. It is not said out loud. On the contrary, the Helvetian delegates proudly declare to Caesar that they prefer the honest fight to the undertaking based on tricks and cheating. But real morality is more accommodating and resembles a little the taqqiya in Islam on the matter ( Sahih Al-Bukhari Vol 4 Book 52, Hadith 269:

The Prophet said: “War is deceit”).

And among Celts also therefore the lie, blamed in theory, becomes licit when it is a question of mislaying an enemy, including in the broad sense of the word.

DUTIES OF THE RICH PERSON.

He is certain, according to manners, that the rich person has duties.

Not vague duties of charity, as it will be said later, some duties whose limit is dubious and that the interested party defines itself. Perhaps is it extremely possible, although no text says something about that, that ethics recommend kindness, or an acting pity. What is out of doubt, it is that the great has, because of the manners, a precise obligation to provide for the subsistence of a large number of people.

In order to be a true chief, in the full and honorable senses of the word, a Celt must therefore support a whole world of clients; it is therefore necessary not that he is personally rich but that he has goods to distribute.

The texts indeed show us the leader surrounded by a crowd of clients, ambacti, deuoti. As many of these clients come to him constrained by misery, we must well conclude from it that he provides to them livelihoods. Perhaps does he make them work and does he benefit from their labor, but still he provides to them the means of setting to work. And then many of his clients are not blue-collar workers nor servants in the modern meaning of the word; they are soldiers, guards; some of them, the ambacti, the entourage, are companions that the master treats as equals and who live at his expenses so largely as himself. The Celtic noble has the right, almost the duty? to be rich, but he also has the duty to make his wealth used for the support of a whole world.

History only shows us the possibility that these sumptuous great lords who make a vast clientship living : such the chief about whom Diodorus speaks who gives up to his a part of his spoils, such Lucterius who has a whole town in his clanship, such this famous Dumnorix who has immense resources ad largiendum and supports a cavalry corps. The legend preserves over the centuries the memory of these splendid monarchs who know that abundance obliges and spread wealth on their entourage.

Luern, king of the Arverni, pass through fields in his chariot, throwing gold and silver to the “myriads” of Celts who follow it. Sometimes, he makes enclosed a vast space; vats filled with valuable drinks and such a quantity of food are placed there that, during several days each one can enter the enclosure and take to one’s liking the dishes which are served non-stop. One day, a poet comes too late to take part in the feast. He goes in front of Luern while groaning on this fatal delay and while celebrating the greatness of the monarch. Luern, amused by his song, throws to him a full of gold purse. The poet collects it and strikes up a new song: the traces left by the royal chariot are some furrows from which gold and benefits leave.

And on this subject here a strange passage of Athenaeus which looks strongly to us myth disguised in history.

In his third book the same Phylarchus says that "Ariamnes the Galatian, being an exceedingly rich man, gave notice that he would give all the Galatians a banquet every year, and that he did so, managing in this manner: He divided the country, measuring it by convenient stages along the roads; and at these stages he erected tents of stakes and rushes and osiers, each containing about four hundred men, or somewhat more, according as the district required, and with reference to the number that might be expected to throng in from the villages and towns adjacent to the stage in question. And there he placed huge cauldrons, full of every sort of meat; and he had the cauldrons made in the preceding year before he was to give the feast, sending for artisans from other cities. And he caused many victims to be slain - many oxen, and pigs, and sheep and other animals - every day; and he caused casks of wine to be prepared, and a great quantity of ground corn. And not only," he continues, "did all the Galatians who came from the villages and cities enjoy themselves, but even all the strangers who happened to be passing by were not allowed to escape by the slaves who stood around, but were pressed to come in and partake of what had been prepared." (Athenaeus, the Deipnosophists IV, 34).

The fact portion in these accounts is probably rather thin; but that of the ideal is not negligible. The young Celt who hears them being told internalizes the idea that a rich person has duties; he feels bound by advance, if fortune favors him, to be the patron of a large number of men who, living in his shade, will live at his expenses. Although this duty does not have, it seems, a matching legal sanction,

most of the greatest men do not think of shirking it , since Caesar can say, in general terms that, more they have wealth, more they have ambacti and clients.

Let us note lastly that noble and rich have many duties in the Irish society of the Early Middle Ages.

Jean-François Medard distinguishes two types of clientelism: formal - when it is codified as in the case of the feudalism - and informal - also called patronage.

Modern clientelism (as a concept) owes its origins to the research in social anthropology appeared in the United Kingdom in the early 1950s.

This clientelism is defined as a system of non-commercial interpersonal exchanges of goods and services outside of any legal framework, between individuals with unequal resources (the "patron" and his "clients").

Despite a widely held justified vision of the undemocratic nature of clientelism, particularly in politics, it should be reminded that clientelism is also a means of politicizing populations, but also of overcoming the deficit in the establishment of public services or reducing inequalities .

RICH LOGIC THEREFORE ACCORDING TO US (a simple piece of advice).

If the rich person takes advantage of his money or of his powers to help those who need it out instead of hiding his gold in a hole; then whoever has benefitted from his help can only be grateful to him and in turn lend him a helping hand or help him out when the time comes. If the rich person is logical, he must therefore use his generosity to make for himself as in debt persons as possible. Hoarding is an aberration in the Celtic world. Everything lies in relationships. Wealth is useless for Robinson Crusoe.

ANCIENT CELTIC ETHOLOGY AND REPUTATION.

Caesar forgets in the report of his campaigns a category of characters that the other historians place, however, in the foreground. The bards, these cantors equivalents of the ancient Greek aoidoi, who were located on a at the same time political and religious arena and were responsible for the praise as the blame, of the nobles. Said differently, they played a part rather close to that of the censors of the antiquated Rome, guaranteeing by their anthems the political and honorary place of each one.

The fame then was something important in the Celtic society. In a society marked by orality, reputation was the only means of measuring the value of somebody. It was expected from each and everyone that he is generous, honest, brave, loyal. But the more you were placed high in the social ladder, the more you were to satisfy these criteria. The bards were those who made or destroyed reputations. The fear of being the subject of a satire composed by one of them undoubtedly formed the first of the fears of every Celtic great lord. A song making fun of you could mean your downfall, a poem in your honor to give you a glory spanning centuries.

Diodorus notices that the Celts have the word hyperbolic, not only to enhance themselves, but also to belittle the others.

We could believe in the very unforeseen imagination of an individual; but Diodorus declares that this is a custom: “ When they are formed for the battle, to step out in front of the line and to challenge the most valiant men from among their opponents to single combat, brandishing their weapons in front of them to terrify their adversaries” and when any man accepts the challenge to battle, they revile all the while and belittle their opponent.

As all this boastfulness is part of a regular ceremonial, we cannot doubt that they are approved, perhaps prescribed by military morality. To offend, to insult an enemy, are therefore legitimate things, men act so before the frontline of the army: the insults towards an adversary are part of the warlike ritual.

However it is remarkable that at the time of Caesar, we find no longer trace of such a use. Vercingetorix defends his policy and his tactic with a firm dignity, but without crowing. The only sentence of his speech where some pride appears is that where he declares himself ready to give up his power if the Celts believe to make him more honor than he brings to them a chance of safety. But the expression is full with moderation, and dignity is not boastfulness. What strikes in his speech it is precisely that he avoids exalting himself; and this bias is even more obvious in the words that he pronounces in the triumph time, i.e., after Gergovia; the euphoria of this success, of course, minimized by Caesar inspires him vast ambitions, it does not suggest to him a tirade where he would exalt himself.

The same applies to Critognatus, the Old school Celt, who harangues the besieged men in Alesia: his language is hard and atrocious, but sober, without boasting; he celebrates there neither his own valiancy, nor even that of his ancestors. The ethology which has it that the greats spread out loudly their greatness belongs to the former time.

The honor ethology is expressed in several places. The man has not only what we call today an estate

. He has in the group to which he belongs, a reputation, a fame. He enjoys a certain esteem.

And it is not only of the reputation of others of which a Celt must have care; he must also deal with his own. To be known, admired, surrounded, is, for the greats, an ideal. Nobody thinks of blaming them for an ambition of this kind. The medieval Irish law kept many echoes of that.

We already saw the word of Diviciacus who, invited by Caesar, to march against Dumnorix, answers that he must take account of the public opinion: existimatio uulgi.

In 122 before our era, Cnaeus Domitius, close to leave the territory of the Salyans, sees coming to him an ambassador from Bituitus, king of the Allobroges. This ambassador, followed by a sumptuous procession, is accompanied by a bard who sings first the king Bituitus, then the Allobroges, and lastly the ambassador himself.

According to Appian it is precisely to sing such praises that bards are attached to the high-ranking envoys. Even in less solemn circumstances, Celts appear, flanked by parasites whose function is to celebrate their praises “before large companies assembled, and also to private individuals who are willing to listen to them.” Posidonius quoted by Atenaeus declares that these parasites follow their masters “even when they make war” from where it results obviously that they sing especially in times of peace (Posidonios. Histories. Book XXIII).

Of course there is not here an individual imagination, it is a custom. Bards are regularly attached to the great and have the regular role to celebrate their sponsors publicly.

Caesar speaking to the, at the same time Celtic and Roman, army, that he leads to the war against Ariovistus, and who trembles, calls on the feeling of honor: pudor. It is still the honor, dignitas, which drives imprudent Celts against the troops of Labienus. Critognatus declares that at a pinch he had accepted the idea of a sally against the legions which surround the town “For honor is a powerful motive with him ” : apud me tantum dignitas potest. The leaders who meet the night in wood to organize the revolt, say that it is better to die than not to recover their “glory.”

Of course shame is opposed to honor: Vercingetorix scoffs the Romans to withdraw turpiter; Critognatus denounces the shame which would be the submission to Rome: turipissimam seruitutem; lastly, we know that the presence of a child before the eyes of his father, in a public place, is a dishonoring thing, turpe.

And to come more precisely to the obligation to keep one’s word the Commentaries give us of it many examples. The evidence that they must respect their oath, that morality obliges to do it, it is that if they don’t respect their word, nobody fear to make perish the hostages they gave up. In addition we saw that the Celts some time grant refundable in the other life, loans: such a use would not be perceived if there was not an ethology prescribing honesty.

In a tale by Parthenius of Nicaea, a married woman, Herippe, is abducted by Galatians. Her husband brings the ransom requested. But Herippe, worrying little to leave with her husband, says to the Galatian to kill him and to keep the money brought. The Galatian made indignant of such a bad faith, kills her himself. If the legend is of Celtic origin (and there is no reason to think that the Greeks have invented such an honorable account for Galatians), it proves that faithfulness is considered, among the Celts, as a virtue.

MISCELLANEOUS.

Various points extracted from the very interesting investigation about ancient Celtic ethology of Albert Bayet (volume I of his History of Morality).

A.That the Celts are curious and talkative, the Commentaries affirm it. As we have had already the opportunity to see it, the use is to stop like it or not the traveler to get informed about what they saw and heard, the people in the towns surrounds the traders and obliges them to tell from where they come and what they learned. But indiscretion and chattering despite everything are moderated by a certain courtesy: when they receive the foreigners around their table, to question them the Celts wait until their meal is finished.

B.In the banquets of pageantry, we know that there are etiquette rules.

When the guests are numerous, they sit down circularly; the place of the middle is for the most considerable man, who is as the coryphaeus in the chorus; it is the one who prevails over the others either by his skill in war, or by his birth, or by his wealth. Beside him is sitting the one who receives, and on each side all others according to their more or less high rank. Those who carry the shields are behind these guests, the doryphori opposite them. Sitting in a circle like the masters, they eat at the same time as them. Such is the description given by Posidonius. Diodorus adds that the service is made by very young children, boys and girls, that bravest men receive the finest portions of meat, and that the conversations degenerate very quickly into discussions which end in brawls. It is, however, not very probable that all the feasts end in fights and Caesar is silent on this matter. In certain tribe-States the political conversations are even prohibited to the guests.

C.The great dispute bitterly the power, associating with this fight clients and partisans.

A fact often quoted lets us foresee the vehemence of the political passions. In the assemblies, Strabo says, if somebody stops the speaker, the usher starts by informing him; then in the event of repetition, he cuts a piece of his coat to him. This use of the ancient Celtic ethology shows that it is sometimes difficult to calm the political conflicts and to make the order prevail within the assemblies.

D.We do not know if the law about the inheritance tends towards the safeguard of the big fortunes. On the other hand, we have a reason to believe that the rich class is not a rigorously closed caste. Viridomarus, with the support of Caesar, passes from an obscure status to a brilliant fortune. It will be said that it is there one example; but the ascent of Viridomarus would not be useful to Caesar if the nouveau riche was, theoretically scorned and without influence. It should be admitted therefore that the rich persons can open their ranks to the new men.There is the same thing in Ireland with the status of the briugu.

E.Albert Bayet believes to guess among our forefathers a certain progressive or revolutionary feeling. The political history of the country, according to him, shows the power of the progress sense. The Tribe-State replaces little by little and not without struggle the tribe. Monarchy must give way to aristocratic principates. “Constitutions” succeed the absolute power, as that of the Aeduans who take clever precautions against tyranny.

All these fights, all these revolutions, prove that the innovators have support points in the common awareness.

One of the men facing Caesar among the Aeduans is besides the famous and mysterious Dumnorix, brother of Diviciacus and leader of the party which fights the alliance with Rome. Caesar, although he endeavors his best to paint of him a black picture, acknowledges that he is magni animi, and he adds that he is cupidus rerum novarum. We know the meaning of this expression: it designates exactly the taste for the bold innovations that we would describe today as a revolutionary mind. However Dumnorix has many partisans, and he becomes rather dangerous so that Caesar makes him massacred.

F.The attachment to territory is unfamiliar to the Celts of the first time who give up so valiantly the place where they lived until there and settle where they are well: ubi bene ubi patria. At the very time of Caesar, we saw the Helvetians setting out thus without even having a preconceived idea about the better country for them.

On the other hand, the attachment for the native land exists among Belgians who like better to fight in suis quam in alienis finibus. There exists among the Aeduans who regard as worst misfortune the idea to see themselves reduced to leave their territory. We see at every moment decimated people, almost destroyed by the Romans, to cling to their ground.

G.The land question. The general idea is that the dimension of the occupied grounds must be in keeping with the number of the occupants in order to make it possible each and everyone to live with dignity.

What Livy notices in his account relating to the Celtic invasions in Italy, it is that, in their first answer to the Romans, the Celts, far from seeking the battle, declare themselves ready not to attack if to them who are poor in ground, the Clusinians, rich with more fields than they can farm, yield a part of their territory. The evidence that the Celtic claims do not go beyond an equal division it is that Dio writes:Peace was almost concluded since it was only a question of a portion of territory.

Cassius Dio. Fragments of Book VII. They set little store by this (for it was offered them in return for a portion of the land), and attacked the barbarians in battle right after the conference, taking the Roman envoys along with them. The Galatians, vexed at seeing these on the opposite side, at first sent an embassy in their turn to Rome, preferring charges against the envoys. And when no punishment was visited upon the latter, but they were all, on the contrary, appointed consular tribunes, the barbarians were filled with wrath, being naturally quick to anger, and since they held Clusium in contempt, they set out against Rome etc.etc. (battle of Allia -389).

The case of the Helvetians is similar. Caesar vainly endeavors to paint a bleak picture of them, it results from his account itself that in the very time even when they prepare their exodus, they are in good terms with the Sequani, and with a part of the Aeduan people. What they make to be said to Caesar, at the time when they are not yet defeated and seem full with confidence in their military power, it is that they are ready to go and settle where it will be wanted. What they need it is a territory where to settle; they are by no means keen to conquer it by force, but they estimate contrary to justice that it was claimed to confine them in a country whose extent is not in keeping with their number. It is thus not the very rough violence which justifies in their mind the right of appropriation.

H.Simplicity or luxury.

Lastly, on the question of the luxury, we find in the Celtic world the same conflicts which divide the Greek world and the Roman world: on a side the partisans of what we would call today the infinite growth and on the other side the partisans of a hard and simple life who align themselves with the tradition of the forefathers; the ecologists we could say today.

On this point manners indicate the existence of two attitudes clearly, of which one requires simplicity, while the other admits or approves a comfortable, even sumptuous, life.

Out of the battlefield, several peoples live a very simple life. Posidonius says that those who live in the area of Tolosa “have nothing sumptuous in their way of life,” and Strabo notes that, on this point, Posidonius agrees with many other authors. Polybius, speaking about the Celts settled in the Transpadane regions, shows them living in isolated villages, without walls, in a state deprived of every other convenience. They sleep on a bed of hay or straw, eat meat. In short, their life is hard and simple. We could believe admittedly that morality is for nothing in this simplicity, that poverty alone is the cause of that. But Polybius notices that, far away from appearing as poor in the eyes of the rest of the Celtic world, the Celts in Italy are regarded as exceptionally wealthy and Posidonius notices that the inhabitants of the area of Tolosa have large quantities of gold. It is therefore well by principle that they are satisfied with such a hard life.

Among all Nervians are characterized by their horror of luxury: “there was no access for merchants to them; Caesar says, they suffered no wine and other things tending to luxury to be imported; because, they thought that by their use the mind is enervated and the courage impaired: that they were a savage people and of great bravery: that they upbraided and condemned the rest of the Belgae who had surrendered themselves to the Roman people and thrown aside their national courage.”

The end of this sentence shows clearly that there is a conflict between two moralities: the Nervians, attached to the received from their forefathers traditions, want a life simple and hard and allocate the cowardice of the other Celts to the luxury which feminizes them. But elsewhere, people decide clearly in favor of what the civilization is, i.e., in favor of a more refined life. Because the covered with gold handsome warriors who break across the Alps did not wait for the Roman influence to have jewels.

And it is not either to the Romans that the Celts owe the variegated brilliance of their clothes, streaked, inlaid, speckled and flowered by drawings with thousand shades. The indigenous manufacturers make wool carpets with bright colors, soft mattresses; the enameling is a typically Celtic art whose these “Barbarians” have the secrecy; the glassmaker manufacture jewels with perfect colors; beside the heavy, solid and vulgar pottery, we see urns and vases decorated with complicated drawings and fantastic animals appear.

CONCLUSION.

Is it question of human life? Vainly the Latin authors make the human sacrifices in use among our forefathers a declamation topic: similar sacrifices are found in the Roman world, and, on both sides, they are rather rare. The druids endeavor to reduce them to a simple execution of guilty prisoners under sentence of death.

Is it question of war? Armed Celts ran around the world; but which is the country which, after having seen them, did not see the Roman legions? As of before Caesar it is on the side of Rome that the provocations come, and they are the Celts who temporize and seek to resort to peaceful action.

Is it question of the cruelties of which war is the opportunity? If the Celts massacre sometimes (and not always) their enemy defeated, Caesar does not recoil in front of atrocities hundred times bloodier and which equal all that a hostile legend could reproach to the Celts.

Is it question of the suicide? The legend which shows the Celts running easily to death for the lightest reason is a very gratuitous legend. In Fact, they approve the suicide only in given cases: it is exactly the attitude of the Roman aristocracy.

But analogy is not identity.

Beside these common characteristics, we notice many ethological divergences: we don’t find, as far as I know, among the Romans, neither the duel for the awarding of the best portion in a banquet, neither the use to preserve and display the heads of defeated enemies, neither the institution of the solduri, neither the use of the refundable in the other world loans, neither the practice to serve as mercenary soldiers, nor the sending to boarding of the children at the home of a mother’s relative to complete their education (daltachas/altrom in Ireland).

The respect of the knowledge is in Celtica much greater than in Rome. Lastly, the very love of the Tribe-State is there, in some ways, rather different, since the Celt of this time can apparently imagine its greatness apart from its full independence or sovereignty. This ethology explains the program and the influence of the pro-Roman party. It also explains the fast adaptation of the Celts to the Roman life. Shortly even after the annexation some principes enter the Senate and join cordially the government of the Empire.

REMINDER ABOUT THE ARYAN TRIPARTITION IN CELTIC COUNTRY.

(The “aire” component which systematically appears in the nomenclature of the Irish vassal pyramid (bo-aire, oc-aire etc.) comes from the Proto-Celtic Aryos = free man).

Spirituality, army or policy, economy… The tripartite ideology determines all the organization, all the cosmic construction, as well the fitting of the human and divine society as the motivations, or the mechanisms, which determine and regulate the functioning of it. This social organization or Tripartition, first consequence of the tripartite ideology, is specific to the Indo-Europeans. We seek it in vainly in the brilliant Semitic civilizations of Mesopotamia, vainly in the Bible; still vainly in a people, as refined, as subtle, and as intelligent as the Chinese, whose tradition is based above all on dyads and binary oppositions.

Kings lords and knights holders of the nertis (of the power and of the strength) have as a social role the temporal power, under the supervision of the supreme spiritual authority of the druids. The spiritual authority always prevails in dignity over the temporal power (the law is prioritized over the nertis, is prioritized over the strength).

India calls “revolt of kshatriyas” any breach of this principle. In the Celtic tradition also “the priest always prevails over the warrior (and over the politician who is resulting from him)”.

The trifunctional formulas reserved to druids are not built on the same model as those which are intended for those who handle the rough nertis, and do not involve the same qualities or the same faults. A druid cannot be miserly by definition, since it is not in his role to give, but to live on the alms that people must grant to him. It is not expected from him either the physical courage since, if he has the right to fight, it is not an obligation for him. The only thing which is required from the druid, as from the Brahman besides, it is the knowledge, what, of course, excludes ignorance ipso facto.

The druid, in the broad sense, therefore is responsible for:

The study of the oral literature in sacred matter, the meditation then the commentary for the benefit of those who will be worthy of it.

The sacrifices.

Kings lords and knights must have their own values: bodily and moral courage, contempt of material wealth. We are there polar opposite the princes who control us currently, who are only vulgar upstarts, spreading out their material wealth coarsely.

They have the duty to be generous, to take part in the sacrifices presided over by the druids and to hear (but not to teach) the oral literature in religious matter. They are subjected to an almost military discipline. It is not asked from the warrior to meditate endlessly, it is asked from him to be without fear, neither hatred, nor jealousy, like Cuchulainn; and to devote himself to the “war” techniques which are summarized in “tricks” and in “feats” of skill (riastrade, clessa) requiring much flexibility and agility. The warrior is entitled to the stratagem, but not to the lie, even by omission and it is required from him a very acute sense of honor. Compert Con Culainn : Am túalaing mo daltai. Am dín cech dochraite.

Dogníu dochur cech tríuin, dogníu sochur cech lobair (Fergus). As his master Sencha had learned to him (a great people never breaches the rules of the fair play with an unknown man), Setanta Cuchulainn never transgressed the fir fer, killed neither the charioteers , neither the messengers, nor unarmed people; it seemed to him neither noble, nor beautiful, to take the horses, the clothing, or the weapons, from killed men (in other words to strip them. See not the surah of the Quran devoted to the spoils but the story of the rustling of the cattle of Cooley).

The king, as for him, is made to give much more than to receive, and the miserly sovereign, such Bres, in the story of Cath Maighe Tuireadh, finishes very badly his career. Editor’s note. The best to speak about the producers in Celtica is perhaps to use” the word “atectai, i.e. “protected persons,” from where Gaelic aitheachta according to M. Dillon and Nora K. Chadwick. What would match the shudras of Hinduism.

Consequently the material wealth and the work which produces it is given up to the producing class of the boaires, aes dana and others atectai or aitheachta in the ancient Celtic society (therefore shudras in India). In return for sacrifices and material protection which are granted to them, boaires, aes dana and others atectai or aitheachta known as shudras in Hinduism, must be able to do their work freely, they handle material wealth.

Holiness, asceticism or courage and generosity, are obviously less expected from the producers boaires or aes dana.

What is expected from them, on the other hand , it is to be free from miserliness (to grant or give alms) and to offer sacrifices.

In other words: three functions.

A first function responsible for the management of the sacredness and which has no other obligations than that of its own perfection; a military and political class responsible for protection: defense (or attack)… approximately for the use of the nertis (of the strength); a craft and producing class therefore being responsible for the production in all its forms, and in charge of providing the two others.

The sacrifice or religious ceremony, the meditation, for the priest; the war for the warrior; not being able to be permanent states; it is therefore obvious that, at one time or another, the members of the first and second classes are immersed in definitive or transitory states of “third function.” This would be only through rest, peace, food or pleasure.

The class is a social and hierarchical membership. It is not specific of a function in the sense that a member of the priestly class who takes on a responsibility of first function can also run over the second function, even on the third one.

The ancient traditional Celtic society is consequently structured in 3 + 1 functions, the druids (Brahmans in India), the kings the lords and the knights (kshatriyas in India), the farmers and the craftsmen (boaires and aes dana. vaishya in India), the plebs (shudra in India). This plebs was formed by the subjected , but not yet Celtized, peoples, who were then, and contrary to the Indian case, integrated into the tripartite system (as soon as there had been Celtization, at least as regards language, and reciprocal civilizational assimilation).

In Ireland as on the Continent, in the final analysis we deal with a social organization arranged for the insertion of the specialists. Only the plebs, which has no directly usable technique, knowledge, know- how, is rejected in the bottom of the scale.

Caesar says nothing about the farmers (boaires) nor about craftsmen (aes dana) who, however, were to form the enormous majority of the population. His description of the Celtic society is therefore to be corrected in this direction. The plebs crushed by the weight of the debts and the taxes and which “nihil per se audet” matches rather the Indian shudras.

There exist enough archeological traces of the work of the Celtic craft industry between the 10th and the 1st century before our era so that this correction is accepted.

Ireland also considers nemed (nemetos = sacred) whoever practices or has an ecclesiastical or lay, honorable, honorary, or high ranking, function ; including thus the boaires in a way (whoever at least a head of cattle has).

The general principle is that the sovereign, in other words, the king, maintains the good balance of the society (absence of war, economic prosperity) through the respect or the good execution of the contracts, even verbal (the dissolution or the non-observance of the contracts, is one of the calamities listed by the Senchus Mor); through the practice of what Ireland names the fir flaithemon, or “truth of the sovereigns,” which one could just as easily understand or translate by “justice of the sovereign.” What is important, it is balance. Balance of the forces composing sovereignty, but also balance of the presences and of the goods, balances of royal marriage and, through and by this marriage, psychic, moral, mental, and intellectual, balance, of the kings, who, otherwise, cannot control their kingdom well. It is, as Dumezil precisely signaled it, a very old Indo-European design of the good practice of the temporal power. The strength and the vigor of the king, eminent representative of the warlike function, raised by his election on the same level that the druid, must be only used for the maintenance of the social coherence; with, moreover, and, in conclusion, the obligation to be right, good and generous, under penalty of being no longer a king.

Generally, the Irish medieval stories know and stigmatize three calamities.

The druid of the type “white marabout,” who lies, who knows nothing, or who trades (practice, alas, very widespread in the neo-druidism of today - see the heading “Why druidism? ” of our periodical since its foundation -)

The coward or treacherous soldier.

The miserly, unjust, and petty, towards his people, king (or vergobretus).

The king intervenes here not as a representative of the military and political second class, but as a supreme person in charge of the protection of the third producing and craft class, he is assigned with the mission of controlling as well as possible and of making functioning. Atectorix or “protective king” is besides a word witnessed in Celtic onomastic.

It goes without saying that for the three classes the dishonor, worse even, the supreme crime, remains the lie, and immediately after the lie, the theft.

Besides the functional tripartition of the Celtic society, also existed a sexpartite categorization according to age, which will be later called “colomna ais” in Ireland.

As column is a borrowing from Latin, we can imagine that was to correspond, in old Celtic , to something like * stoloi aiuiti: the age columns. There were six “stoloi” or “columns.”

Old CelticGaelic

Noidenotaxeto > Nàidendacht: infancy of the baby.

Mapotaxeto >Macdacht: childhood itself.

Geistlaxeto >Gillacht: adolescence.

Ogiolagiato >Hoclachus: youth (the young adulthood).

Senodageto >Sendacht: the mature age.

Diexbliniceto >Diblidecht: old age.

Apart from the infancy, the first stages of the life (age columns called Mapotaxeto and Geistlaxeto in Old Celtic) insert the individual in a society whose essential characteristic is that it communicates permanently with the sacredness. Its central passage is the dubbing, around 14 years old (2 X 7 years) which inserts the individual in a tradition. Each one will consequently have to learn the rudiments of this tradition, to study the adequate oral literature, and to be trained in the achievement of the rites like the prayer or the participation in the rituals, etc.

The second important threshold is the marriage which, in the druidic rites, is celebrated when you are around 21 years old (3 X 7) in front of a fire, which makes the wife responsible for the aforesaid fire; i.e., ultimately of the home, but also of all the adequate rites.

In the time of the former druids, fire was indeed the usual intermediary between men and sacredness (see the concept of perpetual fire).

It is with this union of a man and a woman that the 4th great stage of the life begins (column of age called Ogiolagiato in old Celtic).

The duties of the young couples turn all around the notion of life continuity.

You may start to fill your duties with regard to your parents, the ancestors, and the god-or-demons, duties to which you were prepared in the previous life stage. N.B. It was still probably, in former druidism, a “minority” in the eyes of the law, but it does not go similarly in the new druidism, of course! Only such a perpetuation of the life can guarantee the support of the elderly, the perpetuity of the tradition and of the prayers for the ancestors.

The human being is from now on in ritualized regular communication with the ancestors and the god- or-demons; and he will thus be able, by using the adequate rituals (naming ceremony, dubbing, service of atenoux or divertomu, and others) to prepare his own children to this vertical or immanent communication, with the sacredness. Later, when the children are grown up and will have in turn children, the fifth and penultimate stage of the life for the Celtic spouses who will have become grandparents, will be able to begin.

The fifth and penultimate column of age which begins around 42 years old (6 X 7 years) are that of the wisdom and of the deepening of the faith or of the religious experience (Senodageto in old Celtic, word for word “improvement of the senior”). It is the age when the entry in the holy orders (the ordainment as druid druid) takes place generally. But certain people (druidicist ategnati, kinges…) will have been able, as of their youth to have a foot in this reserved domain (for the vates, the veledae, the gutuaters/gutumaters, etc.).

6th and last stage of the life: that of the wandering in the Fintan’s or Merlin’s way.

The hermits, following Fintan, Suibhne, Lailoken or Merlin, the most famous of them, in the silence and the loneliness of the forest, dedicate their life to meditation. Like the kinges, what was also besides the case of Lailoken/Merlin, he trains to release himself from his ties with the bodily needs to become a great soul/mind. In the ancient Celtic world, the one who achieved this process, was respected in spite of his poverty. Such is perhaps ultimately the sense of the famous poem in old Welsh ascribed to Merlin and heading “Yr Afallenau.” His quest for the Grail becomes so intense, he is strengthened so much in his thought continuously directed towards it, that he never stops it, even at the moment when death comes to seize him.

Whoever dies thus, his inner sight fixed until even in death on the other world or its god-or-demons; the one who, in the very death, does not forget that his soul, the anamone, is identified with the

Immanent and Absolute Self which is the awenyddio or universal psychic reservoir; that one can curtail the Vindomagus and be melted directly without waiting more in the Big Whole.

But of course, there are places where the soul/mind breathes and where it is easier to die. In a monastery a holy place like the hill of Sion dear to Barres or near the grave of a hero for example, where the presence of the god-or-demons is perceived more intensely than elsewhere.

Since beings all are different, and that they are located all at very different levels on this way which leads to the castle of the Grail, there is not, of course, a same set of behavior codes equally valid for all.

Druidic ethic is an ethic differentiated into various moral codes let us repeat it once again.

There are minimal rules to be followed by everyone, but it is obvious for example that the ardor in work has more importance for a young person than for an elderly person ; that it is expected from him more than from any other person the respect of the elderly people…

This Celtic principle therefore implies partially different standards of behavior according to generations. That shakes in nothing the validity of the gessa of ethical nature. The gessa indeed structure the Celtic acting in all the social domains, but assign to each one his own rules of behavior (his specific duties and obligations).

As a whole, these general recommendations, however, imply no precise law as regards civil, social or lay life. We are there the exact opposite of Islam of whose the prohibitions or regulations have as purpose to govern in the least detail the life of the believers.

In the sexual field for example, the largest diversity of manners prevailed according to the areas.

“They hold all things in common, even children and wives, so that the latter possess the same valor as the men (Cassius Dio. Book 62, 6).

Caesar is the earliest author having mentioned this practice, which according to his statement, seems common to the Britons.

Eusebius of Caesarea (4th century) as well as the Pseudo-Bardesanes give no additional detail, being satisfied to oppose the fact to a “shameful vice,” the homosexuality. Lastly, Xiphilin (9th century), taking over Cassius Dio, mentions it only among the Caledonians.

Caesar. V, 14: “Ten and even twelve have wives common to them, and particularly brothers among brothers, and fathers among their sons; but if there be any issue by these wives, they are reputed to be the children of those by whom respectively each was first espoused when a virgin.”

Eusebius of Caesarea, preparation for the gospel, VI, 10: “In Britain many men have the same wife.”

Pseudo-Bardesanes, the book of the law of the countries, V: “Among the Britons many men take one and the same wife.”

Xiphilin, Summary of the Roman History of Cassius Dio LXXVI, 12.

“The Caledonians are behind them. Both inhabit wild and waterless mountains, desolate and swampy plains, holding no walls, nor cities, nor tilled fields, but living by pasturage and hunting and a few fruit trees. The fish, which are inexhaustible and past computing for multitude, they do not taste. They dwell coatless and shoeless in tents, possess their women in common, and rear all the offspring as a community.”

Three great factors are generally put forward to explain this form of union.

A matriarchal society: it is according to any probability a requirement necessary to the existence of polyandry.

A demographic imbalance: The number of men is clearly higher than the number of women.

Singular economic and legal conditions: The adelphic (fraternal) forms of polyandry are explained by the will not to divide the family property between brothers of the same blood. This non-division includes even the wives and the children, communal properties of the phratry.

It is rather delicate to call on a “demographic imbalance” to explain the origin of this form of union in the British Isles. Only data produced by anthropologists and archeologists and dealing with the study of the corpses unearthed in the ancient burials could show the reality of this factor of explanation.

Can we for all that speak of a matriarchal society? Nothing is less sure; nevertheless this evokes a sociological specificity peculiar to these islands. Caesar gives us more information than the other sources, about this practice, particularly some clues as for the legal aspect of such a union. He mentions the fact that polyandry and polygyny intervened jointly within the framework of the phratry.

Without wanting to enter here the discussed question of the path of the Namnetes or of the Celtic Tantrism, let us say simply that the druidism did not introduce new standards with regard to the sexual behavior and the family law. Polyandry could remain where it had been established, in Great Britain, for example, while elsewhere polygyny, or sacred prostitution of the Celtic bacchanalia, could continue.

“In the ocean, he says, there is a small island, not very far out to sea, situated off the outlet of the Liger River; and the island is inhabited by women of the Namnetes (in Greek Samnitôn], they are possessed by Dionysus and make this god propitious by appeasing him with mystic initiations as well as other sacred performances; no man sets foot on the island, although the women themselves, sailing from it, have intercourse with the men and then return.”

(Strabo, Geography book IV, Chapter IV. 6). In Short! Polyandry could remain, as well as polygyny, or conversely the monogamy of Indo-European patriarchal type be spread.

THE MEDIEVAL IRISH SOCIETY.

The Irish medieval feudality has as a base indeed, not the concession of land, but that of livestock, the cattle being the oldest currency (and the land remaining property of the state, of the tribe, of the people).

The Celtic chief not being allowed to deal with the land in favor of his vassals since the property of the ground was regarded as depending on the domain of the tribe-State; he gave them cattle.

Besides the English word fee has still also the meaning of wages or pay. The oldest wages were paid indeed in cattle, and when the wage earning entered a commitment of which the length reached several years, the livestock contract was the natural form of the agreement; the wage-earning received a certain quantity of cattle, but with the obligation of delivering to the lessor a part of the young

animals and of doing him certain favors .

The historical word of fiefdom besides is identical to the late Latin feuum which is only a Latinized form of the Germanic word fehu, in Gothic faihu, in modern German vieh, “cattle.”

By the contract of livestock, the taker therefore receives from the lessor one or more heads of cattle and takes out consequently the obligation that this contract determines.

The Irish law distinguishes two kinds of livestock: the free livestock and the slave livestock; from where two kinds of vassals: the free vassals the slave vassals. They are the free vassals, it seems, that Caesar calls clientes; whereas he gives to the slave vassals the name of ambacti.

The free livestock contract is formed by the handing-over to the taker:

1° of the cattle which are the capital of the revenue which is to be paid by him in the form of various royalties and of certain services; these animals are called turcreic, i.e. “purchase price.”

2° of the cattle which form the third of his honor’s price; they call those exchanged cattle, seoit turcluide.

The slave contract of livestock is formed in the same way:

The taker of the free livestock receiving only a third of his honor price, in addition to the cattle forming the livestock; he owed:

1° income in kind equivalent to the third of the received capital, so that in Ireland the interest was for him of thirty-three percent;

2° a not paid bodily work, manchuine, for example his cooperation in the building or repairing of the fortress of the chief, in the harvest of the wheat of the chief, finally in his wars;

3° a homage renewable every three years and which consisted in standing in front of the sitting lessor.

The taker of the slave livestock had similar charges; but the royalty in kind was less heavy.

The plebeian, fer midboth, owed each year a one-year-old heifer for a slave livestock of twelve cattle heads of average value: that formed therefore for him only an interest of a little more than eight percent a year.

The ocaire, i.-e. the nobleman of last class, received sixteen cattle heads for an annuity of a two-year- old male calf still deprived of horns. That constituted an interest of a little more than six and a half percent a year.

The boaire, to whom thirty heads of cattle were given, was to provide each year the eighteenth of this value, that is to say a cow as interest; he therefore had to support an interest of only five and half percent a year.

Let us not forget either that in addition to the livestock itself, turcreic, this plebeian, this ocaire, this boaire, had received from the lessor the totality of the price of his honor i.-e. a young cattle head for the plebeian, three for the ocaire, five (or three cows) for the boaire, and for that, for this supplement of livestock, no annuity was due.

The slave livestock was therefore much more advantageous for the taker than the free livestock, only it was regarded as dishonoring. The taker was no longer entitled to the price of his honor. Like the plebeian in the Celtica of the time of Caesar, he was no longer among the men who are important and who are more or less honored.

The Crith Gablach is an Irish manuscript written around the year 700 and whose name means “branched purchase.”

A Little like the Uraicecht Becc, another tract of Irish Law, it details the various classes and subclasses of the Irish society according to the honor price which is due to them, from the ri ruirech or king of great kings which is at the top of the social pyramid, and whose honor is evaluated at 14 female slaves (cumala, a measuring unit in practice in reality) to the fer midboth or “man between huts” whose honor was evaluated at a calf (dairt) even one two-year-old heifer, depending on the age of the fer midboth in question.

The Crith Gablach is a poem dealing with law in the ideal society according to his author but not corresponding necessarily to reality.

There is besides the same kind of as far as possible muddled debate in France today, with this aggravating factor that as regards ethnic statistics the intellectuals of the French media-political class get permanently ideal and reality mixed up, in the ideas that they ascribe to some of their whipping boys; what hardly supports the political reflection. French intellectuals are indeed absolutely against the ethnic mentions or statistics which they unanimously regard as Nazism or apartheid. From where the periodic media lynching where the French intellectuals in the proportion generally of 10 against 1 when it is not all against one, lash out at the unhappy woman who was naive enough to tell (for once) the truth and no reasonable discussion becomes then possible. This ousting of the reason out of the debate, of course, does not make easier the treatment of the evils of which the society suffers.

But let us return to our sheep! Former Ireland thus seems a private income economy structured by a carefully defined social hierarchy. As we have had already the opportunity to say it, the status of each one was determined there by the place occupied formerly by his ancestors, their merits or their personal talents, as by the wealth they had acquired. Therefore that meant that you could only claim the social status of your grandfather or then be regarded as the starting point of a process of ascent in the social scale. The practical needs for the hospitality duty had indeed as a consequence that a man born in one of the lower social classes of the society, as a Céile for example, could always rise to the rank of bo aire and thus acquire enough property to be able to rent out to others with less. This process of changing social status required three generations in general. In that therefore the system differed completely from that of castes in India.

As we have had yet the opportunity to say it, the ancient Celtic society was very unequal. Completely as at the height of the European Middle Ages, i.e., divided into clergy (druids), nobility (nemed in Gaelic terminology) and people (we will return to the case of the slaves who were generally only prisoners (atectoi) members of the defeated people, Atectai (those that the Muslims call dhimmis) or some poor farmers bound to the land (serfs). But this inequality of status had sometimes good sides.

The first good side of the thing was that in Ireland the “rent” of the unfree livestock fiefdom was lower than the rent of the free livestock fiefdom located much higher in the social hierarchy. Less expensive but less “honorable” too. A Little as if it were prostitution.

N.B. By the contract of livestock, the taker therefore receives from the lessor one or more heads of cattle and contracts consequently the obligations that this contract determines (homage, rent, duties, military service).

The second good side of the thing it is that it was less asked from the poor in certain legal procedures. A little as in the current guarantee system. Except that in this case, it was not a recoverable security but a payment let us say in a way “with full discharge” (when he risked capital punishment).

D’Artois de Jubainville not specifying under which conditions this second system was combined with the first one (not counting that I, of course, do not master French language as well as I would have wished it, as a Bossuet or an academician of the 18th century and the exact meaning of words like

“croît ” or “brocard” for example gave me a headache) we will leave to others the care to clear this mystery starting from the following elements.

Below indeed what d’Arbois de Jubainville says about it.

Beside the fine system about which we spoke up to now, there is another one which, instead of being based on the legal value of the offended person, his weight in the society, has as a base the legal value of the culprit. The composition, whose tariff is fixed according to the second system, is called in Irish smacht. The rule is given as it follows by the book of Aicill: “Cach uair is [s] macht ictar ann, is a ic for aicned[h] inti icas”. “Whenever that the fine is a smacht , it is paid according to the rank (aicned) of the person who pays it.”

The explanation in is undoubtedly very down-to-earth, very pragmatic, and has nothing to do with altruism.

We also find in the Salic law some examples of fine paid off according to the value of the culprit. The technical expression in this document is vitam redimere, se redimere, “to repurchase one’s life, to repurchase oneself .”

The one who removes a prisoner from the magistrate called grafio (= count) must redeem his life (pay his wergild) . The same obligation falls on the grafio (count) in the event of a miscarriage of justice; he must redeem himself by paying the price he costs (his wergild): Quantum valet redimere. If he does not pay this price (wergild) , he will pay it with his life, what is called de vita componere. The insolvent murderer is treated according to this system, he loses his life if none of his parents wants to redeem him: Si eum in compositionem nullus voluerit redimere, de vita componat.

It is also the doctrines of the law of the Twelve Tables; according to this Roman law, the debtor, i.e., generally the murderer - I do not say the murderer to whom Numa’s law is applied - after being put on sale in three successive markets and not having found a purchaser, remains at the disposal of his creditors, i.e., of the parents of his victim who could kill him, sell him as a slave in Etruria or to even divide his body as they would have shared the composition: partes secanto. The Irish composition known as smacht therefore seems to be the continuation of a use common to the Celts, Germans and Latins, but in more civilized.

The complete amount of the smacht, is of thirty-five cattle heads of average quality, it is exactly the price of the body of a free man coirp to dire. The smacht can in a large number of cases being reduced to the seventh, i.e., to five cattle heads of average value, sed. It is what happens when the debtor is a serf: the price of his body is reduced to the value of thirty-five heads of cattle: such is the composition that he must pay to redeem his life when he made a murder.

This variability according to financial means of the culprit has as a result sometimes that in the Irish Law the word smacht has a doubtful, or that we cannot determine without a certain attention,meaning. The smacht, penalty for a false judgment, smacht na gu-breithi is, of course, of thirty-five heads of cattle, because they are not the serfs who judge but druids or brehons. Such also is the smacht that a free man is obliged to pay to the noble man, aire, to have made a false witness in connection with a contract in which this noble was a party or to have killed somebody who was placed under the protection of this noble, while the smacht owed for lack of service to the lessor by the taker of the slave livestock, is only of five heads of cattle, like that any person owes for having used a bill hook of which he is not the owner and for having encroached on a nearby field.

N.B. As we had the opportunity to signal it, the explanation of this taking into account of the means of the payer has nothing to do with the compassion. The legal principle of which the word smacht is the Irish expression: repurchase of the life, belongs to the oldest Germanic and Roman law as to the Celtic law. It goes back to the most distant antiquity. And the rather vague sense of the word smacht in various texts does not prevent that smacht had in the oldest language of the Irish law a very precise meaning and designated the fine that a culprit was to pay in order to redeem his life. This composition consisted of thirty-five heads of cattle for the wealthiest persons, five heads of cattle only for the serfs. But it does not matter because that comes to the same thing. We could perhaps therefore take as a starting point this smacht system as regards, not the compositions, but the taxations (tax pressure). Simple remark in passing.

THE PLACE OF THE DRUIDS IN THE SOCIETY.

The druid Imrinn who was a son of Cathbad….. This archaic specification , in the course of a sentence in Gaelic language, shows us two things since Cathbad was himself a druid.

1° Druids may have, most publicly possible, some children. Therefore they were by no means compelled to celibacy (even if to devote all one’s energy by abstaining from possible sexual relations is not a ridiculous idea, that can be conceivable).

2° Some druids could take part in fight. It remains to know exactly how. There are indeed all kinds of ways of taking part in engagements. Joan of Arc practiced of them one which consisted especially in motivating the troops. And this very young and courageous girl succeeded a long time in that, at the point to earn the respect of hardened roughneck soldiers like Gilles de Rais (the French ancestor of Blue Beard: 200 victims, with the little girls "disdaining the natural vase"). The Welsh monks of Bangor in the 7th century practiced another one.

Being gathered on a hill at the time of the siege of Chester by the Saxon king Ethelfrid around year 610, they were all massacred by the latter which had exclaimed, informed of the situation, namely that they prayed for the safety of their soldiers: “If it be so that they cry to their gods against us, they do truly fight against us, though they have no weapons!”

At least according to the venerable Bede (it is true that when the gods interfere , and abandon you….)

Let us be clear therefore, ancient druids felt being perfectly right and even perhaps regarded as a duty to bring the moral and spiritual comfort which they could to their armed fellow countrymen , exactly as the chaplains in the armies of today. With this moral advantage over the Christians that themselves had never preached absolute pacifism (to turn the other cheek) and that they had always accepted the self-defense even the possibility in certain cases of “righteous” wars, without fall on this subject for all that in current hypocrisy (see the war fought in Libya by NATO and the French Head of State in 2011, in order to set up an Islamic Republic based on the sharia, we wonder well why).

Some even had to take part personally and actively in the patriotic resistance against certain occupying forces (see the case of the Resistance fighter called gutuater by Caesar and the druidic prophecies having hailed the beginning of the action of the Boian druid Mariccus in the year 68.

“Amid the adventures of these illustrious men, one is ashamed to relate how a certain Mariccus, a Boian of the lowest origin, pretending to divine inspiration, ventured to thrust himself into fortune's game, and to challenge the arms of Rome. Calling himself the champion of Celtica, and a god (for he had assumed this title), he had now collected eight thousand men, and was taking possession of the neighboring villages of the Aedui, when that most formidable tribe-state attacked him with a picked force of its native youth, to which Vitellius attached some cohorts, and dispersed the crowd of fanatics. Mariccus was captured in the engagement, and was soon after exposed to wild beasts, but not having been torn by them, was believed by the senseless multitude to be invulnerable, till he was put to death in the presence of Vitellius.” (Tacitus. Histories. Book II, chapter LXI).

This particular point of the moral code of the druidic vocation is therefore the distant echo of a very antiquated state of the Indo-European society, unlike the Roman flamen and even the Indian brahman. We will return there because it goes without saying that, without being at all costs pacifists, the very knowing of the ancient druidiaction were nevertheless… peaceful, and tried to prevent conflicts even to calm them.

N.B. And it goes without saying also that it was not a hereditary caste because, of course, they did not hesitate either to dispense freely their teaching to young common people of whom they have had the opportunity of noticing the gifts and the aptitudes. But here, as studies lasted a long time (a little like today besides, about twenty years, from the nursery school to the university, from three or four years old to twenty-five years old) and were expensive, would it be only by depriving the family of a very useful for the house pair of hands, it was easier to the son of a druid or king to become druid (same phenomenon in France of today in spite of its pseudo-republican ideal, with the teachers or the children of senior officers).

LOVE FOR THE LANGUAGE OF THE ANCESTORS (FENIUS FARSAID) BECAUSE THE CELTS ARE ESSENTIALLY

A CHOSEN LANGUAGE OR A SPIRITUAL RACE, NOT A RACE OF PHENOTYPE.

Diodorus of Sicily, the library of history, V, 31: “ It is a custom of theirs that no one should perform a sacrifice without a "philosopher"; for thank-offerings should be rendered to the gods, they say, by the hands of men who are experienced in the nature of the divine, and who speak, as it were, the language of the god or demons * , it is also through the mediation of such men, they think, that blessings likewise should be sought.”

* The exact Greek word is homophonon.

Timagenes of Alexandria, in Ammianus Marcellinus, History XV, 9-12. “The first inhabitants ever seen in these regions were called Celts, after the name of their king, who was very popular among them, and sometimes also Galatae, after the name of his mother. For Galatae is the Greek translation of the Roman term Galli. Others affirm that they are Dorians, who, following a more ancient Hercules, selected for their home the districts bordering on the ocean.

The drasidae [druids]affirm that a portion of the people was really indigenous to the soil, but that other inhabitants poured in from very remote islands on the coast, and from the districts across the Rhine, having been driven from their former abodes by frequent wars, and sometimes by inroads of a tempestuous sea.Some again maintain that after the destruction of Troy, a few Trojans fleeing from the Greeks, who were then scattered over the whole world, occupied these districts, which at that time had no inhabitants at all. But the natives of these countries affirm this more positively than any other fact (and, indeed, we ourselves have read it engraved on their monuments), that Hercules, the son of Amphitryon, hastening to the destruction of those cruel tyrants, Geryones and Tauriscus, one of whom was oppressing the continental Celtica, and the other Spain; after he had conquered both of them, took to wife some women of noble birth in those countries, became the father of many children; and that his sons called the districts of which they became the kings after their own names. Also an Asiatic tribe coming from Phocaea in order to escape the cruelty of Harpalus, the lieutenant of Cyrus the king, sought to sail to Italy. And a part of them founded Velia, in Lucania, others settled a colony at Marseilles, in the area of Vienne; and then, in subsequent ages, these towns increasing in strength and importance, founded other cities. Throughout these provinces, the people gradually becoming civilized, the study of noble sciences flourished, having been first introduced by the bards, the vates and the druids.”

The Celts civilized by Hercules and various elements of genealogy therefore. Eustathius. Commentary on Dionysius Periegetes.

“ Celtus and Iber are sons of Heracles and from a barbarian woman, and it is from them these people, the Celts and Iberians, come.”

Diodorus of Sicily, the Library of History, V, 24.

“Since we have set forth the facts concerning the islands which lie in the western regions, we consider that it will not be foreign to our purpose to discuss briefly the tribes of Europe which lie near them and which we failed to mention in our former books. Now Celtica was ruled in ancient times, so we are told, by a renowned man who had a daughter who was of unusual stature and far excelled in beauty all the other maidens. But she, because of her strength of body and marvelous comeliness, was so haughty that she kept refusing every man who wooed her in marriage, since she believed that no one of her wooers was worthy of her. Now in the course of his campaign against the Geryones, Heracles visited Celtica and founded there the city of Alesia; the maiden, on seeing Heracles, wondered at his prowess and his bodily superiority and accepted his embraces with all eagerness, her parents having given their consent. From this union she bore to Heracles a son named Galates, who far surpassed all the youths of the tribe in quality of spirit and strength of body. And when he had attained to man's estate and had succeeded to the throne of his fathers, he subdued a large part of the neighboring territory and accomplished great feats in war. Becoming renowned for his bravery, he called his subjects Galatians after himself, and these in turn gave their name to all of Galatia.”

Parthenius of Nicaia: Love stories, XXX.

“Hercules, it is told, after he had taken the cattle of Geryones from Erythea, was wandering through the country of the Celts and came to the house of Bretannus, who had a daughter called Celtine.

Celtine fell in love with Hercules and hid away the cattle, refusing to give them back to him unless he would first content her. Hercules was indeed very anxious to bring the heifers safe home, but he was far more struck by the girl’s exceeding beauty, and consented to her wishes; and then, when the time had come round, a son called Celtus was born to them, from whom the Celtic race derived their name.”

In Short, from the union of Hercules and Celtine, daughter of Bretannus,were born Celtus and Galates.

Strabo: Geography IV, I, 7.

“Between Massilia [ today Marseilles] and the outlets of the Rhodanus there is a plain, circular, which is as far distant from the sea as a hundred stadia, and is also as much as that in diameter. It is called Stony Plain from the fact that it is full of stones as large as you can hold in your hand; although from beneath the stones there is a growth of wild herbage which affords abundant pasturage for cattle. In the middle of the plain stand water and salt ponds, and also lumps of salt.

The whole of the country which lies beyond, as well as this, is exposed to the wind, the black wind from north (the mistral, in Greek the Melamborion] a violent and chilly wind, which descends upon this plain with exceptional severity; at any rate it is said that some of the stones are swept and rolled along, and that by the blasts the people are dashed from their vehicles and stripped of both weapons and clothing.

Aristotle says that the stones, after being vomited to the surface by some types of earthquakes [that are called "brastae,” Greek braston] rolled together into the hollow places of the districts. But Poseidonius says that, since it was a lake, it solidified because a violent fall of water level, and because of this was parted into a number of stones, as are the river rocks and the pebbles on the seashore; and by reason of the similarity of origin, the former, like the latter, are both smooth and equal in size. And an account of the cause has been given by both men. And now the argument in both treatises is equally plausible; for of necessity the stones that have been assembled in this way cannot separately, one by one: either they have changed from liquid to solid or have been detached from great masses of rock that received a succession of fractures. What was difficult to account for, however, Aeschylus, who closely studied the accounts or else received them from another source, removed to the domain of the myth. At any rate, Prometheus, in Aeschylus's poem, in detailing to Heracles the route of the roads from the Caucasus to the Hesperides says:

And you will come to the undaunted host of the Ligurians, Where you will not complain of battle, I clearly know, Impetuous fighter though you are;

Because there it is fated that even your missiles will fail you, And no stone from the ground will you be able to take, Since the whole district is soft ground

But Zeus, seeing thee without means to fight, will have pity upon you And, supplying a cloud with a snow-like shower of round stones,

He will put immediately the soil under cover; And with these stones thereupon you will pelt,

And easily push your way through, the Ligurian host.

As if it were not better, says Poseidonius, for Zeus, to have cast the stones upon the Ligures themselves and to have buried the whole host, than to represent Heracles as in need of so many stones. Now, as for the number ("so many"), he needed them all if indeed the poet was speaking with reference to a throng of enemies that was very numerous; so that in this, at least, the poet writer of the myth is more logical than the man who revises the myth.”

The only question is therefore WHO IS THE DRUIDIC GOD-OR-DEMON WHO HIDES BEHIND THIS CELTIC HERCULES???

GENERALITIES ABOUT THE SENCHUS MOR OR CAIN PATRAIC

(= Law according to St. Patrick.)

The first part of this work or “introduction ” (30 pages) is, of course, entirely written for the greater glory of St. Patrick and we really enter the heart of the matter only starting from page 64 with the chapter which deals with the 4 kinds of seizures of personal property (di chethar shlicht athgabala) being able to exist.

It goes without saying that the Christian monks authors of this text have

eliminated or caricatured all that they disapproved

additioned many more or less quite disposed elements (glosses)

distorted some others.

Therefore it is to the specialists to distinguish in all this jumble what is due to Roman Catholic Church and what is really pre-Christian therefore purely Celtic.

This very long introduction of the Senchus Mor (30 pages) comprises nevertheless several interesting elements.

Having said that we will not follow the order usually kept for this ancient compilation of manuscripts and we will start with more general considerations about the Irish society of the Early Middle Age.

According to d’Arbois de Jubainville (Study on the Celtic Law, volume 1st 1895) the former laws in Ireland were commonly called brehon law because of the brehon, or judges, who rendered their judgments in lines of verses. These old monuments of the Irish law are known only since the middle of the 19th century. This law had, however, remained in practice until the beginning of the 17th century, but it had been repealed at that time and doomed to oblivion, like all what could remember to Irishmen their former national existence. It is only in 1852 that the English government better inspired made the still existing manuscripts sought and ordered the transcription as well as the publication of them. The first volume appeared in 1865. The first work published in this collection is called Senchus Mor or great “Senchus.” What means something like great “collection of antiquities” (senchus). It is a compilation carried out around the year 700 but using older documents.

Unfortunately, the exact reconstruction of the text and the faithful translation of the Senchus-Mor are a work of an extreme difficulty in the actual state of the Irish scholarship. An administrative commission, so well made up that it can be and what can be the lights with which it surrounds itself, cannot do what only successive generations of scholars could have achieved. It is in lines of verse and in the primitive idiom of Ireland, in the language called berla-feini, that the Senchus-Mor was initially written. In the 10th century, the berla-feini was no longer understood. The Senchus-Mor was then translated, as it was said, from coarse Irish into good Irish. However the fine Irish of the 10th century became in turn incomprehensible for those who in very small number, can read and write what we call today the old Irish, i.e. the language of the inhabitants of the coastal parts of the south and west of Ireland. To understand the

Senchus-Mor, it is therefore necessary to pass through two dead languages. However the insults undergone by the primitive text were perhaps not as deep as we could suppose it. We are in Ireland, i.e., in a country where the men from time immemorial looked backwards, in a country where the past is respected. We can find in many places of the Senchus the old lines of verse under the prose which wraps them, and the extreme difficulty that the translation encountered proves with what care the old words were preserved. Of all the causes which made so frequently the deformation of the Latin manuscripts, none occurred here. There was no change in the social state. After the English invasion, the Irish society was not destroyed; until the reign of Elisabeth, it conquered even its conquerors.

There is no ecclesiastical question raised by the Senchus; it is spoken neither of ecclesiastical jurisdiction there, nor of immunities for the church lands. Who would have distorted it therefore? The brehon, these poets judges and teachers of the jurisprudence schools? Their honor and their interest were to keep intact the national tradition , and if they have, as it is obvious, successively multiplied the need for the presence of lawyers at each step of the procedure, if they increased all that was compensations, fines and honors (honor understood in the sense of fees), that does not touch the very nature of the institutions. On the other hand, although the manuscripts that we have are of relatively recent dates, of the 14th, 15th and even 17th century, these manuscripts carry in themselves a token of authenticity. One belonged to a family of brehon in the Connaught remained faithful to the descendants of Roderic O'Connor, the last of the high kings of Ireland; the other was the specimen of

the last brehon of the counts Desmond. The majority were collected in Ireland by the famous Welsh antiquary Edward Lhwyd. Fallen into the hands of Sir John Sebright, they were given by this one to the library of Trinity College in the face of the urging entreaties from Edmund Burke, and in the hope that one day they could be translated.

The translation itself, in spite of its undeniable merit, is not always safe from reproach. It kept a large number of Irish words, for lack of being able to specify the meaning of them , and among these words are those which characterize the status of the persons and indicate the value of the things. Elsewhere, by having the care to point out it,the translators inserted words and modified their meaning for more clearness. These changes are not always successful. In a perfectly clear passage, they create an ambiguity while adding in the middle, “according to others.” In another passage, they translate the word canon by that of Gospel. The state of mind which produced these modifications is easy to grasp. There are others which are less explained. If, in the British Isles, after the word queen the word of subject comes naturally, it is not a reason for to translate “queen and subject” when there is “the queen and the non-queens,” especially when the gloss explains why the first wife of the king was alone entitled to the appellation of queen and that the others were not queens. Elsewhere, it is translated “ king and vassal ” when there is “the king or the men having the same blood; ” further, instead of the “members of the tribe,” it is said “the follower of the chief. ” There is therefore no illusion to have, the Senchus came to us only after having undergone two deteriorations: one when it was translated from the berla-feini into the Irish of the 10th to the 13th century, the other when it was translated from Irish into English. The showed translations in what follows are therefore given without prejudice. The Senchus-Mor is not less one of the monuments of a disappeared society. If some stones were changed in the building, if a false color covers some of the parts, the broad outlines, remain pure, and the less trained mind can find again in it the primary originality.

Two things give to this book a singularly worthy nature. It is a law without lawgiver a collection of ancient customs, precedents and examples, international conventions concluded, between the three great tribes which shared Ireland, and of judgments given by brehon and poets to whom a divine inspiration was attributed. Sen-Mac-Aige had on his cheeks three red spots all the time that the judgment was bad, and his cheeks became again white when the judgment was good. Connla, thanks to the Holy Spirit, never returned iniquitous verdict. If Fachtna returned a bad verdict, all the fruits of the region fell, and the cows repelled their calves; when the judgment was equitable, the fruits became abundant, and milk filled the udders of the cows. Fithal never pronounced a bad verdict, because he bore in him the truth of nature. Morann never returned a verdict without having a chain around his neck: when the judgment was bad, the chain tightened him up to the point when he was choked; when it was good, it fell from itself. The respect for the religion comes to join the prestige of antiquity. These habits, these precedents, these agreements, were submitted to saint Patrick, the apostle of Ireland. He made erased all that in the former law contradicted the new law, all that in the law of nature (Recht aicnid), as it was called, did not agree with the Gospel. The Senchus-Mor thus became the Cain-Patraic. On one hand, it contains the institutions of the former Celtic society, on the other hand, it is the testimony of the alliance of the clan and of Christianity.

What was therefore this barbarity, or, for better saying, this society towards which St. Patrick showed so little kindness? Before the Senchus, the preamble says, the world was in the equality.

Ireland therefore started with equality (recht aicnid), and the word equality is not here a misprint or a drafting accident; it is a question, in several parts of the Senchus and of the glosses, of a social state previous the clan system, and which is called with a kind of contempt a time when each one was only responsible for one’s debts and crimes. The authors of the glosses do not know how to interpret the word of equality: equality of ignorance and of injustice, equality, the system where there is of no other law only the strength, equality in what concerns the right to be compensated... In other words, what we call today equality before the law. Every chief rules over his land, whether it be small or whether it be great. Such equality seems to have greatly displeased to the Christian monks authors of this pseudo-Prolog.

In the relations of the members of the tribe between them the greatest benevolence prevails.

What we admire especially, it is the respect for the parents and the divine love for the old age, which is still today the most beautiful feature of the Irish character. The children are held to look after their old or crippled parents. The product of eight cows is allocated to each senior unless he can sing and can earn a living by amusing the others. When a family neglects the care of feeding an old man and that

another family nourishes him, this one becomes his heiress. There are still in the law of seizures a large number of provisions which show the high price that people attached to honor and which show a great delicacy of feelings. The attacks against honor, the defamation, the satire, all that can make a man blush, are punished like the theft and the murder. Offense is worsened when the insult applies to the dead, it is a man who is scoffed or at a woman from whom you claim to have got the favors. In the things necessary to life and therefore which cannot be the object of seizures, they have the chessboard of the chief, the lapdog of the wife and the toys of the children , their hurley, balls, and hoops. The goodly things which remove dullness from little boys, viz. hurley, balls, and hoops, must be restored,” the gloss specifies.

Undoubtedly we distinguish three orders of people placed in different legal conditions: owners or chiefs at all the degrees, between whom a kind of equality exists; the tenants, who are divided into two categories; finally, the men for whom the law does not provide special protection because they are under the protection of another man. The clan is nevertheless generous and develops its action.

These people of unequal status are of the same race and of the same blood, and the social kinship causes between them these relations of affection and devotion which are the honor of the clan. That in the 5th century there is in Ireland like everywhere men belonging to other men we will not see there like elsewhere hatred and contempt. In no Germanic or feudal, legislation, we will read this sentence of the Senchus: “Of the three objects of the law - government, honor and the soul - government belongs to the chiefs, honor and soul belongs to all.” When it is a question of the respect for the weakness and of the care for the poor persons, these half-savages and half-pagan small clans, which, in their laws revised by St. Patrick, call still sacred forests the druidic forests, show more humanity than the civilized and Christian societies. Each year, part of the territory of the tribe is put at the disposal of the chief to be distributed between the poor. The first duty, the Senchus says, for their rights precede all rights and the immediate seizure at the end of the one-day deadline is then required, is to provide those “the magic wand struck. ” Five cows is the fine for neglecting to provide for the maintenance of the fool, ten cows if it is a madwoman. Same care for the child who loses his mother while coming into the world, same care for the casualty and the patient. “The sick is to be placed in a proper house, that it be not a dirty snail-besmeared house; or that it be not one of the three inferior houses, i.e., that there be four openings out of it , that the sick man may be seen from every side, and water must run across the middle of it.”

Instead of the law about the social kinship and the other great laws announced by the preamble, the authors of the publication of the Senchus give us in the first volume the law about the seizures, i.e., a code of civil and criminal procedure. And our frustration is all the more high as this law on the seizures is of a difficult reading. We have difficulty to find one’s way in the middle of all these 15-century-old professional subtleties. The law on the seizures for example admits exceptions in favor of those who are in the army, fighting for the tribe, and of those who look after a patient.

Nevertheless we would be wrong to complain. The procedure involves the civil law and the criminal law and the needs for an entire social order proceed in front of your eyes when you come to the following paragraphs:

“Why is the seizures termed four fold? Because there are four things for which seizure is levied : one’s own crime, the crime of a near kinsman, the crime of a middle kinsman, and the crime of a kinsman in general.”

“Because the four nearest tribes bear the crime of each kinsman of their stock.”

“Because there are four who have an interest in everyone who sues or is sued: the tribe of the father, the chief, the church, the tribe of the mother, or the foster father.”

“Because everyone gives pledges for his cattle in right of co-occupancy of land to the four neighbors next to him on the two sides and the two ends of his land.”

Then these four axioms come:

“A notice is served upon the tribe of the debtor and the nearest kinsman of this tribe is sued.” “Every tribe is liable after the absconding of a member of it.”

“They charge the liability of each kinsman upon the other, in the same way as he obtains his inheritance.”

“The seizures they have are two: seizures from a debtor and seizures from a kinsman.”

Here is the system of the clan in all his strength. Its principle, it is the solidarity of each member of the tribe.

Compared to the hardness of the modern society, which so easily sacrifices the individual to the progress of the species, it is understood that the Irishmen, humiliated and stripped, look with indulgence towards the time of the brehon laws.

Let the poor of Ireland nevertheless not think that in the past centuries everyone was chief or lived the life of chiefs. Each page of the Senchus shows that, if there existed a kind of equality among the chiefs, there was inequality between the men of the upper class and those of the lower class. The latter were reduced to a legal condition badly defined by the laws of seizures, and that we are tempted to compare with that of the slaves or of the serfs, although, of course, the analogy is not complete. The cowherd, the shepherd, the carter, the employee and the worker of any species had neither the right to contract without the authorization of their master, nor that to sue without being guaranteed by a chief. They were placed by the law in the social status of the minors and of the lunatics. These things, it will be said, were common to all the legislation of these unhappy times. It is therefore necessary to see what belongs exclusively to the system of the clan and what pertains the primitive Christianity which, let us remind it, never required from its followers that they have no slave (there is no word about the mandatory mandatory abolition of slavery in the 4 Gospels. Same situation besides in the Islam which followed).

In the system of the social kinship, there cannot be other penalties than pecuniary damage. At the same time, in this system, each one being responsible for the crime or the debt of others - crime or debt have the same consequences - it is in the interest of all to make the criminal or the debtor escape. So all the skill of the brehon applied to find the way of bringing people before the courts. It is the first interest; all the others are sacrificed.

Whoever believes to have a civil or criminal complaint to make against somebody starts by seizing his property, and naturally the portion of this property easiest to transport, his cattle. He places them in an enclosure, that of the chief, that of the church, or his own enclosure, after having served notice of it, and in the case where, on presentation of the notice, guarantee was not offered to him. There the cattle are kept and fed during a certain number of days, three, five or ten, at the expenses of the distressed person, who pays, moreover, a fine of approximately two cows for each day that it is long in appearing. At the end of the fixed period, if i he did not appear, the seized animals are confiscated, and another seizure against the same person, or one of his parents, or one of the members of his tribe, is carried out , and it is done thus again until the attacked person or his assignee agreed to appear: It is not all. As, in the event of default, the parents until the seventeenth degree for the ordinary cases are sued successively, those have the right to do a seizure on each person responsible for a closer degree.

When it is against a chief that a legal action is taken, the law is more favorable to the defendant. First the man of a lower rank who attacks the one of a higher rank is obliged to buy the assistance of another chief under penalty of paying a considerable fine and to be put off side for one day, one week, one month, one year. Then the long delays which must go by between the notice of the seizures and the seizures itself is doubled, in order to give more facility to get a guarantee. Lastly, the damage and the fines risked for the illegalities to which the complication of the procedure exposes unceasingly are quadrupled when the opposing party is the king or a person of the same rank, doubled when it is a chief of the second rank, and simple when it is a man of a lower class.

The time granted to each one to speak in front of the judge and to breathe is also measured according to the dignity of the person. It was to be almost impossible to get justice from the rich man, and to even to sue him. As a remedy for this denial of justice, our ancestors resorted to a process of a strange nature.

At the same time as you gave notice of the seizures to a chief, you had, under penalty of fine and under penalty also to be nonsuited of the request, to fast at his door until he had provided guarantees. That is also practiced in the Indies, where we often saw regiments of sepoys appeared to the door of a nabob and asking for the payment of their pay while threatening to let themselves starve , if they were not paid. Some people claim that this way of obtaining justice is very effective in India. It was probably also the case in the former Ireland; it would be the same thing even in our country if somebody were established before the door of your house and declared to all comers that he is there, starving, to testify that you committed an injustice as regards him, the constraint would be enormous, and you would be in a hurry to withdraw yourself from it, even the complaint would be unjust. [Editor’s note. We call today hunger strike such a practice].

I do not discuss the morality of this justice, which made order from disorder, as it was recently said in France without suspecting that they repeated so the favorite maxim of the brehon laws. I make this simple point. If the effect of the social kinship is such as, to bring a man in front of the judge, it is

necessary to start by seizing his goods before the opening of the lawsuit, these same social kinship unceasingly had to excite each one to take up arms in order to defend the man of his tribe. And when you see this litigant who comes to fast at the door of the chief and who undoubtedly assembles around him all the population to which he tells his complaints, we cannot help thinking that a riot was to be the result of that more often than a lawsuit. The legislation of the brehon is therefore not in contradiction, as it is claimed, with the history of Ireland, this history which can be summarized in two words: powerlessness to defend oneself against a foreign enemy, so weak it is; powerlessness to remain one day in peace with its neighbor.

In a clan society, since any private affair becomes clan matter, most affairs must be settled like the affairs between states are decided , i.e., by war, plunder and injustice, and the brehon undoubtedly made more peace treaties than they pronounced sentences. Were there among former Irishmen some political freedoms, some assemblies, some mallum, as among the Franks? Yes and not; there were some of them as far as the clan system made it possible. With this regime, it can’t be a question neither of general meetings of the nation, nor even of general meetings of each one of the three big people which shared Ireland. But according to a gloss of the Senchus, the owners of lands, who were required to accompany the king to war, were entitled at the same time to contribute with him to the settlement of the questions which interested several close tribes, and all, i.e., probably all the free men, decided war jointly. All also had to distribute the two tributes called “food- tribute of the king” and “food tribute of the chief .” These names of “food-tribute" can hide true taxes in kind. We have the distribution of this tax by provinces in the 8th century, and the Senchus informs us that in the 5th century when the chief dies before having received the tribute, his heir has the right to claim the arrear. To these two loads, several others were added some others which show a certain level of civilization: the construction of the bridges out of stone and wood, the maintenance of the fairgrounds, the maintenance of the roads. The roads were divided into three classes, and the roads of first class were called royal roads. People must put repaired three times a year: during the winter, during the fairs, at the time of the horse races. Then a whole series of common work came, the tilling of the common fields, the keeping of the common cattle, the maintenance of the common mill, and the care of the fisheries or of the common nets.

All this work, as well as the construction and the victualling of the forts, were supervised by the chiefs, and the brother alone then had the right to achieve the task of the brother; but, in a time when war was the first of the activities and the plunder the only source of wealth, the military obligations were to be most strict of all. Whoever had a land was to follow the king to the three annual wars and to come to join him each time it was necessary. The one who had a shield and could use it was required to take part in all the expeditions of plundering, and the rest of the people was to be ready every day to repel the attacks of the pirates, as well as the incursions of the neighboring tribes, and every seven days, in the event of peace, to hunt the wolves.

The heaviest fine is inflicted to the one who disturbs the meeting of the chiefs by causing tumult. The one who, while the chiefs are in a conference or feast, cuts the bridles of the horses and makes them escape must, as compensation, to pay the amount of the value of the honor damage due to the three nobler characters in the meeting or to the seven nobler, according to the opinion of a female brehon of the 2nd century. Lastly, the one who undermines the hillock of grass of the assembly place must fill with milk the hole he made. The dispossessed chief, if he is of second class - because the same privilege does not apply to the king - may, to comfort himself, give to himself the probably dangerous, pleasure, to seizures the cattle of the tenants who did not defend him, and even of all those to whom he reproaches for having plotted against him.

Among the singularities which characterize the clan system, it is noticed that every foreigner is regarded as suspect and treated as an enemy. If the foreigner, i.e., the inhabitant of a nearby territory, has no property on the territory of the tribe, he is arrested, even if he is a minstrel, and is deported.

The one in the house of whom he stayed or ate becomes for twenty-four hours person in charge of his crimes.

If the foreigner has properties on the territory of the tribe, he is not entitled to the complete income of his estate, and when he sues, he must be assisted by a member of the tribe under the penalty of being dismissed. There is an exception in favor of the shipping trade. The tribe does not owe protection simply to the foreign ship, it must feed the crews. When a ship enters a port, the head of the family of the place goes to the king, and this one undertakes a seizure against the tribe to guarantee the execution of the law.

It is not enough to have a dignity, it should also be deserved. There is indeed strengthening of paganism if an evil deed is avenged (discussed translation).

The insurrection against the king who does not his tenant justice, against the shameless bishop, the speculator poet or the unworthy chief is the most sacred of duties. The cases of forfeiture are singularly multiplied. Almost all the crimes, including defamation, lead to it legally, the ones when there is recidivism, the others without recidivism.

In the paragraph relating to the damage or fees granted to kings, bishops, brehon and poets, it is a question of a fifth class of people who enjoy the same privilege. It is the chief or the owner (the two words have the same meaning here) who always has his cauldron full. This chief was called in Gaelic language the brewy or briugu, and the translators left the Irish word in the English translation, although using glosses the sense was easy to specify: a innkeeper or hospitaller.

Whoever had a tenant was a chief, and the chiefs of the last degree are those who have one tenant.In the first degree are the brewys or briugu, whose honor, as a gloss says, is to keep on their premises fatty animals unsuitable for reproduction. The brewy or briugu of the first rank, because there are two, is a man who lives in a house with four doors, through which a running water brook runs, to aerate and drain moisture. He must support at least two hundred workers and have two hundred heads of cattle of each species. He must have its cauldron ever hanging from the pot-hook and always full with three species of meat, beef, mutton and pork, with a right proportion of fat and lean meat in order to always be able to fill the duties of hospitality. It is necessary that can be drawn from the cauldron a food sufficient for all comers and suitable for each one according to his rank: the haunch for the king, the bishop and the brehon, the leg for the young chief, the head for the charioteer, and the fillet steak for the queen. N.B. To the king opposed in his government, only the cheap cuts of the animal will be given, because he is entitled then only to half of the fees of his rank. It is as compensation for the loads of hospitality that higher damage or fees were granted to the brewy (briugu) but if, on the one hand, he receives considerable damage for all the injuries which are caused to him and frequent fees for all the witnesses that he has to bear, he is exposed, on the other hand, under the terms of the social kinship, to pay the debts, the compensations and the fines of an infinity of people. His situation is almost as precarious as that of the kings. There were probably in the 5th century as many sons of kings and sons of brewy-briugu reduced to misery or a poor social status, that there is some of them today. The Prolog of Senchus ends in a call on the revolt against the chiefs who do not fulfill their duties.

ANCIENT LAWS AND INSTITUTES OF IRELAND (SENCHUS MOR) VOLUME 1.

A ro siacht recht aicnid mar nad rochat recht litri.

The law of nature had prevailed when the written law did not reach….The world was at an equality until the Senchus Mor was established. The source of injustice, before the Senchus, was that everyone was equal before the law ???.

Intud i ngeindtleacht gnim olc mad indechur. There is strengthening of paganism if an evil deed is avenged (discuted tralaton).

CRITH GABLACH.

Besides the Senchus Mor There will also be much a question in the following study of the Crith Gablach, an Irish treatise of the 8th century describing an Irish feudal pyramid, perhaps somewhat idealized. Or not.

MORE DETAILED ANALYSIS.

THE MARRIAGE.

WHATEVER WE MAY SAY THERE EXIST EXAMPLES OF MONOGAMIST MARRIAGE IN THE ANCIENT CELTIC SOCIETY.

In the Irish text heading Boroma, a king of Leinster marries the oldest daughter of the king of the kings in Ireland. He is not satisfied with this marriage, goes and meet his father-in-law, and tells him: The one of your daughters I had died, give me the other. He gets what he asked.

The older sister, seeing the junior one arriving, dies of pain and the sorrow caused to the junior by this tragic end makes this one dying.

The king of Ireland regarded the king of Leinster as guilty of a double murder; he undertook against him a war in which he was victorious and following which, to avenge the death of his daughters, he imposed to the inhabitants of Leinster, as composition, an enormous tribute.

These facts appear to date of the second century of our era. It is difficult not to admit a historical value to them since the tribute in question was still paid in the seventh century.

The Roman law does not know the bride price: in Roman law the husband receives a dowry and gives nothing in return; an Irish scientist of the eleventh century, who had studied the Roman law, thought that the bride-price, tinnscra, was a use unknown in the whole world, except in Ireland and invented on this subject an incredible history whose conclusion was, of course: “It is from this circumstance that it is the men who purchase wives in Ireland for ever, whilst it is the husbands that are purchased by the wives throughout the world besides (translation O’Curry).

Caesar’s Commentaries give us, about the marriage on the Continent, two contradictory indications. The first one is relating to the system of the goods. The wives bring a dowry, dos, the Latin author says. It is what is called in Gaelic language tinol, literally the “collection” i.e., the whole of the presents given to the bride by her father, her mother and her other parents.

With this dowry, in the time of Caesar, goods of the husband for an equal value are joined together : it is the bride-price, in Gaelic language tinnscra, which, for without fortune people, could consist simply of a silver ring accompanied by some household utensils, but which, among rich people, were more important. At the origin, every a little considerable bride-price or tinnscra had to be a herd. Later, a tinnscra could be property.

We also find the bride price in the Welsh laws where it is called cowyll.

Indeed the Welsh law distinguishes, when it is the marriage, three sums to be paid.

1° The purchase price of the wife, gober, gobyr, or amober, amobor, amobyr, in Latin merces; it is the coibche of the Irishmen.

2° The bride-price, coguyll, couyll, cowyll, in Gaelic language tinnscra. 3° The dowry, aguedy, agweddy, in Gaelic language tinol.

“There are, an ancient triad recorded in the Dimetian Code says, three shames of a maiden: the first is, on her father saying to her: maiden, I have given you to a man; the second is when she first goes into the bed to her husband; the third is when she first comes from the bed among men. For the first, her amobyr is given to her father, for the second her cowyll is given to herself, for the third, the father gives her agweddy to the husband.”

The cowyll or bride-price, given by the husband like the Germanic morgengabe, is the price of the virginity of the wife. But, in the Celtic use, it is paid before the first night, instead of being paid afterwards as among the Germanic ones. Among the Welsh men, the agweddy or the dowry appears to have been generally the triple of the bride-price, and, in addition to the dowry given by the family of the wife to the husband, the woman could, in Wales in the Middle Ages, on the continent under the Roman empire, receive from her family paraphernalia called by the Roman jurists peculium, by the Welsh argyvreu. The dowry was distinct from the paraphernalia.

Could the Celtic wife, in the time of Caesar, have paraphernalia? It is what we cannot affirm, but it is certain that she had some of them at least sometimes in Great Britain before the Roman conquest. Cartimandua, queen of the Brigantes, i.e., of the surroundings of York, and, held her kingdom as paraphernalia in the middle of the first century; she had married one of her subjects named Venutius, a great warrior, but she was queen and he was not king. She dismissed him, replaced him by Vellocatus, squire of this scorned husband, and kept her kingdom by associating her new husband with the royalty.

Among the Bretons , in the first century of our era before the Roman conquest, the wives could inherit in the absence of a son and, consequently, to have a fortune more considerable than their husband; in this case, it was them who probably had the authority in the household, like that occurs in the Irish law of the Middle Ages in such a case, i.e., when there is

“Lanamnas fir for bantinchur” “union of a man on a woman's property” which sets the man in the place of the woman and the woman in the place of the man.

Cartimandua was, of course, the daughter of a king of the Brigantes who, like later Prasutagus, king of the Iceni, had left no son. She had inherited the kingdom of her father like, later, the daughters of Prasutagus claimed to inherit the kingdom of this one, and her husband had beside her the subordinate situation the wives have in the ordinary households. But it is there an exception on which it is useless to expand more.

We therefore find generally in Celtic law - in addition to the use of buying the women, which was Greek, Roman, Germanic, Indo-European, we may even say universal - two marriage habits, that of the dowry, Latin dos, Irish tinol, Welsh agweddy, the other, Germanic, that of the bride-price, German morgen-gabe, Irish tinnscra, Welsh cowyll.

According to Tacitus, the Germanic tribes knew only the bride-price: “The bride-price is brought by the husband to the wife,” the Roman historian wrote, “not by the wife to the husband.”

However we would be wrong to conclude from it that among the Germanic ones the use of the dowry given by the parents of the woman and brought by this one was absolutely unknown.

Undoubtedly, among the Germanic ones, the bride-price had a great importance; it could comprise a certain number of horses, of heads of cattle, even of slaves, and, when the real estate was established, it could consist of real estates.

In the law of the continental Celts of the time of Caesar, the bride price and the dowry were of equal value. On this point the continental Celtic use held the medium between the Germanic habit which exaggerated the importance of the bride price and the Greco-Roman law which did not know the bride price and which gave to the dowry a function whose the Germanic people have no idea.

In the Celtica of the moment of the conquest, the bride price and the dowry formed a capital allotted to the survivor of the two spouses according to a passage of the Commentaries by Caesar: “Whatever values the husbands have received in the name of dowry from their wives, making an estimate of them, they add the same amount out of their own estates. An account is kept of all these values conjointly, and the profits are laid by, whoever of them shall have survived [the other]; to that one the portion of both reverts together with the profits of the previous time.”

These values consisted of cattle, and the profits about which Caesar speaks were the young of these animals.”

The legend of St. Brigit gives us a characteristic example of the rights of the legitimate wife, cétmuinter, in Ireland. The druid Dubthach, who had a legitimate wife, bought a female slave made her his partner and got her pregnant, the legitimate wife threatened Dubthach with a divorce; however, while divorcing, she was to keep the bride-price that her husband had given her; so after a long resistance, the druid ends up in selling his partner to another master. Thus the Irish married woman has the right to divorce in the event of infidelity of her husband. We are there the extreme opposite of the status of the wife in the Islamic religion.

The technical word of the Irish law to designate the wife herself is cétmuinter. She is opposed to the de facto wife, literally “betrothed woman,” Ben urnadma. She must have same fortune and same birth that her husband; she and her children can cancel the detrimental contracts concluded by her husband without she agreed. When he did not give her husband legitimate causes of divorce and that this one buys another wife, the purchase price belongs to the first wife, to the detriment of the second

wife and of her parents. The second wife owes the price of honor to the first one, and the first marriage is dissolved; the husband who reconciles with his first wife owes her a new purchase price.

In Ireland, the legitimate wife - we do not speak about the concubine - was generally incompetent to contract validly without the assent of her husband; but this rule comprised exceptions: when the two spouses had the same fortune, Lanamnas comthinchuir , the wife validly made, as for her personal fortune, every advantageous contract; the assent of the husband was necessary only for the detrimental contracts and the wife had by reciprocity the right to demand the cancellation of the detrimental contracts made by the husband on his personal fortune.

In Ireland the married woman did not enter as in Rome the family of her husband. When her husband was killed, she was not entitled to the composition for a murder that she could not have avenged. If she remarried, it was with her family and not with that of her husband that she divided the price of her sale to her second husband. From there resulted, for the married woman, an independence of which the oldest example is given to us by Medb, queen of Connaught, one of the most important characters of the main piece of the Irish epic literature, that which tells us how this queen seized the bull of Cuailnge.

César writes that the husband has power of life and death on his wife. But the advantage of survival ensured to the husband as to the wife by the institution of the bride-price, also mentioned by Caesar, is not reconcilable with the right for the husband to kill his wife when it pleased to him. This right the husband had it on the de facto wife, without bride-price, generally his slave; we must recognize concubines of lower status in these wives, who, according to Caesar, are tortured by the parents of the husband when it is suspected one of them of having made the late husband die. The husband who would have killed his legitimates wife would have owed the compensation for murder, like later in Ireland the king of Leinster mentioned in connection with the institution of the Boroma (a tax).

The husband therefore has power of life and death only on the female slave who is used as a de facto wife by him, this slave is his thing, it is not a subject of law; but as for the legitimate wife, in Gaelic language cetmuinter, equivalent of the Roman materfamilias, if the husband kills her, the family of the wife avenge this crime.

SEPARATION.

In Irish civil law, the divorce by consent is licit, what it is said about the subject by the Irish canon law which, initially, allowed the divorce to the husband because of the adultery of the wife but which only then prohibited the divorce even due to adultery. This last rule is that which entered the “Irish canonical Collection,” where it is placed under the patronage of St. Patrick, although, according to another document, St Patrick has been in favor of the first system. The canonical Collection expresses thus: “It is not permitted to a man to put away his wife, except because of adultery.”

In short, the situation of the married women in Ireland, such as the oldest documents make it known by us, is about the same one as in Rome at the end of the Republic and under the Empire. The wives are independent of their husbands and have the ability to divorce. A husband who would have killed his wife would owe to the family of his wife the composition due for a murder.

FAMILY.

The family intervening in many procedures of Celtic Law, the former druids (brehon in Ireland) were therefore brought to define the various concerned perimeters of them, according to the circumstances, and therefore to give them a name.

Family (in the broad sense of a clan or almost) is said veni in old Celtic. From where in Gaelic language....

Geilfine. The family in the sense it is generally understood today , in other words, the three generations: grandparents’ children grandchildren.

Derbfine. Family extended to uncles and first cousins.

Iarfine. A generation is added. Great-grandparents, parents, children, grandchildren. Indfine. The same one but extended, cousins,great-great-uncle, etc.

Fine to taccuir. Takes into account also the adopted children (mac foesma).

Glasfine. Takes also into account the children whose father is an immigrant in the event of mixed marriage.The child is then regarded as a member by right of the family of the mother.

NB. As we will have been able to notice it, it is hardly question in all that of single parents or blended families, modern and exclusively modern concepts.

RIGHTS OF THE FATHER AND PATERNAL AUTHORITY.

When it is about a son in the usual sense of the word i.e., whose father is not dependent on him, the father can cancel every detrimental contract and every advantageous contract concluded by the son but it is necessary then he opposes in such a way that it is known of everybody. He can take back the goods of his son in every place he finds them; he is the owner :

1° of the price that his son received in the event of a sale,

2° of the unspecified object given to his son in mutual exchange.

And naturally the son cannot oppose neither to the advantageous contract or to the detrimental contract concluded by his father

MAJORITY (majority age).

The Indo-European primitive habit appears everywhere to have recognized to the fathers power of life and of death on their minors; but, generally, the marriage of the children, which usually took place at puberty, put an end to the parental rights. In the Roman law and in the Galatian Law, the parental rights lasted as much as the life of the father. This agreement of the two legislations, the Roman and the Galatian one, was observed by the Roman jurist Gaius, who lived in the second century of our era. Certain Celts had brought as far as Asia Minor the national law which adjusted the power of the father on the son in a way identical to the Roman law.

For the Romans, this agreement of the two legislations was all the more striking that the Greek law, like the Germanic law, gave for an end to the parental rights the majority of the son, fixed at the age of seventeen or eighteen years by the law of Athens, fourteen years by the Germanic custom. It is the age of the military service which, about identical to the age of puberty, fixes, among the Greeks and the Germanic tribes, the date of the releasing of parental authority for male children. The same habit existed among Welshmen in the Middle Ages: “At the end of fourteen years, the Venedotian Code says, the father is to bring his son to the lord, argluyd…..and he is himself to answer for every claim that be made on him; and is to possess his own property: thenceforward his father is not to correct him.”

In Ireland, as in Rome, the parental rights on the son have a term; but this end is not other than the death of the father, except the case of emancipation. The Irish law of the Middle Ages therefore preserves to the parental rights the duration devoted by the Indo-European primitive habit. The Senchus mor expresses it as follows: “Everyone is foolish who deals with the son of a living father in the absence of his father, without [his] authority, without [his] subsequent agreement.”

This incompetence extends to every kind of contract. We read in the same tract that is prone to opposition” every fuidir, (kind of serf) every bothach (man housed in a hut ) every foster son, until the completion of his fosterage, every pupil during the period of his pupilage to his tutor, every son of an alive father, who is not free from obligation.”

However, in Irish law, the parental rights are decreased by the incapacity of the father. The father who can no longer be self-sufficient and who becomes dependent on his son is regarded as incompetent.

FAMILY SOLIDARITY.

Family solidarity was not a vain word in former druidism.

To take care of the old people is a load of the family in general. But it was especially a duty of the son and the legal sanction was the right for the father to disinherit the son who refused to look after him. The father that his sons abandon can take an “adopted son,” mac foesma, and give him the price of a man, i.e., seven female slaves, or the equivalent, thirty-five heads of cattle. However, this adoption is not valid without the assent of the family, i.e., without all the parents until the fourth degree, having declared that they refused to give the disabled , or sick, father the care required by his state, have, either willingly or otherwise, ratified the adoption.

The son who provides the needs of his father can validly conclude certain contracts without the assent of his father and has the right to require the cancellation of some other contracts if his father concluded them. Here how the Senchus Mor speaks about that point:

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“A son who supports his father impugns every bad contract of his father’s, he does not impugn any good contract.”

So is the father in relation to the son who supports him; he impugns every bad contract, he does not impugn any contract.

THE SOLIDARITY BEYOND THE NUCLEAR FAMILY.

This family solidarity was found in the duty of revenge. The most distant degree to which the duty of revenge was extended, in Irish law, was the fourth according to the way of counting of the Roman law; beyond the cousins, this obligation existed no longer.

NB. In other words, the terrible duty of revenge was limited to the closest parents.

When somebody was insolvent, the close relatives (father son, etc.) could be called upon. And in the event of murder when the family could not give the culprit, it became the debtor of the composition, after deducting the possessions of the culprit.

Let us notice that this mechanism in the event of insufficiency of payment could extend to the extended family (derbfine iarfine, indfine etc…) even to the superior levels in the event of insufficiency of the resources of the family.

If the culprit was the vassal of a nobleman, this nobleman became for example responsible for the payment; in the absence of this nobleman, every person who gave the culprit bed, clothing, food, was responsible; lastly, when the offended person or the family of the dead could not, using these various responsibilities, recover all that was owed, they had the resource to ask the king. There was in Ireland a legal maxim which could be translated as follows:

“Every man without a chief to the king”. And as they could not by definition seize a king, they made the seizures in three houses of the tribe of the culprit.

To validly accept a duel without the assent of his family was, for an Irishman, as impossible as to place himself in the slavery of a chief or, in general, as to manage his hereditary fortune without this assent. “Every clansman,” the Senchus mor says, “is able to keep his family land, he is not to sell it, or alienate it.” “If the clan acknowledges their bad contracts, they bear in common, according to circumstances, every compact with its returns.”

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THE FORMER CELTIC SOCIETY

(AND THE REST OF THE SENCHUS MOR).

ON THE CONTINENT.

The clientelism is a relationship between individuals of unequal economic and social status (the “patron” and his “clients”), based on reciprocal exchanges of goods and services and being established on the basis of personal bond usually thought in terms of moral obligation. Considered in this way it is a phenomenon shown in very diverse social contexts. In ancient Rome, the patricians supported a vast clientship of followers to whom, in compensation of their allegiance and political support, they provided their economic protection and pour out their generosity. In the feudal time, the relation linking a vassal with his lord supposed commitments of private nature implying mutual loyalty and assistance. In most traditional societies, the holders of authority were to justify their power and their prestige by distributing part of their wealth to their subordinates, in the form of gifts, emoluments or assistance.

A first feudal system based on the clientelism (relationship between patron = lord and client = vassal) existed in embryonic form among the Celts and the Germanic tribes.

The Celtic society of the former druidism is indeed a society of the feudal type but a society where what is important it is the man-to-man bonds.

During the Middle Ages, according to the model of the man-to-man relations, bonds were also created between the warlike class and the class of the armers. In this system as it is presented by the medieval elites, essentially clerical, like Chrestien de Troyes, the knight guaranteed protection to farmers, who in exchange provided him subsistence and means of being equipped.

This protection took several forms:

warlike: personal fights of the knight against attacks;

defensive: shelter provided by the castle for people, cattle and harvests;

hunting: as much as a war training, hunting was useful for the farmer community, which was thus cleared from the wild animals destroying the cultures (stags, deer, roe deer, wild boars) or threatening for the cattle (wolves, foxes, bear).

Lords and vassal have reciprocal rights and duties. Both are linked by a bond stronger than friendship. For vassals, the lord is a guard while, for a lord, a vassal more is an enemy less.

The duties of the vassal are the assistance and the council.

•The military help (called host) consists in taking part in the defense of the fiefdom or of the kingdom. The time of the service is fixed by the habit (generally, forty days). Financial support is due for paying the ransom of a captive lord or when the lord wants to marry his oldest daughter, to make his oldest son a knight, to buy a land or - as from the 11th century - to leave in a crusade.

•The lords ask counsel from their vassals as soon as they have a decision to make. They also join them together to form their court and to do justice. The vassals achieve thus their counsel duty.

In compensation of these duties, the lord must protect his vassal against his enemies, make him benefit from his prestige and his influence. But especially, he must be generous towards him, i.e. (as from the 11th century) to entrust a fiefdom to him.

But unlike what will follow in the West, the Celtic feudality had as a base, not the concession of lands, but that of livestock. The ground is indeed in theory property of the state, of the city, of the tribe. The king can, as a magistrate, authorize a citizen to take possession of a portion of territory in order to settle his residence there. It is not as feudal suzerain in the English way that he acts. In the story entitled “the cause of the battle of Cnucha,” we see the king of the kings Cathair, who reigned in the second century of our era, assigning to his druid a piece of land in order to build there a dwelling ; he imposes on him no royalty, no service, he does not concede this ground as a fiefdom. When approximately five centuries later, Diarmait and Blathmaic, sons of Aed Slane, jointly high kings,

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divided Ireland between the inhabitants and gave to each one nine furrows of marsh, as much of ground and as much of forest, this distribution was not done as a land fiefdom.

As we have already mentioned, it above, the oldest form of the contract which produces vassalage and that we may call a feudal contract in Celtic land is therefore the contract of livestock. By the livestock contracts, the taker receives from the lessor one or more heads of cattle and contracts as a consequence obligations that this contract determines.

The cattle are the oldest currency. Among the Germanic tribes, in the time of Tacitus, the cattle were the only wealth; the compositions for the crimes and offenses were discharged in horses and cattle. Among the Greeks of Homer, the beautiful girls are those whose marriage will bring back many cows to their father when he sells them to their husband. Finally, everyone knows that the Latin pecunia, derived from the primitive pecus “cattle,” points out the memory of the primitive time where Rome did not know another currency only the domestic animals.

Ireland passed through this primitive state to which the Senchus Mordates back, except the gloss, and to which also all the other oldest monuments of the Irish law dates back. The Celtic chief could not have the land at his disposal in favor of his vassal since the property of the land was regarded as depending on the domain of the tribe-State; on the other hand, he gave them cattle, as also did the Germanic people.

The real fiefdom dates only from times when the Celtic system of clientelism, expelled by the Roman conquest, was brought back there by the Germanic peoples. Those found while coming the Roman imperial system of land ownership which then changed the conditions of the primitive vassalage and gave it a real base originally unknown of the Celtic and Germanic world.

The word fiefdom nevertheless preserved in the Middle Ages a meaning still in conformity (to a certain extent) with its primitive value and with its etymology.

Beside the real fiefdom, which plays such a large part the Middle Ages indeed also knew the money- fief, fief-rent or feudum de bursa which consisted of a money revenue. In the contract which gives rise to this fief, the money takes the place of the cattle, as it did in the compensation for crime such as the oldest Germanic laws regulate it. The accounts of the Middle Ages often offer to us a chapter entitled Fiefs, and this chapter is devoted to the money wages or fees paid by the accountant as remuneration of various services done for the person in the interest of whom the account is done. As we have had already the opportunity to say it previously, “salary” or “emoluments” is still one of the meanings of the English word fee, which is identical to the Gothic faihu, “cattle.” The oldest salaries were paid in cattle, and when the wage-earning contracted a commitment of which the duration reached several years, the contract of livestock was the natural form of the agreement; the wage-earning received a certain quantity of cattle, with responsibility to deliver to the lessor a part of the young of the animals and to do certain services for him.

It is cattle that were to have received the clientes and the obaerati with whom the Helvetian Orgetorix was surrounded at the same time as with his ten thousand slaves, familia, when, in the year 60 before our era, accused of high treason, he appeared in the court of the Tribe-State and got through terror the deferment of the case. The powerful men who, thanks to their fortune, at that time in the country rented men, and who, by this means, seized the royalty, had given these men some cattle as livestock. The silver and gold currency was then recent; it was hardly probably used but in the trade, where the relations with the Greeks had introduced it; to modify the forms of a contract as old and as important as the feudal contract, a long interval of time is needed that had not yet passed when, in the year 58 before our era, Caesar started the conquest.

Below the equites or knights, Caesar mentions some clients and ambacti or servi (some slaves according to the Roman terminology). However such a terminology is misleading. The ambactus is consequently a kind of slave but who is distinguished from the Roman servus in that he is armed and in that he accompanies his master to war. This important difference fraught in consequences and revealing of a certain state of mind (of a certain confidence in the relationship) justifies besides that the word slave is not used in this case (as regards the Celtic world in any event).

It is therefore with this reservation that it is necessary to admit the assertion of Festus, that ambactus is a Celtic word meaning servus and used already in this meaning by Ennius (239-169 before our era). The Celtic ambactus was therefore also a warrior, maxim contrary to the rules of the Roman law about the status of the slaves as we saw it, but, moreover, he probably had like the doer-céle in Ireland the right to leave a miserly and hard master for a more liberal and more gentle one, who made him capable of refunding his debt towards the first; we already quoted the passage of the commentaries where Caesar complains about these ambitious rich persons who used their fortune to rent men and

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who by this means reached royalty. The ambactus was consequently to a certain extent a free man, but he was no longer entitled to the price of his honor; the regard and the influence whose measure was given by the more or less high amount of the honor price among the members of the aristocracy was missing for him.

In a passage of the De Bello Gallico, the expression servi et clientes appear to express the same idea as elsewhere the formula ambacti et clientes.

“A little before this period, Caesars says, slaves and dependents, who were ascertained to have been beloved by them, after the regular funeral rites for the chiefs were completed, were burnt together with them.”

“When any war occurs the knights are engaged in war,” Caesar reports elsewhere” and those of them most distinguished by birth and resources, have the greatest number of ambacti et clientes around them.”

However the Irish law distinguishes two kinds of livestock: slave livestock and free livestock; from where two kinds of vassals : the slave vassals, the free vassals. They are the free vassals that Caesar apparently calls clientes and the non-free vassals he calls servi. But as we already had the opportunity to say it, such a terminology is more than reducing.

The ambact is a kind of servus but of servus which is distinguished from the Roman slave in that he is armed and in that he accompanies his master to war. It is therefore with this important reservation, let us repeat it, that it is necessary to admit the assertion of Festus, that ambactus is a Celtic word meaning servus and used with this value by Ennius.

THE SPECIFIC CASE OF THE IRELAND IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES.

SOCIAL HIERARCHICAL ORDER.

In the Irish society of the Early Middle Ages, the higher social classes (nemed) are, in the order, and the druids having disappeared.

The kings.

The aire or members of the nobility (flaith). They are the equivalents of the equites or knights of Caesar (the lower degree of nobility was that of oc-aire).

The men of letters or scientists, the storytellers, poets, jurists, file or fili (who are equated to them). The commoners are called midboth.

NB. Christianity in Ireland replaced the druids by the Christian clergy that it raised on the level of the nobility; it preserved the same dignity to the file or fili (veledae) who were not some druids druids but druids specialized in the letters.Above the king of Tribe-State (tuath) there was the king of a province or king of a fifth of the island (coiced). And lastly above the kings of the province there was the king of these kings (ri ruirech = rix ro airecon).

The honor price (the measure of the weight in the society in a way) of these various characters varies according to the texts.

After the Senchus Mor the honor of the king of the kings or rix ro airecon was worth that of four kings of Tribe-State and came to eighty-four cows, or a hundred and forty cattle heads of average value.

The honor of the king of a province was worth that of three kings of tribe-States. Sixty-three cows or a hundred and five heads of cattle of average value.

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According to Crith Gablach, on the other hand, the price of the honor of the king of tkings was only all in all the double of that of a king of Tribe-State i.e., 42 cows.

All these contradictions in any event don’t matter since we are there in the former druidism and nobody would think of paying his fines in female slaves or cows.

Below the kings the nobility or flaith whose members were called aire began.

The first category of the aire was made up of those who had under them some vassals. The whole of the vassals of a chief was called déis, in the genitive désa.

The chiefs who had some vassals were divided into four classes: aire forgill, aire tuise, aire ard, aire désa. It was them who formed, strictly speaking, the nobility or flaith: a passage of the Senchus Mor says that the flaith goes from the aire désa to the king. The other aire formed a kind of lower nobility between the flaith itself and the simple free man.

The aire forgill or “noble of superior testimony,” i.e., the one of the noblemen whose witness statement reaches the highest value, has, according to the Crith gablach, forty vassals, ceile, half free, soer céile, half serfs, ceile-gialna or doer céile. The price of his honor, the gloss of Senchus Mor says , is of thirty heads of cattle i.e., five less than for a king.

The aire tuise or the “noble of first rank,” thus named because he precedes in dignity those of whom it will be a question, has twelve free vassals free and fifteen serf vassals, in all twenty-seven, thirteen less than the aire forgill. The price of his honor is fixed at twenty heads of cattle, séd, including sixteen-two-year-old heifers, samaisc, and four cows: ten heads less than when it is the aire forgill.

The aire ardd or “high noble,” high compared to the aire désa, has seven vassals less than the aire tuise, i.e., he has twenty of them, half free and half serf. The price of his honor, lesser of five heads of cattle than of the aire tuise, comes only to fifteen heads of cattle including twelve-two-year-old heifers and three cows.

The aire désa or “noble with vassals” must, the Crith Gablach says, have ten vassals, namely five free, five serf.

The price of his honor is also represented by the figure ten, ten horned animals, including eight-two- year-old heifers and two cows.

Below the aire désa two classes of aire come which have no vassals, the bo-aire, the oc-aire.

The bo-aire or “cow noble” has twelve cows, the price of his honor is of five heads of cattle. A variety of the boaire is the bruighfer who has twenty cows, and for whom the honor price comes to six heads of cattle.

The ôc-aire or “noble beginning,” literally “young noble,” has seven cows. The price of his honor is of three cattle heads, i.e., of three-two-year-old heifers.

Below the aire comes the free man of lower status, midboth, who has nothing, or at least who has less fortune than the oc-aire. His honor is estimated only one head of cattle, it is still a heifer, but this heifer is less than two years old.

As we have had already the opportunity to say it previously, in Ireland the ôcaire, i.e., the noble one of the lowest rank, received sixteen heads of cattle for an annual rent of a two-year-old male calf still deprived of horns. That formed an interest of a little more than six and a half percent a year.

The bôaire, to whom thirty heads of cattle were given, i.e., by counting five average animals for three cows, eighteen cows, was to provide each year the eighteenth of this value, that is to say a cow of interest; he therefore had to pay an interest of five and half percent only each year.

The taker of the free livestock owed.

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1° An annuity in kind equivalent to the third of the received capital, so that in Ireland the interest was for him of thirty-three percent.

2° A non-paid bodily manchuine, for example a participation in the building or the repairing of the fort of the chief, the harvest of the wheat fields of the chief, finally in his wars.

3° A renewable homage every three years and which consisted in standing in front of the lessor sitting.

When the livestock is free, the taker can, by giving back the cattle he received, to release himself from every obligation: “If the taker is weary of his deal, the Senchus Mor says, “he can give the stock back when he pleases .”

When, on the contrary, the livestock is slave, the general rule is that the taker cannot release himself without returning it

double of what he received; if he gives to the cancellation of the contract an injurious form for the lessor the price of the honor of the lessor, moreover, can be required by this last; the taker has the right to break the contract by a simple restitution only if the lessor has been excluded from the flaith (the nobility) for breach of duty.

The taker of the slave stock or fer midboth (commoner of last rank) had similar loads: bodily work, particularly service in war, harvest; the lessor fed the taker when he kept him busy, and the rent in kind was less heavy; the plebeian one, fer midboth, owed to each year a one-year-old heifer for a slave livestock of twelve cattle heads of average value: it was therefore only an interest of a little more than eight percent a year.

As in addition to the livestock itself, this plebeian, this ôc-aire, this bô-aire received from the financial backer the totality of the price of their honor, a financial backer who thus to some extent bought their honor them: i.e., a young animal with horns for the plebeian one, three for the 'ôc-aire, five (or three cows) for the bôaire, and that for this supplement of livestock, they did not owe any revenue; one can thus consider that on the “financial” level strictly the servile livestock was much more advantageous for the taker than the free livestock, only it was considered a degradation since the taker did not have any more right in this case at the cost of his honor, having already received it and once and for all on behalf of the financial backer, having thus to some extent sold it to the financial backer.

The system can appear strange to us but had as unexpected a result that it was more advantageous materially speaking to be regarded as a man without honor or to do a job regarded as dishonoring.

It is undoubtedly this type of vassal which Caesar regards as being no longer a member of the men who mean and to whom some honor is granted, and who are subjected to the noblemen, with the obligation to make the harvesting of the chief, to build or repair his fort, what made Caesar say that most of these plebeians were in a position identical to that of the Roman slave. But there was nevertheless between them and the Roman slave this great difference that they were the war companions of the master. The Irish text is categorical. And Caesar, who uses (wrongly) the word ambactus as a synonym of servus, and says that the military power of the chiefs depends, among other things, on the number of their ambacti; therefore agrees on this point with the Irish law.

The membership of the social class of the nemed had implications or concrete consequences because noblesse oblige and the privilege in fact was double -edged.

In most traditional societies , the holders of the authority were to justify their power and their prestige by distributing part of their wealth to their subordinates, in the form of gifts, emoluments or assistance.

In the event of a seizure of real estate property, whether the applicant of the seizure is or common status or of a class higher than that to which his debtor belongs, the Irish etiquette forbids from sending a before seizure summons to the people of nemed rank; it is necessary to go and fast an entire day at their door. That formed a formal notice more polite than the summons but more serious and which exposed to a greater sanction. The debtor in front of the door of whom his creditor fasts must offer him some food and promise either to pay him, or to make the question judge; as a guarantee, it is necessary that he gives him a solvent guarantor, or to deliver pledges to him.

Otherwise his debt is doubled; he owes, moreover, five heads of cattle of damages, and he is struck by a kind of curse; never will either God or man pay him; i.e., if, to get from one of his debtors the refunding of a debt he leads him in front of one of these arbitration judges who got from the public

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confidence a kind of semi-official authority, this judge will refuse to hear him until whole payment of the debt that the creditor requested through his fast.

But if the creditor, refusing to accept suitable offers made by his debtor, persists in fasting, he loses his claim. Lastly, if the one who fasts while claiming to be a creditor, is not a true debtor, he must, as compensation, to pay to his alleged debtor five cattle heads of compensation, not counting the damages fixed by the use for the insult or false accusation of which he made himself guilty towards him.

Noblesse oblige we say. We may suppose that the same was true on the Continent in the time of Caesar but, let us remind of it, all that it is some former druidism and we speak of that here only on a purely historical basis, not on a normative basis.

In any event this fundamental inequality of the Irish Society in the Early Middle Ages could form an unquestionable advantage in certain fields as we have already seen it.

Beside the fine system about which we spoke up to now, there is another one which, instead of being based on the legal value of the offended person, his weight in the society, has as a base the legal value of the culprit. The composition, whose tariff is fixed according to the second system, is called in Irish smacht. The rule is given as it follows by the book of Aicill: “Whenver that fine is smacht , it is regulated according to the rank (aicned) of the person who pays it.”

The complete amount of the smacht, is of thirty-five cattle heads of average quality, it is exactly the price of the body of a free man coirp dire. The smacht can in a large number of cases being reduced to the seventh, i.e., to five cattle heads of average value, sed. It is what happens when the debtor is a serf: the price of his body is reduced to the value of thirty-five heads of cattle: such is the composition that he must pay to redeem his life when he made a murder.

This variability according to financial means of the culprit has as a result sometimes that in the Irish Law the word smacht has a meaning or doubtful, or that we cannot determine without a certain attention.

The smacht, penalty for a false judgment, smacht na gu-breithi is, of course, of thirty-five heads of cattle, because they are not the serfs who judge but the druids or brehons. Such also is the smacht that a free man is obliged to pay the noble man, aire, to have made a false witness in connection with a contract in which this noble was a part or to have killed somebody who was placed under the protection of this noble, while the smacht owed for lack of service to the lessor by the taker of the servile livestock, is only of five heads of cattle, like that any person owes for having used a bill hook of which he is not the owner and for having encroached on a nearby field.

As we had the opportunity to signal it, the explanation of this taking into account of the means of the payer has nothing to do with the compassion. The legal principle of which the word smacht is the Irish expression: repurchase of the life, belongs to the oldest Germanic and Roman law as to the Celtic law. It goes back to the most distant antiquity. And the rather vague sense of the word smacht in various texts does not prevent that smacht had in the oldest language of the Irish law a very precise meaning and designated the fine that a culprit was to pay to redeem his life. This composition consisted of thirty-five heads of cattle for the wealthiest persons, five heads of cattle only for the serfs. But it does not matter because that comes to the same thing. We could perhaps therefore take as a starting point this smacht system as regards, not the compositions, but the taxation (the tax pressure).

INFRINGEMENT OF THE PHYSICAL INTEGRITY OF OTHERS. MANSLAUGHTER.

i.e., homicide made at the time of a brawl of a fit of anger of an imprudence of a lack of precautions, etc.

There was then no revenge duty.

INTENTIONAL AND PREMEDITATED HOMICIDE.

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In the event of murder, the families had the right to avenge the victim with the death of the murderer or of the murders or to leave them alive for a compensation payment.

The Roman conquest put an end to this choice on the Continent and the modern system of justice done by the magistrates was substituted to it.

In Great Britain, after the departure of the Romans (around 410 ) a new word designated the price of the body, it was galanas; and the galanas, instead of being fixed, became variable, was more or less high, according to the importance of the killed person; that did not prevent it from being cumulated with the price of honor, called in this case by the Welsh saraad. Saraad derives from sar, Welsh and Irish word whose meaning is “injury and offense,” but which does not belong to the technical language of the Irish law. The Welsh saraad is the same word as sarugud, which means “violation, injury” in Irish. A third of the saraad and of the galanas comes down to the king and to his officers, two thirds to the family of the dead.

In Ireland the duty to avenge the victim remained such as it is and this duty was extended to the first cousins in accordance with doctrines which seem to have been common to all Mankind.

The murder in this case is regarded as “necessary, i.e., imposed to the murderer by the sacred duty of revenge; and as the duty of revenge was a must for all to the close relatives by order of relationship, the closest relatives bore all the consequences of the act that this duty required.

Usually, the composition was not required in such a case (for a murder known as necessary) but if it was the case the only possible difference between the two compensations was then to be paid by the “avengers.”

NB. In Ireland, this terrible duty of revenge seems to be limited to the closest parents.

Capital punishment existed only when the culprit was in the incapacity to pay the financial composition due.

“Everyone dies for his crime i.e., everyone dies for his willful crimes when he does not get the amount of the composition (eric)”.

This gloss, which distinguishes the voluntary crime from the other, underwent the influence of the modern spirit, as for this distinction. But it is perhaps in virtue of this principle that on the Continent every five years the druids supervised the execution of such prisoners under sentence of death.

FINANCIAL COMPOSITION FOR THE MURDERS AND THE WOUNDS.

Ireland preserved the primitive sense of the word * direid, compensation for murder, paid to the family (of the dead). The idea that this word expressed in Ireland was perhaps one of the elements of continental Celtic law before Roman conquest.

As we have had already the opportunity to see it, in Irish, the full amount of the composition due for an infringement of the integrity of others is called eric = * er-icca “perfect payment” and “perfect healing” because the integral payment of the compensation is supposed to heal all the wounds that weapons and blows made.

The two elements of which the eric is made up : 1° the body price , in Irish coirp-dire, or simply dire; 2° the honor price - literally of the face - in Irish enech-lann later log-eneich.

The body price is fixed, the honor price varies according to the rank of the victim in the society.

The oldest mention we have of a fixed price for the life of a man in Ireland, of course, of a free man, a citizen, dates back to the fifth century of our era. St. Patrick, in the apologetic account of his life, known under the name of Confession, states that his ministry was uninterested, he refused in Ireland every present that the Christians his brethren, the virgins and the pious wiwes, offered to him,he managed freely the sacraments of the baptism and of the ordainment. Moreover he spread abundant alms.

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“You know,” he says, “how much I expended on those who were the poor in those regions which I most frequently visited. I estimate that I gave out not less than the price of fifteen men.”

Tirechan who seems not to have well understood this text adds an important gloss in the book of Armagh: he writes, not “price of fifteen men,” but “price of fifteen lives of men.” Pretium quindecim animarum hominum.

But what was the legal value of a man in Ireland? The Senchus Mor (Ancient laws and Institutes of Ireland Volume III p. 71)

informs us about that. The lay chiefs, it says to us, who remove from a Church one of her sons, owe to this Church, in addition to the honor price (logh n-einiuch), secht cumhals, for the body price, coirp- dire, that is to say 35 heads of cattle.

This tariff which fixes at thirty-five heads of cattle the price of the life of a free man and at the seventh of this price the value of the serf also appears to go back to an early antiquity and to have been common to the Celts and to the Germanic ones.

NOTICE ABOUT THE ACCOUNT OR VALUE UNITS. In Addition to the estimate in cattle, we also find estimates in cumala i.e., in female slaves. A female slave of average quality is worth three cows or three oxen whose equivalent is five cattle heads of average value. This estimate of the female slave appears to have been used elsewhere than in Ireland. In the Iliad it is a question of a female slave evaluated four oxen, but she was an outstanding worker.

AGGRAVATING CIRCUMSTANCES.

“Fines are double by anger” is a maxim frequently quoted in Ireland when there was premeditation. A gloss of the book of Aicill informs us that the pecuniary compensation is doubled for:

1° Murder committed in a mountain or in a wild place. 2° When the body was concealed.

The Welsh law has the same rule.

A fire caused the death of man, another legal text of Ireland says (Ancient laws and institutes of Ireland, tome IV, p. 251). The culprit of this fire is a stranger, consequently not very solvent, and it is willfully that he set fire: he will be punished with death even if had given the seven female slaves of the coirp-dire, even if, moreover, he would have paid what the Church claims for ecclesiastical penance and what is due by the strangers who breaks civil peace; the compensation is not sufficient, he will be killed under the thus drawn up principle : “Everyone dies for his willful crimes when he did not succeed in paying the amount of compensation.”

FINANCIAL PUNISHMENT AND COMPOSITIONS.

The Irish society of the Early Middle Ages which are unaware of what the State is in the current meaning of the word. It is in Rome that we owe the principle of ours: no person is entitled to take the law into his own hands; whoever believes to have to complain about another must require justice of the magistrate. In Ireland the citizens take the law into their own hands but within an ethological framework fixed by the customary law, from where the importance of the seizures and of the arbitrations. The two parties go to court only if by mutual agreement they got on doing so. In the more important cases, usually, the judgment was rendered by the king on the report of the jurist or brehon and in agreement with the assembly of citizens.

financial compensation is required for a wound which was not fatal, for a blow, an unspecified wrong done to others, lastly for a premeditated murder that the duty of revenge does not justify; in all these cases, the composition is due entirely by the culprit; his family is debtor only if he is inadequate, and it can discharge itself from every debt by giving the culprit up either to the alive offended, or to the family

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of the victim, if this victim died. It is the noxal surrender. Of this rule, there is an Irish expression which can be translated as follows: “Everyone for his crimes.” And the consequence of this maxim was oppressed by two legal proverbs: “Everyone dies for his crimes” “Everyone dies for his willful crimes when he did not succeed in paying the amount of compensation.” See above.

It is besides in accordance with this principle that on the Continent the druids kept the robbers, the brigands and the other criminals not being able to pay their fine in order to offer them in sacrifice to gods every five years.

As we have had already the opportunity to say it previously, let us remind that the compensation mechanism in the event of insufficiency for payment could extend to the extended family (derbfine iarfine, indfine etc…) even to the hierarchically superior levels in the event of insufficiency of the resources of the family.

If the culprit was vassal of a nobleman, this noble became for example responsible for the payment; in the absence of this nobleman, every person who gave the culprit bed, clothing, food, was responsible; lastly, when the offended person or the family of the dead could not, using these various responsibilities, to recover all that was due to it, they had the resource to as the king. There was in Ireland a legal maxim which could be translated as follows:

“Every man without a chief, to the king”. And as they could not by definition seize a king, they performed the seizures in three houses of the tribe of the culprit .

These rules, which are given by texts of Irish civil law whose date cannot be determined in a rigorous way, are found about exactly, except some differences in detail, in the “Irish canonical Collection” published in 1874 by Hermann Wasserschleben (page 196), which dates back around the year 700 of our era. This compilation ascribes to an Irish synod the following decision: Primum delictum uniuscujusque Mali hominis.........in qua est ecclesia ista.” The crime of each malicious man will fall

initially on his fortune or his herds, then it will fall on his region (= his parents and his chief); if this man has no region (no parents nor chief) , his crime will fall on his king; if this man has no king, his crime will fall on the person who gave food and clothing to the culprit; in the absence of this person, the crime will fall on the one who gave to this man food and bed. If, finally, it is impossible to take something from all these people and if this man commits a crime against a church, this church will make itself paid by the highest king of the province where it is located (Translation without prejudice, my 7 years of Latin are distant).

THE PRICE OF HONOR.

“To revere the gods, to abstain from wrongdoing, and to be a man, a true one” (Diogenes Laertius).

After having underlined as far as the repetition that in the branch “Law” of the former druidism, more you were poor, less you paid fines and less the interest rates of your loans were high, let us notice now that the Irishmen of before St Patrick had a sense of honor so developed that they even thought of being capable of weighing it.

But the notion of honor among ancient Celts was indeed very different from that of today. Besides rather than of honor it would be perhaps better to speak of social importance or weight in the society, reputation or respectability.

The honor then was a powerful factor of stability in the society because it encouraged each individual to behave in accordance with the image that he made of his social identity. The compliance with the codes in force made the behaviors identifiable, foreseeable and the loss of one’s honor was equivalent to a real disappearance of the social existence.

Ireland in the Early Middle Ages had apparently a design of honor confusing the honor of a person closely with his social status, what is, of course, cynically logical but regrettable.

It was a concept with multiple practical implications. It was in a way what weight a man carried in the society, what he was worth, his respectability, his influence. And all these concrete consequences of

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the honor of somebody could be given up guaranteed sold or bought. We would speak today about an honor which can be traded on the stock exchange. The practical result was that certain people carried more weight than others in the society, had more importance, for example as regards their witness statement in a lawsuit. An individual could thus be important according to his personal and initial influence in the society but increased with all those he had been able to acquire from other people, his clients for examples. Ten kilograms of honor could be thus increased with two other kilos of honor, another one kilo of honor, etc., etc.Finally, the recipient could therefore see his honor and consequently his influence in certain cases… multiplied ad infinitum.

BREACHES TO HONOR.

Among Celts, the amount of the composition is generally determined by the rank of the victim, either they are a murder, or some injuries; it is the common law of the Indo-Europeans. The rule is given as it follows by the book of Aicill: “Whenever honor price (enechlann) is paid, it shall be paid according to the rank of the person to whom it is paid.”

What is special to the Celtic law, it is the distinction between the body price, invariably fixed for all the free men; and the honor price, which is added to the body price and whose amount depends on the dignity of the one who was killed, wounded or insulted.

Naturally, if the price of honor depends on the dignity of the injured person, it also depends on the seriousness of the injury. A mortal blow gives to the family of the dead the right to require the totality of the honor price. For a wound which causes bloodshed simply and which was made in a fit of anger, the casualty is entitled only to the quarter of his honor price, etc.

As we have already the opportunity to see it, in Gaelic language the full amount of the composition due for an infringement of the physical integrity of others is called eric = * er-icca “perfect payment” and “perfect cure” because the integral payment of the compensation is supposed to cure all the wounds which the weapons and the blows made.

The two elements with which the eric is made up are therefore 1° the body price , in Irish coirp-dire, or simply dire; 2° the honor price, - literally of the face, - in Irish enech-lann later log-eneich.

As mentioned above the Gaelic expression to designate the part of the financial composition called “price of honor” means therefore literally “ price of the face.” Such is the meaning of the words enech- lann, log-eneichen in Irish, and it is explained it by the blush that the insult makes coming to the face of the insulted person. This expression is used for the men; it is also used for the women of whom decency is affected either by the rape, or by the marriage.

To express the idea of honor by a word meaning “face” and to make the honor price an element of the compensation, it is, as for the form and as for the content, a Celtic doctrine which must date back to earliest antiquity.

The Irish theory of the price of honor therefore undoubtedly also existed on the Continent where it was to exist very severe laws against defamation or insult.

The oldest mention of the price of the honor is around year 700 in the Irish canonical collection. Sinodus Hibernensis ait : Omnis qui ausus fuerit ea quae sunt regis aut episcopi furari aut rapere aut aliquid in eos commitere, parvipendens dispicere, VII ancillarum pretium reddat aut VII annis peniteat cum episcopo vel scriba. “Everyone who shall dare to steal anything belonging to a king or bishop or to take away from or commit anything against them heedlessly shall pay the price of twenty and one cows or thirty-five cattle heads of average value or do penance for seven years with a bishop or cloistered scribe”. (N.B. This decision is also ascribed to St. Patrick).

It is necessary to distinguish two elements in this text there.

The first is a piece of the Celtic law, the seven female slaves (ancillas) or their value due to the king who was seriously insulted.

To this primitive element was added a new element which is properly Christian, and in which there are still two parts to distinguish: 1° the equating of a bishop to a king; 2° for the insolvent one, substitution to the composition of the canonical penance, on the basis of a year of penance per female slave. It

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was there a reduction brought to the primitive law which, in the event of non-payment, unleashed the right of revenge, and royal revenge in this case it was the capital punishment.

N.B. This druidic principle of the substitution of the punishment (a more reduced but longer punishment instead of a shorter but harsher punishment is at the origin of the Catholic practice of indulgences. On the subject (the arra) see our previous opuscules and particularly the tenth one.

A list of the honor price in Ireland was preserved to us by the tract entitled Crith gablach.

The honor price of the king is there of seven female slaves as in the canon law: “As Cormac says: you will adjudge to an illustrious king, Cairbre, the value of a convict in beautiful female slaves, to seven female slaves….it will be the compensation for assaulting him, or for violating his protection, or for his cheek-blistering.”

Seven female slaves are the equivalent of twenty and one cows or thirty-five cattle heads of median value, in old Irish sét, later séd.

This Cormac, to whom is ascribed a form of the legal rule which fixes at seven female slaves the honor price of the kings, would have been king of the king in Ireland during the third century of our era. He was a son of Art, and grandson of Conn called Cétehathach, i.e., “able to stand up to hundred warriors ” . He would have taught lessons of law, it is said, to Cairpre or Coirbre Lifechair his son, and the rule which fixes at seven female slaves the honor price of the kings would have been part of his lessons.

We find this rule in the Senchus Mor. This price list distinguishes several kinds of kings. The king himself, without epithets, is the lower king, the one who is in charge of one tribe-State, tuath; he is called in the Gaelic language ri tuaithe (when you want to distinguish him from the kings of higher rank). The price of his honor, his enech-lann, is there also of seven female slaves.

The former Ireland therefore had apparently a very precise social stratification, for worse or for better (the financial value of a guarantee, the value of a witness statement).

Here below the price of their honor expressed in heads of cattle of head this time.

Oc-aire

Bo-aire

Aire désa

10.

Aire ard

15.

Aire tuise

20.

Aire forgill

30.

King of tuath 35.

When the king and the noblemen walk in the territory of the tribe-State, they are entitled to make themselves accompanied by an entourage , whose importance depends on their dignity.

The number of the people who form the entourage of a king of tuath is of twelve, according to the Crith gablach of which the list continues as follows: aire-forgill, nine people; aire-tuise, eight; aire-ard, seven; aire-désa, six; bo-aire, three.

In the gloss of the Senchus Mor, three figures seem a little higher: aire-forgill, twelve people instead of nine; aire-tuise, ten instead of eight; aire-ard, eight instead of seven; and the oc-aire, to whom the Crith gablach does not allocate an entourage, has an entourage of two people of them.

No entourage is envisaged for the midboth or commoner who therefore visits his friends all alone.

In Ireland the honor price was therefore graduated and depended on the importance of the injured person we said.

This strange design of the value of honor had its pros and its cons.

One of its pros for the underprivileged social classes it was that (as regards the owners of fiefdoms in “unfree” cattle) it was more advantageous materially speaking to be regarded as a man without honor, same thing for the “damages” to pay, if necessary.

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THE SEIZURES.

Considering the importance of this practice in a society without prison, the Senchus Mor besides begins with that (the distresses).

In Addition to the compensations and the duels and as the prison sentence did not exist, another of the means of getting justice was the seizures. From where the fact that this point is approached firstly in the Senchus Mor and that the women too were entitled to it.

In the primitive time to which the Irish law makes us go back, the ministry of a bailiff is unknown; the creditor carries out the seizure by himself or by any agent whom he chooses, provided that it is a member of the tribe enjoying all his civic rights. So the still depending on parental authority son, the slave, the fool, the insolvent one cannot seize the goods of their debtor.

The applicant, who has on his side the content of the law and the form, is supported by his family initially, then by the public opinion. The family members of the defendant do not risk their life to yield to the whims of a relative whose wrongs are obvious, and if this one dares to kill an applicant of whom the right is clear and who acted in the forms, it is certain that he will be lynched by the crows. The human mind has always had the same laws, and where the private individuals do not get from public authorities the calm and cold protection whose Roman tradition gave us the two-thousand-year-old habit, indignation and popular fury are the violent sanction of the law ridiculed by the hubris of unjust and malicious man.

The Irish law considered much the question and distinguished all kinds of seizures all kinds of more or less refined procedures.

The only interest of the Irish details about the seizures ( they count in them by nights and not by days for example), the deadlines, the methods, their nature, etc.etc. is to show us that the former Celts were far away from being some a little rough big barbarians and that they could on the contrary fall into the most advanced analysis of various cases, even into subtlety.

It is not a question, of course, of making an exhaustive report of them here, this concerns the former druidism and the problems as well as the general state of the society evolved much since, the only thing which is important is to meditate the mind of these procedures.

The Irish legal texts that we have show women invested with the capacity to sue by seizure of a personal or real property. A special procedure exists for them: it is perfectly distinct from the procedure which the men observe to levy either the seizure of personal property or the seizure of real property.

Two texts claim even to teach us by whom this female procedure was invented.

The seizure of personal property by women is a fifth species of seizure of personal property, that known as of the two nights, while the first four, that of one night, that of three nights, that of five nights and that of ten nights, are for men.

Today in our countries the lawsuit begins with a summons, which is notified by writ or differently. In Ireland, it is by the seizure not of a jurisdiction, but of a thing, that the procedure begins.

The language of the Irish law expresses generally the idea of seizure by the word tobach which indicates at the same time the seizure of a personal property and the seizure of a real property.

The Senchus Mor offers to us the example of the two species of seizures, the seizures of a personal property and the seizures of a real property.

The seizure of a personal property is levied in two ways. 1° Without delay and immediately.

2° With delays, or, to speak like the Senchus Mor, “after length; iar fut.”

The seizure with delays, established in the advantage of the debtor, reduced the rigor of the primitive law represented by the Tract of the immediate seizure to which it is later.

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The procedure of the fast is a modification brought to the procedure of the seizure with delay: notice, aurfocre or apad, with which the procedure of the seizures with delay begins, is replaced by a fast when the debtor is a member of the aristocracy: this fast is performed at the door of the debtor by the creditor for one day, it forms a more polite than the order formal notice, but it has a much more serious sanction: if, after the fast of the creditor, the debtor does not pay, or at least does not promise, either to pay, or to appear before an arbitrator and does not give pledges as guarantees, the debt is doubled, and this recalcitrant debtor loses all his claims.

PERSONAL PROPERTY SEIZURES.

The seizure of a personal property is strictly called ath-gabail, literally “taking back. ” The seizures of a personal property like the duel and the fight of more than two persons takes place without the prior approval of an arbitrator.

The one-night immediate seizure was particularly rigorous: the applicant, without a preliminary warning, removed the movable objects belonging to his debtor, and, after the expiration of the one- night respite, began what was called in Gaelic language lobad, i.e., the expropriation of the debtor for the benefit of his creditor.

Theoretically , every seizure of a personal property must be predated by a notice: aurfocre.

In the part of the Senchus Mor which relates to the seizures of personal property with delay, we find an exception to this rule. This exception occurs when the person against whom it is a question of levying the seizure belongs the aristocracy, i.e., to the category of the people whom the Irish law designates by the adjective nemed, whose meaning is “sacred, privileged.”

Whether the applicant is or of common status or of the class higher than that to which his adversary belongs, it does not matter: the Irish etiquette forbids from sending a notice to the people known as nemed; it is necessary to go to fast before their door. The debtor in front of the door of whom his creditor fasts must offer to him something to eat and promise either to pay him, or to make the question judged; as a guarantee, it is necessary that he gives him a solvent guarantor, or gives pledges to him. Otherwise his debt is doubled, etc., etc. See higher.

After the notice, that the fast replaces in certain cases, and when the time is finished , the Senchus Mor advises the one who levies the seizures to make himself accompanied by a jurist , at the same time enough learned to be sure of the legitimate achievement of the formalities and skilled enough (in the art of the word to expound in front of the judges how everything occurred).

The one who seizes illegitimately owes to the distrainee five cattle heads of compensation; but the Irish jurists admit that the presence of one of their fellow members, called and naturally paid by the one who levies the seizures, prevents the requirement of this kind of fine, when the irregularity results from a mistake of the jurist.

The seizure is prohibited to whoever does not have the right to take part in the public assembly which judges on the report of a jurist. This provision puts a considerable number of inhabitants of the country in the inability of getting justice without the intervention of a third party more powerful than them.

But a rule that we could call democratic corrects somewhat this exclusion of poor and weak.

It is forbidden to the chiefs of the public assembly, kings, heirs to kings, advisers of the kings, to levy personally a seizure: the impossibility of standing up to them would make their power tyrannical. When they want to make the furniture of a debtor seized, they make themselves represented in this levy by a subordinate agent and it is against this agent that their persons answerable to the law, sue, when conversely they are their creditors.

At the time when the seizure with delay was unknown, and when the immediate seizure was the only one levied people did not make notice, or more exactly the notice was immediately followed by the notification of seizures and by the removal of the seized objects: The highest dignitaries of the aristocracy who did not pay their debts were risked the immediate seizure, but this seizure comprised ten nights of impoundment.

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REAL PROPERTY SEIZURES.

The taking possession, techtugad, of the real estate, could be done by means of the seizure, tellach. It was necessary that the fact called tellach, i.e., the act of occupation achieved in the legal form, was repeated three times; after the third time, the man who seized, was invested with a right called tuinidhe, or better tuinnige, what we may translate by “possession,” and in virtue of which he had, as we will see it, the right to exercise most prerogatives of a definitive owner.

The act called tellach appears initially as a military and violent occupation. When the man levying this seizure wants to proceed to this act for the first time, he brings two horses harnessed to a cart. An old text of versified law calls these horses mairc, it is the name by which in ancient times the Celts and the Germanic people designated the horses harnessed to the chariot of the warrior. In the text that we quote and who does not date back to the heroic period of the history of Ireland, the chariot of the warriors is not required; a common cart can satisfy the regulations of the law, but we must regard as certain that in the beginning the symbolic act of the occupation of a real property by the man who levied the seizure was performed with a chariot.

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THE BREHON LAW (CONTINUATION AND END).

It was not to druids to make the law; the legislative power did not belong to them. There were only laws but those of nature (recht aicnid), whose essence was equality (characteristic which seems to have been regarded negatively by the Christian writers of the Senchus Mor) and the druids of before Saint Patrick were in fact only alive libraries of case law, even when they acted as arbitrator chosen by the conflicting parties.

We are there in a world really polar opposite of that of today.

It was not to the druids either to rule, therefore to do politics. The executive power did not belong to them, it fell to the king.

On the other hand, it fell to them to point out jurisprudence and to show common sense or an elementary sense of justice on the base of this equality disapproved by the Christian monks having succeeded them.

It is therefore still useful to study the old Celtic laws (and the taboos of then) to deduce from them the subjacent ethology.

Nevertheless it goes without saying that some of the considerations of these texts could in no case be supported by the druids of today. They concern indeed by definition the former druidism, and in the former druidism, there was, of course, the better… But also the worse! It is not because certain Christian scholars of the time could parallel them with various episodes of the Torah, the life of Moses, or of the patriarchs, that the men of today must go into ecstasies in front of them.

It is to us to make the sorting between what is still, or more than ever, valid, at least in its principle, and what should not be regarded as concerning a fortunately distant past.

To those who, by conscious or unconscious Judeo-Chistian racism (the Decalog as first but also unsurpassable monument of Mankind, what a joke! What an intellectual swindle!) or for every other reason; would continue to pretend that the druids had been only barbarians fearing neither god nor man ; we advise having a quick look at the text hereafter, the summary of a detailed study by Professor Karl Raimund, at University of Bangor (Wales), on the law of Brehons, in other words, on the prechristian Irish law. It makes it available for the public, what is very linuxian and typically Celtic minded, provided that his mail address is also indicated:

a8700035@unet.univie.ac.at.

We re-examined and reduced, even simplified it. Therefore it is no longer really the original text. Another reference works : Fergus Kelly, a guide to early Irish law. Dublin 1988).

It is certain that this mini-tract relates mainly to the Irish law, which is most complete to have reached us. The Welsh law is mentioned at the end, as well as the ancient Celtic law, for which the sources are obviously very fraction, but where nothing seems to contradict what is detailed here.

We will be able therefore to notice there that the Celtic law was a civil rather than penal code, without prison, being interested in the compensation of the evil done but also in the question of property, inheritance and contracts.

LEGAL BASES.

Before to have a look at the laws which existed in Ireland before Christianity and at what they resembled, we must examine their bases.

The basic political unit was the tribe (túath), and that also seems to have been the basic legal unit, the Celtic law distinguishing then the deorad or strangers to the túath, from the aurrad or person having a status in the túath.

N.B. On the Continent, the murder of the foreigner was very early abolished or at least severely repressed, according to Nicholas of Damascus (Collection of remarkable customs. Fragment No. XLIV, 41, preserved by Stobaeus): “Among them, man is punished more rigorously for the murder of a stranger than for that of a fellow citizen: in the first case, death, in the second exile only.” Or Diodorus of Sicily, Book IV, 19. “Heracles….. took his army and passing into Celtica and traversing the length and breadth of it he put an end to the lawlessness and murdering of strangers.”

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The social status. The second base of the Law in the Christian Ireland of the early Middle Age was the rank. Ireland during the medieval time was a very hierarchical society, paying a great attention to the social status, to the rights and duties which matched it, according to property, and to the relationship between the lords and their vassals.

In other words, more the person whom you had injured or wounded was high ranking in the Society, more that was expensive for you.

On this point the things hardly changed and it is still like in the famous fable about the animals sick of the plague. Human courts acquit the strong, and doom the weak, as therefore wrong. Hue and cry against the ass!

But the system also had advantages. The more you were rich for example, the more you were to give money to your doctor in order to be cured. Conversely, more you were poor, and less it was asked from you. In other words, all the opposite of France of today where, more you are rich, less you pay taxes; even more you receive big checks from the State.

Ancient Ireland therefore distinguished the notables (nemed) carefully from those who were not. But if she assigns to each one a precise place according to one’s rank or one’s merit, Ireland is unaware of the Roman definition of the artes liberales opposed to the artes serviles. Was honorable and honored whoever was the holder of an intellectual or manual knowledge or know-how. He was a member of the aes dàna or “people of the arts,” and he was even envisaged the case when a blacksmith because of his professional competence precisely is entitled to the designation of “doctor” (ollam).

In the Ireland of this time, the indication of the social status of a person was the honor price or lóg n- enech (literally the “price of his face”), which was to be paid for every serious crime like murder, wounds, etc. having affected him. The infringements which did not touch the honor of the victim – like the slight damage to the property or the straying of animals - involved slighter fines. The capacity of an individual to carry out legal acts depended directly on the price of his honor. He could conclude a contract only according to the price of his honor, he could not be a guarantor for a higher amount, and his oath had only the value of the price of his honor when a collective oath (compurgation) was necessary.

Editor’s note. It is a question there, of course, of former druidism. Nobody is obliged to share this point of view, and in any event as long as to do, what should prevail, it is the opposite. The rich and the powerful persons must pay more, or make even more efforts, and this, in all the fields, that the ordinary citizens or the poor people. Noblesse oblige ! Because the true nobility consists, not to rank above another man, but to be ranked above what we were before (Hindu proverb).

The kinship. Another basic element of the Irish legal system. For the druids, the family was the logical and obvious place of mutual aid. For them, it was normal that parents help themselves and support themselves mutually. The family ties therefore intervened, of course, in the management of the lands or of the natural resources. The adoption (daltachas/altrom) could extend the framework of it.

The parental group of which it is made mention generally in the legal texts is the derbfine or “true family,” which comprised all the descendants of a common great-grandfather. The chief of the family on this level was called ágae fine or cenn fine (sometimes conn fine). He was selected among the members of the derbfine, probably by an election, on the basis of a higher wealth and rank, or of his common sense, and he acted or spoke in the name of his kinship.

This group had considerable power over its members. Each derbfine had its own parental land, called fintiu, towards which each legally competent adult male had a responsibility. This land could be sold only with the assent of the kinship. Any man, by right a member of this family, could cancel the contracts of the other members of the derbfine if he thought that they were prejudicial for him. This family group was also legally responsible for the infringements made by one of its members: a member of the family could be seized if somebody did not fulfill his legal requirements. But the kinship could then turn against the culprit, and he could be excluded from it.

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If a member of the derbfine was the victim of a homicide, his parents received a share of the eraic (wergeld or blood price), and if the culprit did not pay, the members of the family could therefore wreak a kind of blood feud against him. The act to kill a member of one’s kinship or parricide, called fingal, was particularly condemned. The murderer lost his share of the land belonging to the family group, but he remained still subjected to the payment of the fines for the infringements made by his parents.

The maternal kinship. Even if the relationship, in Ireland of this time, was initially determined by the paternal line, the maternal relationship also played a part; because by marrying, the wife did not completely break the bonds with her own relationship. The maternal kinship was also brought to take part in a blood feud if the child of one of its daughters was the victim of a homicide and if the culprit did not pay. It received a share of the eraic provided for such a murder, and it was to intervene if the education of a child was not correctly made.

RIGHTS AND DUTIES ACCORDING TO SOCIAL CLASSES. THE SACREDNESS (NEMETOS) IT IS THE HUMAN PERSON!

Ancient Ireland applied mainly this principle of the sacrosanct nature of the human being to a minority of the population. A rather important minority in number since it comprised doctors, judges, blacksmiths, boilermakers, harpists, carpenters, as well as other craftsmen of this type, but a minority nevertheless!

Basically, there exist indeed three classes of people in the former Irish druidism. The first and most important is the class of the nemed, a not easily translatable Gaelic word meaning more or less “public figure, responsible, chief.”

The following category is that of the ordinary citizens, including the rest of the craftsmen and of the farmers.

Lastly , there are the legally incapable people (children, minors, mentally ill persons, war prisoners become slaves).

The men or women enjoying the status of nemed fully since the sacredness it is the man.

Five categories of persons members of the class of the nemed, namely, the king, the lords, the hospitallers (people responsible for practicing hospitality concretely, called briugu or brewry), learned people and poets.

The status of nemed gave some benefits. The property of a nemed, for example, could not be seized in the usual way, because you were initially to carry out a hunger strike against him. The nemed was also exempted from certain legal requirements.

Notice by Peter DeLaCrau. The most advanced modern druids are in favor to reverse these principles on the matter and to consider that the people of high rank are bound more than the others, to comply with certain rules. Noblesse oblige!

In any event, even a nemed was not entirely above laws. He did not have the right for example to house an outlaw.

N.B. As we saw it, this kind of social stratification also had its good sides. The fees of a doctor were for example proportional to the status of the patient. If he was a member of the privileged class, he paid more than a common man. In short all the opposite of the current French health care system where the rich persons do not pay more, at least theoretically, than the poor, for the same operation or the same treatment. What is therefore equivalent in fact so that they are the poor, or more exactly the middle class, who support the rich people. In any case for the moment.

The sacredness it is the man. The king: rí in Gaelic language.

There are various categories of kings. Basically, these differences come from the number of túatha placed under the control of the aforesaid king. The honor price of a king can vary from 7 to 14 cumal (one cumal = one female slave). The Celtic king has certain legal requirements, and their non- observance can involve a reduction even a loss of the price of his honor, therefore of his rank. These obligations are the following ones.

Firstly: to make the law applied. The laws were not made by the king, but the druids discovered them thanks to their case law. They were implemented by a set of rather autonomous guarantees, pleadings, or seizures, so that the king theoretically was not implied in these procedures. In the event

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of emergency or of problems exceeding the competence of one tuath, on the other hand, his competence was necessary.

Secondly: to make the judgments applied. The king was nevertheless, of course, to get involved in the most important legal cases (just as the chief druid), and to approve the judgments given in such cases, if it is not to judge himself. It also seems that in the event of a denial of justice, if for example a judge refused to arbitrate, the case was then submitted to the king, who was the sovereign institution for the legal affairs not being able to be dealt by low-ranking judges.

The sacredness it is the man. The lord: flaith.

The rights of the lord depend basically on his obliged or vassal people, because those determine his status. A lord must have a certain number of vassals to be a lord, whose lowest rank is the “aire déso” or “vassal little lord” who has only 5 free men in his service. A lord must be fair with his vassals or obliged persons. He is dishonored if he does not fulfill his obligations towards them, and can also lose the price of his honor following various infringements; like the refusal of hospitality, the concealment of an outlaw, the fact of eating manifestly stolen food, or of failing to the sworn oath. There exist relatively detailed descriptions of what he must have, in addition to the required number of vassals or obliged persons, specifying up to the size of his house and the number of beds having to be inside.

N.B. A special case, the hospitaller : brewry or briugu.

All the hosts were to provide (in a certain way) hospitality to a free man. Among the great lords or among those who aspired to this honor, a kind of steward called brewry or briugu undertook this task. For a hospitaller, brewry or briugu, this obligation was known as boundless (cf. KELLY 1988.36). He had the obligation to provide hospitality to whoever, as often as he came, and to keep no accounts. A hospitaller preserved this rank as long as he did not refuse hospitality. The load of briugu seems to have been one of those through which a man rich, but of non-noble birth, could get a higher rank (cf. KELLY 1988.36).

The sacredness it is the Man. Intellectual professions and craftsmen. Poets and learned people: fili or éces.

The only surviving professionals of the druidic order (the druids having become bishops?) enjoying the status of nemed fully were poets. The main right of the poet was to receive, for each ordered poem, a commission (dúas) dependent on his rank and on the nature of the composition. Works of quality were nevertheless expected from him , if not he could lose his status of nemed. If the poet was not paid, he could satirize his owner. The Irish law recognized two categories of poets, the velede, and the bard - inferior in status and talent - who received only half of the honor price due to a velede of the same rank.

The poetess: banfili.

It apparently seems to have been possible for women to become appointed poetess. It was, however, regarded as unusual, and that occurred perhaps only when a poet had no male heir. Our gracious sovereign, Her Majesty Elisabeth II, also queen of Canada, of Australia, of New Zealand, etc., therefore invented nothing by making the named Carol Ann Duffy her official poetess (in 2009).

The sacredness it is the Man. The doernemed or nemed of lower rank.

Certain texts speak to us indeed about “doer nemed” or “lower nemed,” including doctors, judges, blacksmiths, boilermakers, harpists, carpenters, as well as other craftsmen of this kind. In this category therefore were the free men and craftsmen were who were not specifically mentioned as having the status of nemed. They formed, of course, the basic level of the nemed, but it is clear that in the framework of the become Christian Ireland they did not have all the rights and duties of the five groups mentioned above: aire désa, aire ard, aire tuise,aire forgill, king (of tuath).

The experts, including the jurists, the doctors and the “druids” enjoyed nevertheless some specific privileges because of their profession. They fixed particularly the sums which were due to them for their work or their fees (example 1/12 of the claimed sums, which came down to the jurist, or the meal

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due to the doctor who treated a wounded or sick person) and conversely they laid down the rules of what they were to pay asfines if they made a mistake in the practice of their trade (as in the case of a judge pronouncing a bad judgment).

The sacredness it is the man. The houseboys the housemaids in short the servants.

The servants of the house of a king or of a lord were treated separately, because they also had a certain legal capacity (independent, although that it is only to a certain extent); but the price of their honor (and, therefore, fines and penalties due for infringements or faults made against them) amounted to only a part ( generally the half) of the honor price of their lord.

A lord could also have unfree subordinates (unlike his vassal or obliged persons who were free men). And particularly the fuidir (a semi-free tenant, which could not conclude a contract without the permission from his lord and who was to carry out all the tasks fixed by him – unlike the vassal or the obliged person who had only a given number of obligations to fulfill: assistance in war, etc.). The fuidir was to be supported by the lord who must also pay for every fault or infringement made by him, but who, on the other hand, cashed the fines due for faults or infringements made against him. The fuidir could leave the property of his lord, on condition that he leaves behind him neither debt nor commitment to keep and to restore two thirds of the products of his farm to his former lord.

There was then the bothach, literally “the one who lives in a hut,” and who was usually compared to the fuidir, the difference between the two statuses being not very clear.

Lastly, there was the senchléithe, in other words, the serf. Senchléithe means literally “ancient dwelling .” It was a bothach or a fuidir whose ancestors had worked the same land since at least three generations. The senchléithe was not a slave, but he was attached to the ground and could not give up his farm. If the ground changed its owner, the senchléithe changed his lord too.

Editor’s note. Basically, all these people therefore had legal capacity and could conclude contracts, make promises or act as guarantees for business which did not exceed the price of their honor. Some of them could even be united to carry out transactions going up the sum of the prices of their respective honors (for example for a collective oath, what is called compurgation).

LAWS ON PROPERTY.

Land ownership.

Editor’s note. The (primitive) communism is a mode of social and economic organization which was dominating throughout what it is agreed to call Prehistory, until the Neolithic Era; i.e., at least during more than 90% of the history of modern Man (homo sapiens sapiens). This primitive Communism relates particularly all the societies known as societies of hunters gatherers, which could have few tens to several hundreds of individuals.

The social relationships are egalitarian. The division of the work is “natural,” i.e., based on the physical and intellectual capacities (on the tastes also) of each individual. Coarsely, it results in a sexual division of the tasks, where the man hunts big game and takes on the most dangerous tasks, and the woman the gathering and the education of the young children. It also appears by a natural division between age groups.

But all that does not involve a domination of the old men on the young people, nor of the men on the women.

These societies, beyond their diversity, have all a point in common: they are dominated by the natural factors, by the environment. All their effort tends, essentially, to be freed from this domination in order to improve the conditions of life and reproduction of their members, since the creation of the first tools until the inventions of the breeding and agriculture.

These improvements are slow, because of the fact that nature is seen as a living being, a higher force, which gives itself to the human being in the condition that this one serves it as it is necessary. In this

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context, every technical invention, to be able to be adopted, was to never be regarded by the group as a transgression of the natural order.

Rise of the inequalities as well as social classes.

With agriculture and breeding, this relationship with nature is reversed gradually, and the idea of a domination of the man on nature will be developing to result, technologically speaking, in industry. But, in same time, the inversion of this relationship will be accompanied by a collapse of the social equality.

The agricultural productive inequalities, according to the quality of the cultivated grounds, will gradually transform the relations of mutual aid of the hunters-gatherers in the primitive communism into relations of dependence of the first societies divided into social classes. The limitation of the surface of the farmable lands and the social inequalities will also bring to the first social confrontations between human groups (class struggle) and to war. Many traces of this original Communism remain in the Irish Law.

The ultimate Celtic property was the clannish or tribal property.

Wood, mines, fields, pastures, ponds and rivers, did not belong to individuals in particular, but to the community, the druids distributed the use of them among their fellow citizens (combroges) so that each one can live on them as well as possible.

Same situation on the Continent, of course!

“… Of the tribes neighboring upon the Celtiberians the most advanced is the people of the Vaccaei, as they are called; for this people each year divides among its members the land which it tills and making the fruits the property of all they measure out his portion to each man, and for any cultivators who have appropriated some part for themselves they have set the penalty as death.”

See also this quotation of Caesar in connection with the druids.

“These assemble at a fixed period of the year in a consecrated place in the territories of the Carnutes…. Hither all who have disputes, assemble from every part…..For they determine respecting almost all controversies, public and private; if any crime has been perpetrated, if murder has been committed, if there be any dispute about an inheritance, or about boundaries, these same persons decide it; they decree compensations and punishments.” (Caesar. B.G. VI, 13).

Another Editor’s note. “It is impossible for us today to design the agricultural countryside under another mode that of the personal property. This current regime comprises the free individual use of the lands and of the ground. In every country, constantly, we see the fancy of an owner introducing some modifications, to change the physiognomy of the places, to transform farming. One plants an orchard; the other gets into farming a grazing ground; such tears off his vine; such other plants it. This one reforests; that one clears. Everywhere, before our eyes, we see on the farming area of the village ceaseless transformations that the wills of the owners determine: far-sighted calculations or saving preoccupations, mistakes or carelessness, unforeseen fancies or reasoned intentions. No other law than that of the individual. No other rule than that of mood. On this ground lacerated by the rights of the individual, shredded into particular thin straps, each one is at each step an owner, master of a part of land, despot of a little glebe, sovereign of a little ground and dust. And he makes it to one’s liking wheat, wine or brambles. We feel then that this regime of freedom or disorder is that of which every past century made the easy application. Countryside and property appear to us indissolubly dependent terms. From time immemorial each one was free to manage one’s share of land, to distribute the farming on it, free to arrange the service roads of it, free to build there one’s residence according to the convenience of one’s transport and to the suitability of one’s tastes. The most primitive fields would have the same history therefore as the most recent fields. An individual labor tore off, plot by plot, the feeding glebe from the embraces of the natural forest. The agricultural territory would have been constituted by the juxtaposition of these individual conquests. No discipline would have determined the constructive order of it, and this conquest of a land, whose appropriation was natural and preliminary, would have its origins only in zeals of owners.

But we know that it is not thus. It is easy for us to restore to the peaceful stretches of our fields, the calm extends of a nameless and without memory duration.

There is no youth on this ground of the fields, or at least the recent elements are rare there; and they affirm us, with their only aspect, that they are late comers and intruders badly in their place in a society of things invested with the solemn characteristic of the original times ” (G. Roupnel. The History of the countryside.1932).

To return to Ireland , the basic unit of the surfaces mentioned in the legal texts, is called “cumal,” a legal word meaning literally “bondmaid,” and which had ended in being used as a legal unit in various cases. A ground cumal was to have the size of approximately 14 hectares, and was worth between 8 adult heifers for a peat bog, and 24 milk cows for a good arable land.

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As we had the opportunity to see it, most of the farmed ground seems to have been of the type “fintiu” ( family land ), and it was distributed between all the male adult members of the kinship, to be farmed. Each one cultivated one’s share individually, but the kinship had still a right of inspection on what he made with one’s land, and he could not sell it without the permission of the kinship.

If somebody had acquired additional lands (by the success in his farming, in another profession or for every other reason, and as far as it was acquired legally or did not come from his own kinship), he could use it more freely. The kinship nevertheless kept a certain portion (from a third to two thirds, according to the reason of the acquisition), which became integral part of the family land on his death. A certain part of the territory of each túath was linked to the royal function, and became property of the new monarch on his advent.

The land which belonged to a man was generally handed down to his sons. The process of division being the following: the youngest son divides the property into equal shares, then the oldest son chooses firstly, the second son secondly, etc. Each son resulting from a legal marriage (i.e., approved by the kinship) had the right to have his share of it, and the sons of second wives or concubines inherited in the same way. The sons born from illegitimate or unusual marriage (for example if a banchomarba had married with a stranger to the tuath), did not inherit generally, or as well as possible had a smaller share than the “legal” children.

In certain cases the family land could be redistributed inside the relives, in order to give more to a bigger branch. A minimal surface of 14 cumal (a ground cumal = approximately ten hectares, let us remind of it) the minimal property for a bó aire, was nevertheless to be allotted to each heir; only what remained after that was redistributed to the other groups of kinship.

The female heritage of the land was possible only in the event of absence of male heir.

The co-operative farming between neighbors was usual in the case of the farmers who had only small properties, the most common form being the co-plowing but the common breeding was also rather frequent. Such co-operations were to be concluded by contracts.

There were other categories of land rights. The individual use of the land was very developed in the brehon law, and extended even to mines and fishing rights; but there were also common rights on the ground, like the estovers (the right to cut enough wood to make a fire); the right to plunge a net in a river to fish in it ; to gather hazel nuts when you are hungry, and so on. There were probably also (limited) hunting rights on the property of others; but the owner in this case was entitled, of course, to a share of what was taken, this share increasing if he had not given his authorization to the hunter.

The property owners had, moreover, explicit rights on the property of their immediate neighbors. If necessary, they could for example dig a drainage ditch through the grounds being next to theirs, on condition that paying a compensation for the value of the lost ground. When there was not another entrance, they had the right to lead their herds through the adjacent properties, subject to a good supervising of them (right-of-way).

Buildings.

A certain number of laws dealt with the buildings and the damages which could be inflicted to them. The damage caused to a part of the house involved a heavy fine, the offense begins with the crossing of the courtyard without permission, the opening of its door, or the fact of looking at inside. There were fines detailed for each case.

The movable property. If the land property was collective among Celts, the individual movable property, itself, was allowed. Certain parts of the equipment were particularly important, like decorative objects, weapons, clothing and containers, which were often used as pledges (see further).

The movable property could be transferred in various ways, mainly by contract.

Lost objects.

The movable property, of course, could be lost. Basically, the Irish law deals with the loss of the objects in the following way: the more you found them close to the residence of their owner, smaller was the share of the one who had brought it back. The part of the discoverer (the one who had found the lost good) was larger if the object had been found in a frequented place. The finder was indeed to proclaim his discovery in the whole country so that the owner shows himself to him.

If the good was put down (in a way or another one, and for a reason or another one) on the land of a third party, the owner of the ground as for him was entitled to “the autsad” (or storage fee?) The same

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principle was mentioned besides in the Bechbretha: the owner of a land on which a swarm of bees was settled, was entitled to the bees or to a share of their production.

CONTRACTS.

An example of contract on the Continent, the Celtiberian inscription discovered in Spain in 1970. Below in short what it says.

TIRIS COMBERCUNE TACAM. Lease . Confirmation of the word given or of obligations.

It will not be allowed to Sosaucos to change the limits of this property neither of its enclosure, neither to make them disappear nor to damage them. In exchange for his use, he will pay as rent an amount of money being equivalent to the value of 100 adult heifers. A way will have to always delimit a cattle shed, a meadow, an enclosure protected by a wall and a shelter. Height of the walls: six feet. Either the harvest is big or small, the tithe of it will have to be paid, in only once, by the people of Acaina. The king will guarantee the fulfillment of this contract. We, Abolu, king of the Uboci, order it thus.

N.B. In 1992 still in Botorrita was discovered a third bronze plaque in Celtiberian. It is a decision of the public authorities in the city of Contrebia Belaisca followed by 241 names of men or women, divided into 4 columns. Maybe a group of settlers. We will know more when the first two lines have been deciphered (List of the first swarm, those who would like to own the new lands of foreigners - eskeninum- in Tragua ????????)

The contracts in Ireland.

The Irish primitive law, in other words, the Gaelic habit, admitted that the base of the contract was the obligation (fiach/féich). The free contract between individuals was one of the fundamental provisions of the Celtic law (from where witnesses, commitments, guarantees, etc.). The contract was an instrument of exchanges through which the obliged persons (féchem) were to commit reciprocally. The security (folud) brought by a promising person was to be accompanied by a counter security (frithfolud) from the other party.

There existed two main categories of contracts. The small contracts from which the execution was immediately due or almost, and longer term, even permanent, contracts. For the first, simple compensations were to be envisaged, for the second ones, on the other hand, people required and some securities and some mortgages.

The contract settlement was therefore one of the greatest parts of the Irish law. So to speak, all that somebody did beyond the simple farming in order to provide for his needs, was to be the object of a contract.

The fundamental text on the old Irish contract law, Di Astud Chor, was published then translated by Neil McLeod.

The most common legal document in the old Irish society was the verbal contract or “cor bel” (literally “contract from the mouth”), often called simply “cor.” What prevailed in the former druidism, it was not indeed the law, but the word given. In short, fewer laws and more contracts, freely agreed.

The basic rule was that somebody could not commit for an amount higher than the price of his honor. If nevertheless he made a point of signing such a contract, he was to get the permission of his kinship

. In the same way, the witnesses and guarantors could not guarantee contracts (or parts of contracts) only up to the price of their honor (cf. KELLY 1988.158).

Witnesses.

To formalize a contract, it was necessary to designate witnesses, particularly responsible for noticing or remembering the terms of the aforesaid contract. The technical word to designate this contractual witness is “roach,” although the word of eyewitness “fíadu” is also often used in the texts.

Guarantors.

Each party was normally to provide a guarantor. The guarantors had as a role to make the contract apply, in two different ways.

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Generally, the guarantor was the hierarchically superior of the contractor, it is the father for his son, of the lord for his vassal.They were therefore in principle of a social status higher than the contracting parties, and thus were more vulnerable to the dishonor which can occur, if the contract were not honored by the party that they supported.

Then they were in a better position than the other party to make the terms of the contract respected. There were three types of guarantors.

The first of them was the “naidm” or “macc,” the “enforcing surety,” who promised on his honor that the party having called upon him as a guarantor would fulfill his contract. If it did not , he was to seize the defaulting party and, moreover, was entitled to the amount of the price of his honor from the defaulting contractor.

The second type of guarantor was the “ráth,” the “paying surety.” The surety guaranteed that he would compensate for on his own means the debts of the party having called upon him if it defaulted , and if the naidm failed to make carry out the payment. In such a case, however, the ráth too had a right to receive the amount of the price of his honor and to recover, with interests, the amount that he had paid to satisfy the claims of the creditor (McLEOD 1995.17).

The third type of guarantor was the “aitire,” the “hostage surety,” who was most probably called upon if the status of the contracting persons was so high that it would have been problematic to make them seized; or if the purpose of the contracts was to avoid blood debts; or in the case of the duty to support a sick person.

If, in this case, the party of the hostage surety defaulted, the hostage surety was to subject himself to the prejudiced party. The incompetent party then had ten days to repurchase him, if not his freedom as his life were lost. The hostage surety could purchase himself by paying the corp-dire (or price of the body) envisaged for a human body in the Irish law (7 cumal); that he had the right, of course, to recover on the defaulting party, who remained bound by the contract.

EDITOR’S NOTE. A cumal = 3 milk cows = 3 ounces of silver. Once again, let us not forget that it is former druidism and that nobody is required to approve such discrimination between rich and poor persons.

The contracts without naidm and without ráth were generally regarded as unenforceable. Handshakes.

There were certain rules to respect in order to finalize contracts, and the fact of mutually slapping hands while saying something like “give me five” or of shaking hands , was probably part of it.

The period of withdrawal.

There was a time during which you may cancel a contract. This delay was in effect until the twilight of the day when the contract was made (time which seems to be increased later to twenty-four hours). Once this period of time had passed, the contract became constraining, unless it presents defects or faults likely to justify its cancellation.

Void contracts.

Certain situations made a contract void. Among those, for example, the contracts concluded under duress, fear, or intoxication. The oldest contracts had priority over most recent. If a contract contained a latent defect, which could not reasonably be discovered by the prejudiced party, it could be canceled or readjusted. In the same way, certain people could not conclude contracts on their own initiative, as the minors, the mentally ill persons, the slaves, the prisoners or the strangers passing through the country. Every contract concluded with these people was void.

There existed some restrictions reducing the capacity of a person to conclude contracts.

Basically, a superior could still cancel the contract concluded by one of his subordinates; whereas the subordinate could cancel among the contracts of his superior, only those which were to his detriment (for example, if the father wants to sell all his land, the son may to oppose, because that would decrease his inheritance accordingly).

It thus appears from it therefore that the Celtic law knew the concept of minors OR ADULTS INCAPABLE.

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In the Irish law of the Early Middle Ages a certain number of people were regarded as incapable, in the legal sense of the word, to contract. The contracts accepted by them were regarded as null and void.

The introduction of Senchus Mor evokes, “Five contracts are dissolved by the Feini, even though they be perfected: the contract of a serf without his lord, the contract of a monk without his abbot, the contract of the son of a living father without the father, the contract of a fool or of a mad woman, the contract of a woman without her man.”

The tract of the right of water too (coibnius uisci ) , gives a list of nine worthless contracts: “The contract of a bondman, the contract of a monk, the contract of a son whose father is alive, a purchase made by an idiot woman, the contract of an idiot with a sane person, the contract of a wife without her husband, a contract in the dark, a contract of drunkenness, a contract of fear.”

Pledges.

A significant portion of the contractual procedure was formed by the pledges (“gell”). A pledge was a valuable item given by its owner for a given period ( cf. KELLY 1988.184). It proved that somebody intended well to satisfy the claims of the others within a reasonable delay, or to subject the case to an arbitration where it would be discussed. Generally, the pledge was an object closely related to the life of its owner; a warrior pawned for example his weapon, a farmer one of his tools, a noble an invaluable brooch, etc.

Pledges could be offered before damage was undergone. Neighbors could for example exchange “pre-pledges” (“tairgille”) in order to show their will to subject to arbitration their case of wounds or straying (of animals).

Just as one could offer pledges for his own behavior, a person could also offer pledges on behalf of a third party. In this case, he was likely to receive an interest (“fuillem”) as long as the object had not returned in his possession. If the object pawned was lost, the interest concerning it increased accordingly and a heavy compensation was to be paid to his ex-owner.

PERSONAL INJURY.

Murder.

Most serious of the damages that you can inflict to somebody is, of course, to kill him. However, unlike many other legal systems, in the Irish law the murder was not punished by making his author undergo the same fate as his victim. The law authorized the murderer indeed to compensate his crime by the payment of a certain amount of money.

So that it seems, this payment was composed of two types distinct of fine, and was to be paid generally to the kinship of the victim.

The first type of fine was the penalty fixed for a homicide, which came to seven cumal i.e., 21 milk cows or 21 ounces of silver, for a free man, whatever his rank. It was generally called “éraic” (replaced in late old Irish by “cró”).

It went to the derbfine of the victim, except for the third known as enforcer’s third (trian tobaig) which could be deduced in the event of appeal in order to pay the new lawyer (cf. KELLY 1988.126).

The second kind of fine was based on the honor price (“lóg n-enech”) of the kinship of the victim. Each member of the kinship of the victim got a fraction of the price of his honor, beginning with the price of the total honor if it was a very close relative (father, mother, son, daughter, brother and sister); half if there was a degree (paternal and maternal uncles and aunts); to a seventh for the murder of a foster brother or of a “godfather.” It results clearly from it that the murder could cost extremely expensive if the victim was a high-ranking person.

If for an unspecified reason the payment was not carried out, the kinship of the victim could seize the murderer then to sell him as a slave (the most common case because it paid, financially speaking) or to put him to death.

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If the murderer was on the lam and if his kinship did not pay the fine, the kinship of the victim was to wreak a vendetta until perfect revenge (dígal) with respect to the victim. If the victim was a lord, the persons in the victim’s debit or his vassals were to join the blood feud.

The parricide (fingal).

In the event of a murder made inside the kinship, this system of repurchase by payment could not be applied, of course. Moreover, the murder could not either be avenged by other members of the kinship, because they would have then committed themselves a fingal by putting the murderer to death. The usual punishment for this kind of crime was therefore the expulsion of his author out of his kinship, he lost every right in it, every status, and therefore became more or less a non-person.

The self-defense and the legal murder.

The Irish law accepted that certain forms of murder were not to involve penalty, therefore that they were in a certain sense “legal.” That could range from the murder made in a battle to the fact of killing a thief caught red-handed, or a prisoner whose ransom was not paid (cimbid) and who could be killed therefore by an individual or a member of the kinship that he had injured by assassinating one of its members. To kill in a state of self-defense (although it is there a rather complex matter) was also authorized.

Wounds.

For the wounds, you were also to pay a financial compensation, variable according to the seriousness, or the after-effects. If somebody did not improve fully at the end of nine days, a doctor came to examine him to see whether he could recover one day or not. If not, the author was to pay the heavy penalty planned for a “crólige báis” (aggravated assault having resulted in death), which was even higher than the fine usually planned for a murder. However, that released him from every later obligation whether the victim dies or recovers.

The support of the wounded persons.

If the victim was not entirely healed at the end of nine days, but if the doctor thought that he was going to recover from it, the author of the wounds was to take him in “folog n-othrusa” (sick maintenance) often designated simply as “othrus.” That involved that he brings the wounded person in the house of a third party where he was to be treated at the expenses of the author of the wound, until complete healing. The support of the casualty in this case was regarded as a contract and therefore was to be formalized by pledges as well as guarantors. Provisions or assistance were particularly gathered together to treat him. That could range from the number of people whom the victim could take as entourage , if he was entitled to it , to the quantity of food that himself and the aforementioned entourage could consume during all this period.

However, even at the time where these texts were written, this practice was already generally replaced by the payment of a fine, because it was too heavy to implement.

Legal wounds.

In certain circumstances, the wounds could also be not illegal, and no penalty was to be paid then. For example, bloodshed during surgery performed by a doctor, wounds caused by a child who was playing (as long as no faulty behavior was attributable to him), or by adversaries at the time of a duel, etc.

The rape.

The Irish law distinguished two kinds of rape (“forcor” and “sleth”), even if identical punishments were applied to both.

The forcor related to the rape in a strict sense of the term, whereas the sleth covered all kinds of situations where a woman was subjected to sexual intercourse without her assent.

Whatever the kind of rape, the rapist was to pay the honor price (generally that of the father, of the husband, of the son or of the guardian); and the complete éraic if the victim was a girl in age to be married, the wife of a chief; the half for any other woman. If the victim became pregnant, the rapist was entirely responsible for the education of the child.

There were nevertheless cases when the rape did not involve a penalty, whatever its category. For example, when the woman was a loose woman or an adulteress, like prostitutes, or when it was a married woman having agreed to meet another man. However, if the woman dissimulated the rape,

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there was either not penalty. If the rape took place in a town or a village, the woman was obliged to call for help but not if the assault took place in nature.

Sexual harassment.

The complete honor price was to be paid to a woman whom you had kissed without her assent. If her dress was raised, she also had to be compensated (although we do not know how, because it is not specified). An attacker was to pay ten ounces of silver to have touched a woman or put his hand in her bodice, and seven cumal as three ounces of silver to have put his hand under her dress in order to soil her.

Satire.

This offense included a range of verbal insults, like the fact of making fun of the appearance of somebody, of inventing a nickname which remained to him, or of composing then repeating an offensive poem. The simple fact of making fun, by gestures, of the flaws of somebody, could make an individual guilty of satire. To have satirized somebody (“áerad,”act of cutting, or “rindad” act of incising), brought to you a fine being equivalent to the totality of the honor price of the victim. And even if somebody had been the subject of a satire after his death, the price of his honor was to be paid, to the kinship in fact, as if he was still alive.

A satire could nevertheless be legal, and even be used as an instrument of justice, because it was a form of pressure to make the law obeyed, particularly in the case of the high-ranking public. If a person, especially a king or a noble, tolerated a satire, he lost his honor. If the satire was illegal, he was to get a compensation from the offender, if not the latter was to offer a pledge making sure that he would pay all the fines due. The satire could also be publicly canceled by the composition of another poem, of praise this time. Such an act canceled the original satire.

Refusal of hospitality.

Hospitality was regarded as a duty for every free man. To refuse somebody something to eat as well as a shelter may therefore constitute the offense of “esáin” (literally “driving out,” also called “etech”: refusing, refusal), and required a compensation appropriate to the rank of the injured party. The only exceptions to this practice were the tenants of the type midboth and ócaire, who because of their lack of means , owed only hospitality to their lord, as stipulated in their contract of vassalage.

In certain cases nevertheless, hospitality was to be refused. A notorious criminal was to be neither received nor protected.

If a person obliged indirectly a third party to refuse hospitality (for example by not giving back to him borrowed food after the agreed time), he was himself to pay the honor price of the embarrassed host.

Violation of a man’s protection.

One of the important principles of the Brehon law the right of any free man to offer legal protection (“snádud” or “turtugud”) for a certain period of time, to another person of equal rank or of a rank lower than his.

To kill or wound a person placed under such a protection, formed the offense known as “díguin” (violation of a protection); a crime for which his author was to pay the guard thus ridiculed, the price of his honor, in addition to every other fines payable for his act.

Every free man besides was supposed to develop a permanent protection on his own house and his surroundings, known by the name of “maigen dígona.” This covered generally the surface which he had enclosed to make his courtyard. If somebody was killed or wounded inside this space, this action made his author guilty of díguin against the host.

However, it was illegal to offer one’s protection to certain fugitive, for example some murderers on the lam, etc. (cf. KELLY 1988.141).

INFRINGE TO THE GOODS.

Theft.

Once more, the main text on this subject, the “Bretha im Gata” (judgments of theft) is missing for us. We can, however, guess what it contained, thanks to the other texts which reached us. The principle

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was that, if you steal something, you must give back twice the price of the stolen object, except when the theft related to large livestock, in what case the amount was to be four or five times its value.

Moreover, if you steal something belonging to a third party (for example an object pertaining to A, but lent to B), you must also pay the price of his honor to the person from whom the object had been stolen; a third going to whom the object belonged previously.

As far as we can guess it from other texts, people distinguished between the willful misrepresentation or theft by trick (gat) and the robbery (brat). We do not know if there was an agreement with the Welsh law, where the theft through trick implied a heavier fine than the robbery.

The place where the object had been stolen was to be taken into account. The rule was that, more the place was located far from the residence of the victim, more the fine was weak.

Some types of “theft” nevertheless were allowed to a free man: to take something from a building or edifice on fire, from a corpse on a battlefield, some metal scraps from a forging mill,some sweeping from the ground, etc.

The sale of stolen objects was part of the void contracts, and the man who received such goods was regarded as “fer medóngaite” (man of middle theft), in other words, a receiver, but only if he was aware of their real origin. If a thief or a robber brought stolen objects in the house of a third party, the receiver was to pay half of the honor price of the host; if he brought them only in the airlise (the enclosed area outside the house), the receiver was to pay a seventh of it.

MITIGATING CIRCUMSTANCES.

There existed a certain number of cases where the responsibility for crimes or offenses could be reduced and even canceled.

Accidents.

As we saw it, the offenses involved penalties, but in certain cases, there was no obvious person responsible, the facts in question having happened accidentally. Thus, no compensation was due if you have been wounded while remaining too close to a craftsman at work, or in the cases when the victim had remained knowingly, exposed to a dangerous situation. No penalty could be claimed by a person wounded by horse during a “óenach” (assembly), or by players during a match of hurling.

Special notice for our lovers of paramilitary training. “However, if a boy is injured in the more dangerous “fíanchluichi” (paramilitary games), for instance by a spear throwing or a stone casting, the culprit’s kin must apparently provide sick maintenance” [cf. KELLY 1988.151].

Normally, the owner of an animal was responsible for every damage caused by the latter, but there were cases when that did not apply, the damage being regarded as resulting from an accident.

Ignorance.

The “anfis” (ignorance) could halve the penalty due for an offense, like in the case of an illegal seizure. Sometimes that could even cancel all the penalties envisaged. A lord eating without knowing stolen food , for example, committed no fault, of course.

Negligence.

Here, the legal principle seems to have been: “An offense made by careless involves only restitution” . However, in certain cases, the negligence required more than a simple restitution, particularly when the herd of a third party was led. But if the wound or the death of the animal had been caused by careless, this could halve the penalty by half.

The constraint or need.

The penalty for a crime or an offense could be canceled if it was made under the physical or mental coercion. So, the first jealous wife, in the event of wounds inflicted to the second wife of her husband in certain circumstances (cf. KELLY 1988.153). In the same way, a patient could steal medicinal herbs or a pregnant woman some food, without any penalty. N.B. On this point the former druidism thus seems to have been more understanding and more human than our modern law.

Intoxication.

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Nothing indicates that the damage or the wounds were treated with more indulgence when they were made in a state of intoxication. However, the contracts concluded whereas one of the parties was drunk were generally regarded as void, except for the contracts of co-plowing, vassalage, or with regard to the right of vicinity.

Insanity.

Generally, the legal guardian was responsible for the acts of the mental lunatic. However, certain offenses as the wounds caused by objects launched by a mad person were regarded as some accidents, and no compensation was therefore due.

Responsibility for the eyewitnesses and the accomplices.

The simple witness of a crime or of an offense could be regarded as guilty of “aircsiu” or “forcsiu” (the two terms meaning: “act of overlooking or seeing without doing something ”) in certain cases. There were, moreover, cases when the witness could straightforwardly be regarded as an accomplice. That involved various fines, ranging from the totality of the penalty for the one who was the instigator of the crime, who accompanied the criminal, or who was delighted by the achievement of the crime; down to only the quarter of the envisaged fine, for whom attended a crime without trying to prevent it. Those who tried to prevent it, as those from whom it was not expected that they can do it, as the women, the children or the feeble-minded persons, owed no fine, of course. Moreover, every informer revealing a criminal undertaking was automatically released from every responsibility, even if himself had been implicated in the beginning. Every person granting hospitality or protection to a notorious criminal was also regarded as an accomplice.

Responsibility after death.

Generally, the personal offenses of an individual died out with him, and were handed down in no way to one’s heirs. However, if a man died by making an offense, his heirs were nevertheless to pay the provided fines. If a man was “hostage surety” (aitire), his responsibility was not handed down to his heirs. But if he was “paying surety ” (ráth), the responsibility that he had shouldered by giving his guarantee, passed to his heirs (cf. KELLY 1988.157). And there was a lapse only starting from the fourth generation.

LEGAL PROCEDURE.

What occurred when one of the dictates mentioned above was violated? SEIZURE (ATHGABÁL).

Plaintiffs or victims were to proceed by on their own in most cases, contrary to what occurs in our modern societies, and for this reason to follow a well-defined procedure.

In the contractual field that was done by declaring lost the pledge of the other party, and therefore by obliging it either to give up it, or to require that the case is examined by a judge or a referee.

Whenever no pledge had been given, there were other methods.

The most common form to establish one’s claims and thereby to start a procedure was the seizure; i.e., generally the removal of a certain number of animals belonging to the defendant (or in certain cases to a substitute for the defendant); most of the time cattle being equivalent to the value of the claim. This is described with many details in the “Chetharslicht Athgabála” (The four divisions of the seizure). The text describes the normal procedure according to which a seizure must take place.

Firstly, and this in reality formed the very beginning of the procedure, the plaintiff was to notify formally to the defendant (airfócre or apad), that he hoped to seize him.

That being done, there was a time (anad) of one to five days during which it was given to the defendant the possibility of reacting; either by fulfilling his obligations towards the applicant (in the case of a non-respected contract); either by paying the fines due; or by giving a pledge to show that he was ready to give satisfaction.

If the defendant does not react, the plaintiff has the right to enter the grounds of the defendant and to take on them some animals of a value being equivalent to the amount of the seizures (tóchsal). This must be done at day break, in the presence of an “aigne” (jurist). These animals must be placed in a

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sure “pound,” which can belong to the plaintiff or to anybody other. Every wound inflicted to the animals while they are in this pound is the responsibility of the plaintiff.

From there, a new time starts to be in effect, called “díthim” (forfeiture beginning), probably of the same length as the first. If the defender settles the cases meanwhile, he recovers his animals and nothing else takes place. However, if the defendant, once more, does not react, the final stage of the seizure starts.

At the conclusion of this second delay, the animals start to be lost according to a procedure called “lobad” (literally: wasting away) or “athgabál íar fut” (seizures with time).

On the first day, animals, for a value of five sét, are lost, then animals for a value of three sét each day, until it remains no longer one of them. When an animal is thus “lost,” it can no longer be recovered by the defender, who, however, can still settle the case constantly at this stage of the procedure; by paying the remainder of the promised amount, plus a tax for the expenditure of the plaintiff intended for the food of the animals put in pound. He can thus get back all the animals still available.

It exists also form special of seizures called “athgabál immleguin,” where it is a substitute for the defendant who is seized, generally a member of the same kinship as the defendant; even if that can also be a ráth (surety), having been guarantor in this contract not respected by the defender. In the case of the seizures of a substitute, the time envisaged is doubled; moreover the substitute must be formally informed about the reasons why he is seized, the place where the animals will be held back, as well as the identity of the “fethem” (legal representative of the plaintiff).

If the substitute is a relative of the defendant, the way in which he will be able to recover the seized animals or their equivalent, will be a matter internal in the kinship; if he is a ráth, he will be entitled to require from the defendant the double of the seized amount, in addition to the price of his honor (and he will be able himself then to seize the defendant to this end, if necessary).

In certain cases, the seizures can also take a more symbolic form . A blacksmith may, for example, be seized , only by attaching a white ribbon around his anvil, which prevents him thus, to some extent “magically,” to work with it.

The procedures described above function normally against whoever is not nemed. If the person to be seized is of a nemed rank to the full meaning of the word, it is different.

The fast.

If the defendant is nemed ranking indeed, the applicant must fast (troscud) in order to oblige him to do justice to him. The fast takes place in front of the residence of the nemed, and, at least according to certain comments, must last only from the sunset to the sunrise (the applicant thus misses the principal meal, that of the evening); during a certain time, rather than until death. If there is fast, the nemed must promise to be subjected to an arbitration, either by designating a guarantor, or by offering a pledge. If he eats during the fast, he will have to pay twice the initially promised amount. If he resists a justified fast, performed in accordance with the rules, he loses his status of nemed, and all the statutory duties going with it.

Limitations and illegal seizure.

There are certain restrictions in practice seizures. Various circumstances, like the death of a close relation, can authorize an adjournment and certain animals cannot be seized (as the cows which have just calved). The reasons for such adjournments, of course, have to be sincere and confirmed by witnesses.

If the applicant does not respect such a legal adjournment, or if he seizes unauthorized animals, or if he seizes during a sacred day , or by violating the protection (turtugud) granted by a third party, or in some other cases; then he makes himself guilty of a nonlegal seizure. The fine for a seizure not in conformity with law is of five sét.

As the many and difficult considerations must be taken into account, in the event of a seizure, and as a formal procedure is always to be followed in this kind of cases, it is therefore highly recommended that an aigne (lawyer or professional jurist) has the possibility of following the procedure in the name of the applicant. He receives in exchange in this case a third of the amount of the seizure.

The legal entry of a man (tellach).

The entry known as legal is the procedure to assert a ground.

It is also a procedure to be followed in the forms and which is detailed in the text entitled “Din Techtugad”. The applicant enters on the ground that he claims by holding two horses, accompanied

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by a witness and some guarantors. He withdraws himself immediately after this first entry (“céttellach”).

The person who occupies the disputed land has consequently five days to subject the conflict to an arbitration. If the occupant does not react, the applicant penetrates again on the ground, ten days after this first entry; accompanied this time by four horses uncoupled (thus free to feed) as well as two witnesses and guarantors; then he withdraws again immediately. It is what is called the “tellach medónach” (the middle entry).

The person who occupies in fact the ground, has this time three days to subject the case to an arbitration. Twenty days after the initial entry, if the occupant of the premises still did not react, the applicant carries out the “tellach déidenach” (the final entry); this time accompanied by eight horses that he can leave there , and by three witnesses. If the occupant finally agrees to submit the case to a judge, a “fast arbitration” is then granted to the applicant, what means that the case will be heard as soon as possible. If, however, the illegitimate occupant continues not to want to subject himself to an arbitration, then the applicant acquires the legal property of the disputed land (Cf. KELLY 1988.187). He must for that spend a night on it, light a fire and keep his animals there.

The legal entry of a woman (bantellach).

The procedure is basically the same one as for t men, except for the delays are of 4,8,10 and 16 days for the entries or the reactions of the occupants of the ground, and that the horses are replaced by ewes. At the time of the final entry, the woman who asserts the land must carry a kneading trough and a sieve to winnow the grain.

Illegal entry.

It is, of course, illegal to perform such an entry on a property where you have no right. And watch out the procedural irregularities. An incorrect number of animals, for example! The entry made illegal by procedural irregularities is punished by a heavy fine and is part, with the seizure known as illegal and the illegal duel, in the three circumstances when the Feni (free men of full legal capacity) can intervene and sue.

PROCEDURE IN THE COURT.

To start a procedure in the court, the victim (or one of his parents) must announce publicly that an offense was made, and undertake the legal action while starting by appointing a lawyer having to plead on his behalf. If a lawsuit was formally brought in this way, a hearing will have to take place therefore. It is a very formal procedure, divided into eight phases.

First phase: the fixing of a date for the hearing.

From what we can deduce from certain texts, the audience was probably fixed at the fifth day after the announcement, the defendant offering a pledge guaranteeing that he will be present in it, on the third day.

Second phase: the choice of the procedure by the lawyer of the plaintiff.

There are five types different of procedure: fír (truth), dliged (obligation), cert (justice), téchtae (property) and Cóir n-athchomairc (fair inquiry), each one with specific obligations. If the lawyer does not choose the good one, or if he changes it during the lawsuit, he will have to pay a fine being equivalent to the value of a cow, but the case will not be affected by this initial mistake.

These five types different of procedure deal mainly with various kinds of violation of the criminal law.

Fír was the name of the procedure dealing with all the questions of defamation, inheritance, acknowledgment of a suzerain, or designation of the head of aa family.

Dliged was the name of the procedure concerning the contracts. Cert the procedure for all that was quantity and value.

Téchta the procedure for all the legal provisions established by the use. Coir n-Athchomairc the name of the procedure dealing with all the rest.

Third phase: the bringing guarantees. At this stage of the procedure, the two parties in conflict must be bound, either by a pledge or by a guarantor, until the judgment. The nature of this guarantee depends on the followed procedure.

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Fourth phase: the pleadings (tacrae).

The pleading takes place in front of one or more judges, in a court (airecht). The more the case is complicated, the more judges are needed. The place can be the house of the judge, or, if there are many witnesses, or assistants, a place in the open air is selected (undoubtedly always the same one besides). In front of the court, the two parties plead, what includes, of course, also an examination of witnesses or guarantors.

Fifth phase: the act of answering (frecrae).

The following stage is the counter-pleading, during which the two lawyers try to refute the arguments of the opposing party. There too, that can involve an examination of witnesses or guarantors.

Sixth phase: the judgment (breth).

After the pleadings and the answering , the judge pronounces a judgment.

Seventh phase: the enactment of the sentence (forus).

The judgment is proclaimed, what also implies the reports of the reasons on which it is based.

Eighth phase: the conclusion (forbae).

That implied, of course, something like a small ceremony, and the judgment could then come into effect.

THE COMPOSITION OF THE TRIBUNAL.

It is possible to determine with a relative certainty, starting from the legal texts which came to us, what the composition of a complete tribunal was.

N.B. For day-too-day matters, all these dignitaries, of course, were to be replaced by substitutes or subordinates.

In the center of the court the judges are, in “the court itself” (airecht fodesin).

At the back of the court (cúl-airecht) the king, the bishop and the chief poet sit (but they can also be replaced by the lord, the priest and the poet of the lord).

On a side, in the “side court” (táb-airecht) the historians, the kings of provinces, the hostage sureties, ráth or aitire, sit.

On the other side is the “court apart” (airecht fo leich), where the naidm and ráth sureties, the witnesses and the sureties to contracts (maic horn mbél) sit.

In front of the court (opposite to the backcourt) is the court of waiting, where the plaintiff and the defendant (both designated by the name of féchemain) as their respective lawyers, stand.

Various types of oath.

One of the most important elements of the procedure in the court was the oath-swearing; it was besides more or less in this way that the cases were decided.

The false oath (éthech).

A person who swears a false oath can no longer bear witness in favor of anybody (cf. KELLY 1988.201).

The denial by oath (díthech, díthach).

By swearing an oath, you can draw aside the charges raised against yourself.

The oath on behalf of others (airthech).

You can also swear an oath in the name of another person, by playing then the part of a true substitute for him.

The higher oath.

If a case is not clear, and if the two parties swear an oath about a fact, or produce witnesses who swear an oath; it is the oath of the person of the highest rank which automatically prevails over that of the person of less rank.

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Editor's note: it is there, of course, some former druidism, and nobody is obliged to follow literally this idea.

The collective oath known as comportugatory oath (imthach).

This practice is one of most important of the Celtic law, because it makes it possible for each part y to strengthen the value of an oath by the oaths of other people (for example 12), in order to exceed the value of the oath of the other party.

Each additional person who swear an oath on behalf of one of the parties, adds to the initial oath a value equal to the price of his personal honor. The party which has finally in total the highest price of honor for its oaths, exceeds the other party in this crucial field and can win.

“They compelled Orgetorix to plead his cause in chains....Orgetorix drew together from all quarters to

the court, all his vassals to the number of ten thousand persons; and led together to the same place all his dependents and debtor bondsmen, of whom he had a great number; by means of those he rescued himself from the necessity of pleading his cause.”

We can deduce from this text that, among the Helvetians, of the oaths similar to those of the Irish and Welsh practices were part of the legal procedure; and that while thus acting, by multiplying ad infinitum the number of the oaths (like modern deputies multiplying the amendments); Orgetorix could delay the procedure.

But such compurgatory collective oaths do nothing but strengthen the oath of the most closely involved person, contrary to the airthech which, itself, is a complete substitute for it.

Repudiation (fretech).

Oath used if kinship wants to be disunited of one of its members; if a debtor who refunded his debt wants to denounce in advance any other claim from his creditor.

Female oath (bannoíll). In certain typical cases, the oath of a woman is valid, and sometimes even cannot be contradicted (like in the case of a woman about to die while giving birth , and who names the father of her child).

The witness (fiadu).

Normally, a witness must thus support his statement by an oath. He can testify only about what he saw or heard. The proof by a single witness is usually regarded as insufficient, and two witnesses at least are necessary. There are some exceptions to this rule, for example one trustworthy witness is preferred with two witnesses who are not so. Every free man can usually bear witness up to his honor price.

Indirect testimony.

Although in general only the direct testimony is usable in the court, it is sometimes possible to resort to indirect testimony. It mainly consists in denouncing the behavior of the suspect, for example by deconstructing an alibi which he had given, or by showing his obvious signs of nervousness in the court. Nevertheless indirect testimony is not in oneself definitive, and there must also be other elements to strengthen it.

Inadmissible testimony.

Certain people cannot testify, whatever they saw. That range from senile persons to thieves, including prostitutes. Other kinds of witnesses are excluded only for certain quite particular cases, as the man who courts a woman and who cannot testify in a case implicating the family of the one he loves.

Similarly somebody cannot testify if that gets a personal advantage to him.

The testimony of the women.

The women are generally excluded from testimonies, but there are exceptions to this rule. Thus, the women can bear witness in the event of bantellach (see above), when a female witness accompanies a woman having to be treated, in the event of sexual problems in a marriage; or when a woman is to be examined by a female witness.

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False witnesses.

A person who provides a false witness (gú fíadnaise) or a false declaration (gúthestas) loses one’s honor.

Decision in the difficult cases.

It can happen that in a case there is no witness, or that the oaths of the two parties balance, even neutralize themselves.

Fate.

Lot was especially used in the cases of an unwitnessed violence against domestic animals, like in the case of an animal killed in a common meadow; or in the case of ground division between heirs who are not able to get along.

Ordeals.

Another means of deciding is provided by ordeals. Most frequent seems to be the “proof of the cauldron” (fír coire), where the suspect must put his hand into a cauldron of boiling water. If his hand shows signs of scalding, he is supposed to be guilty (former druidism).

The duel (roé) or divine judgment is a form of ordeal accepted in the old Irish law. The conditions of such a duel must be approved as a preliminary, and confirmed by the sureties of the two parties, if not it is invalid.

Normally, if one of the parties doesn’t appear to face its adversary, it is regarded as having lost, except if there are reasons for adjournment.

The duels do not have to be fought to death. The least of the setbacks can be regarded as the evidence that you are wrong and that justice is on the side of the other combatant. To fall or to let his weapon drop accidentally, for example.

PUNISHMENTS.

According to our texts, there are various types of possible punishments in the Irish law, of which one is obviously preferred, the payment of a fine. The other possibilities are slavery, corporal punishments, even the outlawing; or the execution, but it seems that people have had recourse to these last modes of punishment, only when the preferential mode, which was the fine, was not possible.

The payment of a fine.

The first type of punishment in Irish law was the payment of a fine, we can think besides that it was the usual mode of compensation of the crimes in Celtic land.

Sanctions and punishments in the event of impossibility of payment of a fine.

These methods were usually used only when the culprit did not want, or could not, to pay. The choice of the punishment applicable to the culprit bad payer undoubtedly belonged to the injured party, the victim if he still lived, or his parents in the contrary case.

The outlawing.

As we already have had the opportunity to say it, Caesar reports that the thieves, the murderers or the other criminals were sometimes punished by death during a sacrifice to the god-or-demons; but obviously the most typical punishment for the serious crimes was, even according to this latter, the excommunication or the exclusion from the religious ceremonies (and with that, most probably, from the tribe and from the family).

B.G. VI, 13. “For the druids determine respecting almost all controversies, public and private; if any crime has been perpetrated, if murder has been committed.....If anyone, either in a private or public

capacity, has not submitted to their decision, they interdict him from the sacrifices. This among them is the heaviest punishment. Those who have been thus interdicted [from the sacrifices] are esteemed in the number of the impious and the criminal: all shun them, and avoid their society and conversation, lest they receive some evil from their contact; nor is justice administered to them when seeking it.”

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You could be deprived of your rights for many reasons. This kind of punishment was used in case of theft, for example, but also in the case of the “fugitives,” i.e., people who had not filled their duties towards the society. The outlaw left the territory of his tribe and became an exiled (deorad). As far as we can know it, it was a life banishment, and there is no example of duration fixed for banishment after which the culprit would have been authorized to come back.

One of the penalties provided by the Irish tradition was, in fact, a setting adrift on the sea sentencing a criminal to sail, deprived of oars and rudder, unto the wind would carry him. In both cases, the man was deprived of the help of his community and this was the greatest punishment that could occur to him. This forced pilgrim could thus count only on Divine Providence.

We have an excellent example of this in the Cain Adomnain of 697, the penalty replacing blood price for women (female offenders).

45. …A woman deserves death for the killing of a man or woman, or for giving poison whereof death ensues, or for burning, or for digging under a church….she is to be put in a boat of one paddle upon the ocean to go with the wind from the land. A vessel of meal and water to be given with her. Judgment on her as God deems it.

Let us remark in passing that we can wonder if a heavy weregild to pay as in the case of male offenders (the ancient Celtic society indeed did not know prison and rarely practiced death penalty but most often resorted to the principle of weregild if there was a man's death) would not have been a gentler punishment but God works in mysterious ways. Especially in Christianity (pagan gods were easier to understand because they were more logical).

The recovery of the legal rights.

The status of an outlaw, nevertheless, was not necessarily definitive. If the outlaw could compensate his crime - by paying or in another way - he could recover all his rights in the society.

The abandonment.

Punishment through which the culprit is abandoned on the sea (and generally reduced in slavery if he is washed up on the shore). This punishment is seldom mentioned in the legal texts. It seems to have been one of the favorite methods to sanction the serious offenses made by women. It is possible that this kind of punishment was introduced only after the advent of Christianity.

When a criminal thus banished was washed up on a coast belonging to his own country, the way in which he was treated depended, of course, on his crime. If it was a minor offense, he was returned to his initial status. If the offense was serious, it seems that he was then sentenced to serve as a slave ( unfree farmer).

Slavery.

It was the last legal possibility in most cases. Even if it was often equated with capital punishment in the legal texts. The victim or his kinship perhaps preferred most of the time to sell the culprit as a slave, and to thus draw some money from him, rather than to execute him, what brought nothing.

Capital punishment.

The secular laws (and therefore not especially Christian) seem to have used the capital punishment only as an alternative to payment or slavery.

The laws or canons of the Church seem to have preferred capital punishment whenever the honor price of the culprit was lower than the fine. Moreover that made the kinship of the culprit responsible for the payment of the fine.

Execution.

The first form of capital punishment admitted by the medieval Irish law was the execution (guin), probably by the sword, the lance or the axe. It is also called literally cró : bloody death (cf. KELLY 1988,219).

Hanging.

The second most common form of capital punishment seems to have been hanging (crochad) to a gibbet (gabul). It was a possible punishment for the wounds or the murder.

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Pit. One of the most obscure forms of execution, on the other hand, was the pit (góla). It seems that, in this case, the sentenced person, probably also chained, starved and was frozen to death in a pit.

They were perhaps in fact, cases close to human sacrifice. PUNISHMENTS APPEARING ONLY WITH CHRISTIANITY.

Certain forms of punishment appear in Ireland only in the canon law (Church’s law). They appear in no secular legal text, we can therefore conclude from it that they did not belong to the Celtic uses before the advent of Christianity.

The mutilation.

No old legal text mentions the dismemberment , except for the Cáin Adomnáin (a canonical text of Moslem inspiration??) which fixes a twofold punishment including firstly the mutilation (of the left foot and of the right hand) , then the execution. The first dismemberment recorded for a crime dates back to 1224: a robber had his hands and feet cut.

Scourging.

Very often mentioned in the old legal texts, particularly as punishment for the slaves, scourging appears in Ireland only in the texts of canon law. No reference to it appears in the old secular legal texts.

Nota bene.

Reference book mentioned: Fergus Kelly, a guide to early Irish law. Dublin 1988.

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THE CELTIC SPIRIT: (SEXUAL) FREEDOM.

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PSYCHOLOGY AND ETHICS OF THE SACRED PROSTITUTION.

From the sexual point of view, if chastity has value, it is not because of the moral excellence which is ascribed to it today, but because of concepts of mystical nature, relating to the ceremonial purity.

Sexuality as higher mode of reproduction is indeed a very old natural law. Some say that its appearance dates back to several million years. This sexed reproduction is chance, source of life and joy, but also of many torments.

The reading of the great mythological texts shows us that there exists a gap between the mythological thought which regarded sexuality as natural as fresh water; and the Judeo-Christian thought which made the latter a taboo, and the base of the guilt complex.

Besides the Celtic king had the right to use freely of the wife of his host according to H. d’Arbois de Jubainville (right of the king in the Irish epic) and he also had the right of primae noctis according to the legends concerning the life and the work of Hesus = Cuchulainn.

Having presented his wife Aemer to the king Conchobar just after being married, the latter was indeed in the obligation to satisfy his droit du seigneur; but the Ulaid discussed the problem and here what they found as a solution: Aemer would spend well the night with Conchobar, but with Fergus and Cathbad between them two in order to take care that there is nothing.

“Accept, o Hound of Culann, Cathbad asked him, and then you will have our blessing .” The Hound of Culann accepted and it was done thus.

On the morrow, Conchobar gave to beautiful Aemer the wedding gift that he intended to her, he did like the habit has it even if nothing had occurred this night. He compensated the Hound of Culann for this infringement of his honor.

Thus everything got back to normal and the Hound of Culann could finally sleep with his wife (last part of the wooing of Aemer).

The first function of the religions should be nevertheless the defense and the glorification of the life. And Man’s life depends on the fertility of his mother nature. However the slightest thing, a hailstorm, a cold snap on the flowers during the spring, a rain which is long in coming, is enough so that the food shortage settles with the death of herds and men. Consequently, the first duty of the druids is to get from the powers ruling the life the support of the fertility of the grounds, of vitality of the plants, of fertility of the animals, of the fertility of women and of the power of men, perpetuated in their posterity. We better understand then the proliferation of the sexual representations in the religions: sacred prostitutes, bacchanalia, offerings, bloody sacrifices intended to revitalize the sun and the earth… The imagination of the men is limitless in its eagerness to stimulate the creating activity of the god-or- demons.

We also easily understand the special attention they grant to the rites of puberty, this season of the man when the boy becomes able to fertilize a woman and the girl to be fertilized. Rites of initiation where the death of the child and the birth of the adult are expressed.

To find, in our own traditions a healthier and more balanced design of sexuality, we are obliged to back until Antiquity. Many practices which would seem to us aberrant nowadays were then licit during it and had even a great symbolic value. It was so about bacchanalia, for example.

CELTIC BACCHANALIA.

Without wanting to enter here the discussed question of the path of the Namnetes (of the Celtic Tantrism), let us say simply that the aspect which takes up us; is that which Strabo evokes for his famous island of the Namnetes. The orgia and their corollaries, the ecstasy and the love of life, in short all that constitutes the Great Pagan Health, were not the prerogative of a single god, Dionysus, nor of the only Greeks! These bacchanalia were also celebrated in the island that the Namnetes had in a place corresponding roughly speaking to the current peninsula of the Croisic-Batz-Penchateau, in the French department of Loire-Atlantique. See also on the same subject the legendary episode of the adultery of the wife of Partholon.

STRABO, BOOK IV, 4. 6.

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“In the ocean, Posidonius says, there is a small island, not very far out to sea, situated off the outlet of the Liger River; and the island is inhabited by women of the Namnetes , they are possessed by Dionysus and make this god propitious by appeasing him with mystic initiations as well as other sacred performances [……] it is a custom of theirs once a year to un-roof the temple and roof it again on the same day before sunset, each woman bringing her load to add to the roof; but the woman whose load falls out of her arms is rent to pieces by the rest, and they carry the pieces round the temple with cries of (Dionysian) enthusiasm and do not cease until their frenzy ceases; and it is always the case, he says, that someone jostles the woman who is to suffer this fate.”

DIONYSIUS THE PERIEGETES.

Description of the inhabited world. Verse 570.

Nearby there is another path of islets, where the wives of the noble Amnitian men on the opposite shores excitedly perform the sacred rites for Bacchus according to custom, wreathed with clusters of black-leaved ivy by night.

And the clear sound of the tumult rises. Not so on the banks of the Thracian Apsynthus do the Bistonians call upon loud-roaring Eiraphiotes; not so beside the black-eddying Ganges do the Indians, with their children, lead the revelry in honor of loud-thundering Dionysus, not as the women in that land raise their cries of 'Euoe.”

ANONYMOUS.

Paraphrase of Dionysius the Periegetes.

Close to the islands known as Cassiterides, there is another series of very small islands, where women of Amnites, on the other shore, i.e., opposite, celebrate, according to the rites, the worship of Dionysus. It is during the night, and they are crowned by corymbs of ivy with black leaves, i.e., of bunches of this shrub with their fruits in the shape of grapes; the noise of the drums and of the cymbals which they strike resounds away. Nowhere…. neither the Bistonides in Thracia, nor the Indians, led the festivals of the noisy Dionysus with the ardor of these women when they sing together: Evohe Bacchus! In other words, when they sing the sacred hymn of the Dionysia.

COMMENTARY BY EUSTATHIUS.

Comparing with these islands (British Isles) those of these waters, he says, through a diminutive, “the small islands of the Amnites. “Here the wives of the brave Amnites, etc.,” It is reported indeed, that there is in the Ocean, but not completely away from the shore, a small island inhabited by women of Amnites, possessed by the spirit of Dionysus. No man puts his foot in this island; it is the women who go to meet the men, and after having had intercourse with them, they return themselves in their island. Then, by oratorical comparison between these ritual practices and others which resemble them: he [Dionysus] writes that “it exists nowhere elsewhere, women who Žneuzousi ? that is to say celebrate with more ardor Euius Dionysus by shouting evohe to express their Dionysiac enthusiasm.’ It is said, indeed that the wives of the Amnites dance in chorus during whole nights, so that on this point yield to them even the Thracians, even the Indians, though these people, fond of Dionysus, are entirely devoted to these sacred orgia.

STRABO STILL. GEOGRAPHIA IV, 4.6.

“No man sets foot on the island, although the women themselves, sailing from it, have intercourse with the men.”

The women in question were to dance naked and with her body tattooed with black or midnight blue pigments, as the same author signals it for the Celtiberians.

Of course, the Bacchus in question (Dionysius in Posidonius) is only the interpretatio romana or graeca of a Celtic god-or-demon remaining to be identified.

NAMNETISM AND HIEROGAMY.

Specialists, of course, have much glossed about this practice consisting, for women, in offering themselves to men met randomly, it seems.

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It is necessary to understand all this, to get rid from 2000 years of making the body guilty and to see in sexuality only one of the intrinsic components of our deepest being; as natural as the water from a spring.

The principle of the magic known as “sympathetic ” (or analogical?) is rather simple to understand. It is enough to mime, on a small scale, and in our World, an unspecified action, so that this one is reproduced by the god-or-demons on a large scale. See for example the techniques of bewitchment

and the use for that of the dolls which are tortured with pins. We can, of course, make fun with such a design of the things, but it is at the origin of all the current mass religions.

Hierogamy is a technical term of the mythologists meaning “marriage” quite simply. This practice dating back at the Indo-European time is, in spring, an analogical representation of the union of the Sky god-or-demon (or sometimes of the Sun) with a goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if this term is preferred, incarnating the power of generation, of production. The most widespread form was that which made the Mother Earth serviced by the Father Sky.

The bitos or cosmos is an organic Whole, moved by a divine Energy, to which every Celtic minded person is to be identified in order to carry out his own ultimate nature. Nature is a living being, traversed by impulses of attraction and repulsion and livened up by a secret fire that the human beings seek to control. The men can therefore make contact with the higher or lower worlds directly (through dreams) or through mediators (gods, spirits, demons), even helped by some rituals. An absorption of the human self in the divine self is therefore possible.

For the natures more inclined to mysticism like in the case of the Namnetian priestesses; there existed perhaps a total identity between the mind and the matter, the microcosm and the macrocosm, the self and the world, the individual soul and the universal soul. The world has in it a static male principle and a dynamic female principle (or the contrary), which, by being integrated the one into the other, create the life continuously, even spiritual or mental.From the union of these two principles, the world spouts out and the life rises.

The sex act can be a mystical process of identification as well as other primitive means causing the ecstasy: its use is therefore normal as soon as a human group wishes to form an alliance with the natural forces, represented by sacred protagonists. Such is the meaning of the divine marriage (hiéros gamos) publicly celebrated during so many pagan ceremonies.

The union of the two sexes eliminates the polarity of the contraries and leads to the original invisible which was previous the birth of the world. The surpassing every dualism, coincides with the ultimate release of positive energies.

The psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung deals with it , among other universal fundamental symbols of Mankind, in his work “ metamorphoses of the soul and its symbols.”

In his own jargon, Jung speaks about the symbolic melting of the woman and of her animus (male principle latent in each woman), or that of the man and of his anima (latent female principle in each man).

In the 12th century still, the rites of the establishment of certain Irish kings comprised the union of the sovereign with a white mare. This particular form of ritual is attached to this very old current of thought, probably even previous to the coming of the Celts in these areas: that of the magic known as “sympathetic.”

Those who let the body decay, destroy the spirit;

And they won’t attain the powerful knowledge of truth. Having learned the skill of fostering the body,

I fostered the body, and I nurtured the soul.

The Perfect One has entered the temple of the body.” (Tirumular 7th century).

In the path of the Namnetes or Celtic Tantrism, the women are then regarded as being on an equal footing of the man and even as her initiators.

To conclude, let's say that the best way to understand the cathartic function of this famous way of the Namnetes which was yet much written about, is not to refer to Indian Tantrism or to the classical Greek philosophers but, as that corresponds to something very deep in the human race, and that former druids had understood well; to refer preferably to the writing of a Greek Neo-Platonic

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philosopher quite forgotten today, which we have nevertheless already mentioned here and there, namely Iamblichus.

And especially in this passage of his essay on the Egyptian mysteries (yes yes Egypt, let's not be stupidly racist) where he writes after having dealt with the worship of the phallus it is true (the Namnetes were rightly less male chauvinist and more feminist, perhaps still marked by a certain matriarchy).

Section I Chapter 11.

" …Another reason, also, of these things may be assigned. The powers of the human passions that are in us, when they are entirely restrained, become more vehement; but when they are called forth into energy, gradually and commensurately, they rejoice in being moderately gratified, are satisfied; and from hence, becoming purified, they are rendered tractable, and are vanquished without violence. On this account, in comedy and tragedy, by surveying the passions of others, we stop our own passions, cause them to be more moderate, and are purified from them. In sacred ceremonies, likewise, by certain spectacles and auditions of things base, we become liberated from the injury which happens from the works effected by them. Things of this kind, therefore, are introduced for the sake of our soul [sic ! Such is the opinion of Iamblichus], and of the diminution of the evils which adhere to it through generation, and of a solution and liberation from its bonds [Yes !]. On this account, also, they are very properly called by Heraclitus remedies, as healing things of a dreadful nature, and saving souls from the calamities with which the realms of generation are replete.”

The generation in question is that of human beings according to Greek philosophy and particularly Plato. Apart from this dualistic error, it could not be better said and this refers well to the initial prosaic sense of the Greek adjective katharos which, let us remind it, associates the material cleanliness, that of the body and the purity of the moral or religious soul. Katharsis is the action corresponding to "cleanse, purify, purge.” It has first the religious meaning of "purification,” and refers particularly to the ritual of the expulsion practiced in Athens on the eve of the Thargelia.

It was necessary to purify the city by expelling criminals, then scapegoats, according to the ritual of the pharmakos.

Apollo himself is said to be katharsios, a purifier. According to the Socrates of the Cratylus he is named Apolouôn, (who washes), insofar as music, medicine and divination, arts over which he presides, are all practices of purification.

The katharsis links the purification to the separation and the purging, in the religious, political and medical fields.

As a remedy, the katharsis more precisely involves the idea of a homeopathic medicine: it is a question, with the purgation, of fighting fire with fire. This is why all pharmakon is a poison as much as a remedy.

Yes, definitely, Iamblichus was also a druid (in his own way) and the ancient Egyptians some brothers or Celtic-minded persons and this should be enough to end any quarrel on the path of the Namnetes.

The intellectual guides of Christianity succumbed to the temptation of the otherworldliness and expressed their hatred towards the fleshly love. The word Eros was consequently eliminated from the Gospels and the Christians preferred to substitute it the notion of agapê, which is very different.

Among Christians in order to link oneself with the Divinity, it is necessary to become pure soul/mind. However this otherworldliness, i.e., the desire to be an angel is not the good means for the soul to ascend. It constitutes on the contrary a frightening trap, because the Man is at the same time earthly and celestial, made of flesh and of soul/mind, and the body has in no way to be excluded from the life in the other world, it must only be accepted then transfigured. The remarks of the author of the Tirumantiram are very clear on this subject

The human being is potentially endowed with a glorious and incorruptible (bellissime) body that the return of the god-or-demons or to the god-or-demons, will reveal.

NOTE IN CONNECTION WITH THIS “RESURRECTION” OF THE BODIES AFTER DEATH.

The capital text in this field is that of Lucan (Pharsalia I, 458).

“Umbrae non tacitas Erebi sedes, Ditisque profundi pallida reigna petunt: regit idem spiritus artus orbe alio idem; longae (canitis si cognita) vitae mors media est.”

“The shades of dead men seek not the quiet homes of Erebus or death's pale kingdoms but the same soul/mind governs the limbs in another world and the death is only the middle of a long life.”

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The exact meaning of the word used by Lucan to evoke this other world (orbis, orbe alio) and the phenomenon in question (regit idem spiritus artus); excludes categorically every notion of only spiritual or completely disembodied life, after death (like at the Christians for example).

The noun orbis (orbe alio) in the Latin of this time, even implies a very earthly and very material meaning. It is besides only, according to Salomon Reinach, an extension of the earthly and sublunary life in another part of the world.

Conclusion.

Nor absence of body (no shade, or pale kingdoms of Dis, Lucan writes explicitly). “regit idem spiritus artus”… we see badly how that could allude to an incorporeal existence. The spirit reappears, but always united with a body.

But nor body exactly identical to the late body either.

Another body. Perhaps somewhat similar to that of the god-or-demons, endowed with immortality, eternal youth, etc. The corresponding adjective in Old Celtic is bellissamos for the male body and bellissama for a female body. In short an exalted body, regenerated, glorious, luminous, but a body nevertheless!

N.B. The idea that the immediate or eschatological spiritual realization implies, not the negation, but the resurrection of the flesh, is also shared, with various nuances, by the Zoroastrian tradition. The otherworldliness of the Manicheism or Christianity therefore appears in fact as the unconscious refusal of admitting this superiority of the Man over the god-or-demons, however, indisputable from certain points of view. Those who let the body decay, destroy the spirit and they won’t attain the powerful knowledge of truth (Tirumular). See the defeat of the god-or-demons in front of the men at the time of the battle for the Talantio (Tailtiu in Gaelic language: personification: Rosemartha) known as 3rd battle of the Plain of the standing stones or burial mounds.

Let us return to the ritual evoked by Strabo in his famous island of the Namnetes. The bacchanalia to which the Namnetian yogini devoted themselves in the island located at the time near the mouth of the Loire River ( Strabo. Book IV, 4.4 to 6).

In the Greek Panth-eon, Dionysus is a separate god-or-demon: he is a wandering god-or-demon, a god-or-demon of nowhere and everywhere. At the same time wandering and settled, he represents the figure of the other, of what is different, diverting, disconcerting, anomic.

In Greek mythology, Dionysus is the god-or-demon of the junction of opposites or ambiguities (death- life, man-woman, underground god-or-demon/solar god-or-demon, barbarian or foreign/ god-or- demon/ Greek master of the Olympus god-or-demon).

In Orphism, Dionysus, which means twice born (ategnatus in Celtic language) is the god-or-demon of the rebirth and of the eternal restarting. It is the god-or-demon of the wine and of the creative frenzy. Dionysus therefore is well the one who comes from the outside, the stranger to whom the city must give way in certain moments of the year,in front of whom t reason must admit its limits.

On his way, he hands down to men his discovery - the use of the vine - and he establishes a new worship, made of trances and of orgiastic frenzy, the Bacchanalia, when all the people, but especially the women, was overcome by a mystical frenzy.

Dionysus is especially a god-or-demon of the elementals of the arborescent vegetation and all vital juices (sap, sperm, milk, blood), as his epicleses show it : Dendrites, guard of the trees; Phloios, spirit of the envelope of fruits ; Sukites, guard of the fig trees. His principal plants are pine and ivy, as their fruits, the pine cone and the ivy berries , with which he is often crowned. These plants are an apparent exception in nature, because they are always green, and do not seem to lose their sheets, what refers to the resurrections of the god-or-demon. It will also be noticed that the true fruits of the pine are hidden in the cone, and that the poisonous, ivy berries, was used in the manufacturing of an ale which the maenads consumed, what contributed to their trance. We also find the pomegranate with its fruit, the fig tree with its figs (the pomegranate is considered as coming from the blood of the god-or-demon, its fruits mature in winter, and Persephone remains linked to hell for having eaten from it; the fig tree, itself, is associated with the hidden life, in the Mediterranean world, because it grows spontaneously where there is groundwater and therefore reveals springs).

As he brought formerly the vine and the wine to men, we also find the vine and the grape, the drinking cup. But it is rather then an influence by Bacchus, his Roman equivalent.

Dionysus god-or-demon of wine (drink of the comfortably off classes) tardily replaced Dionysus god- or-demon of ale (drink of the popular classes) or Sabazius, whose emblematic animal among the Cretans was the horse (or the centaur). It is that the Athenian beer was an ale containing some spelt, tragos in Greek language. Thus, the “odes to the spelt” (tragedies) could be considered tardily, by

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homonymy, as being “goat odes” (the animal which accompanied the god-or-demon, and combined with the wine in Crete).

He is especially the father of the comedy and of the tragedy. It was at the beginning of the kinds of “ illustrations” of the worship, which were given in the Greek theater during the Dionysies, in the presence of his priests (as the mysteries which were played in the Middle Ages on the square of the cathedrals).

They had a particular chanted literary form, the dithyramb . The Dionysiac songs and music call on percussions and flutes. They are dissonant, syncopated, cause surprise and even sometimes fear. His public worship caused the festivals of the “Dionysies,” but there also existed an important secret worship, represented by the Mysteries, comprising ceremonies with initiatory nature. He is often accompanied by a group of satyrs, maenads, panthers, goats, donkeys and by the old Silenus, forming the “Dionysiac procession.”

The private worship took place among comrunos (initiates), it was a worship with Mysteries. The regrouping of these comrunos or initiates is called after thiasus. The thiasi practiced a hidden or initiatory worship, often in caves and during the night, during which the new members were initiated. We are lacking in sources to know what really occurred there, these secret and night ceremonies nevertheless continued until the reign of the Roman empire. They comprised sacrifices, but also frenzies due to intoxication or to vegetable drugs taking, as well as excesses of all kinds, particularly sexual.

The worship of Dionysus is celebrated in the whole Greece, but especially in Attica: several festivals - Dionysies - proceeded there during the year; marked by tumultuous processions in which appeared then, evoked by masks, the genies of the ground and of the fertility, as well as declamations of dithyrambs (anthems in honor of the god-or-demon). These processions were besides at the origin of the Greek theater, comedy, tragedy and satyric drama (which keeps more clearly the mark of its origin).

In Greece, as we saw it, people called maenads the women who celebrated the mysteries of Dionysus. The menads or bacchantes ran here and there, disheveled, half-naked or covered with tiger skins, her head crowned with ivy or vine branches and a thyrsus in their hand. They frequently repeated the cry “Evoé” (courage, my son 1), as for remembering the triumphs of Dionysus against the Giants.

In Rome, under the name of Bacchus (come from one of his Greek epithets) he is quickly identified with an old Italic god-or-demon, Liber pater, about whom we do not know many things .

The sacred wood of Simila or Stimula was the center of the Bacchanalia. In the origin, only the women were allowed there; initiations were performed then only three times a year, and during the day; the women were successively priestesses. But a Campanian priestess, Annia Paculla, had changed everything during her priesthood: she had allowed men, had postponed at night fall the celebration of the mysteries, and had fixed at five a month instead of three a year, the number of the days reserved for initiations.

The men faked sacred furies there, the women, disguised as bacchantes, ran to the Tiber with torches.

The sect of the initiates was soon so numerous that alone it formed almost a people (jam prope populum Livy says). It had among its members high-ranking men and women.

The Scandal of the Bacchanalia is an case occurred in Rome in 186 before our era. It is well known thanks to the detailed account that makes about it the Roman historian Titus-Livius in his book XXXIX, and by the very text of the senatus consultum De Bacchanalibus, engraved on a bronze plate, and found in Bruttium in 1640. Livy devotes a particular place to it, because it occupies twelve of the fifteen chapters devoted to year 186, what is exceptional. But in spite of the richness of the sources, our information concerning this affair remains dubious and not very reliable; because of the partiality of the account of Titus-Livius, which presents only the official version and does not hide his hostility towards the sect besides.

The scandal of the Bacchanalia has its origin in a story looking like a minor news item. A young knight, Aebutius, is devoted by his mother and his father-in-law for initiation in the mysteries of Bacchus, in payment of a vow expressed for his cure at the time of a disease which could have carried him off. He has a liaison with a courtesan, Hispala, and announces to her that he will sleep elsewhere a few nights to respect the period of abstinence previous his initiation. Hispala then reveals to him her lively concern : before her freeing, she had to accompany her master to the sanctuary of Bacchus, and she saw some rapes there. By love for Aebutius, she therefore chooses to break her initiatory oath in order

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to protect her lover from the criminal intentions of his tutor, who seeks to deprive him from his paternal inheritance. Aebutius informs about his doubts the consul Posutumius who, considering his witness statement trustworthy, decides to meet the courtesan Hispala in order to know more about the movement. Her revelations are edifying: the Dionysiac mysteries are an excuse for orgies leading to worst the crimes.

The major reasons of the persecutions which will follow this discovery (7 000 people approximately were sentenced to death) are in fact primarily of a political nature. And it seems well that the Senate of then blew up out of all proportion an affair ready to cause the scandal , then to justify the judgment of the initiates. It uses for that some elements belonging to the bacchic worship and known of the opinion, but so demystified or led astray from their context, that they become the components of an odious criminal organization. In 186, the Senate is already informed of this case and it gives therefore deliberately on the investigation “about the secret associations” an exceptional characteristic, by diverting the two consuls from their ordinary functions.

However, the pertaining to worship elements that we foresee, through the account by Titus-Livius have nothing revolutionist compared to what we know about the Hellenistic mysteries. But the Bacchanalia cause the reprobation of the Romans because of the too much “nonconformist” nature of the ceremonies of the sect, and also because they practice an inversion of the social order considered as dangerous by the authorities. Moreover, the pertaining to worship rules of these private associations are opposed to those of the public religion. The main part of the priestly functions is held by women (like in the case of the Namnetian women), the members undergo an initiation followed by the swearing of an oath, the worship promises the survival after death and the individual happiness; whereas the official religion aims only the interest of the community.

ANTI DIONYSIAN PERSECUTIONS.

The Senate therefore calls up the whole of the magistrates in a terrible repression (7 000 dead as we have said it). The town is put on alert and locked down by the police which arrests the initiates of whom many prefer the suicide to the breaking of the secrecy. The call for informers makes it possible to quickly arrest the main leaders of the sect who for the majority are executed at once. The celebration of the bacchic worship becomes closely supervised by the authorities, but, in spite of the exceptional severity that the Senate showed, he does not seek to remove it. The Senate did not want to proscribe the worship of the god-or-demon, but simply the ceremonies and the mysteries which had caused so many scandals.

“Regarding the Bacchanalia it was resolved to give the following directions to those who are in alliance with us [foederati….].None of them is to possess a place where the festivals of Bacchus are celebrated: if there are any who claim that it is necessary for them to have such a place, they are to come to Rome to the urban praetor, and the Senate is to decide on those matters, when their claims have been heard, provided that not less than 100 senators are present when the affair is discussed [….] No one in a company of more than five persons altogether shall observe the sacred rites [….] if there are any who have acted contrary to what was written above, senators have decided that a proceeding for a capital offense should be instituted against them…”

The worship persisted in an underground way during nearly one century and half in the form of a mystery , combined with Orphism (Dionysus-Zagreus), which promises to its initiates a new life after death, before being again authorized by Caesar.

1) Blasphemes??? We cannot help thinking of the entreaties of the mother of St. Symphorian from the top of the walls in Augustodunum, a small town that we knew very well.

There exist currently among us feminists campaigning for a re-sacralization of the world by return of the HOLY prostitution.

As there were similar practices among Celts, as we have just seen it (not forgetting the sexual initiation of Cuchulainn by the Scottish queen called Scathache, etc., etc.); we will present here some ideas extracted form an article published by our sister in paganism Deena Metzger about this subject. This article has as a subject the seduction and feminization, therefore Eros. It is an undertaking intended to restore the tradition in order to lead to a renewed vision of the world. A new Weltanschauung. It is not only a question of restoring some practices, but also of finding again the state of mind which made them possible.

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HERE BELOW THEREFORE MY NOTES ON THE SUBJECT, TAKEN AT A TIME WHEN I WAS VERY YOUNG.

Once upon a time in Sumeria, in Mesopotamia, in Egypt, in Greece, there were no whorehouses, no brothels. In that time, in those countries, there were the Temples of the Sacred Prostitutes. In these temples, men were cleansed, not sullied, morality was restored, not desecrated, sexuality was not perverted, but divine. The original whore was a priestess, the conduit to the divine, the one through whose body one entered the sacred arena and was restored. Warriors, soldiers, soiled by combat within the world of men, came to the Holy Prostitute, the Quedishtu, literally meaning “ the undefiled one,” in order to be cleansed and reunited with the divinity (Quedishtu, Quadesh, Anath, Astarte, Asherah, etc.)

Therefore it is no wonder that since the beginning the first patriarchs, the priests of Judea and Israel, the prophets of Jehovah, had condemned the holy prostitutes and the worship of Asherah, Astarte, Anah and the other goddess-or-demonesses. Until the time of these priests women were the one doorway to God. If the priests wished to insert themselves between the people and the divine, they had to remove women from that role. So it was not that sexuality was originally considered sinful per se, or that women’s sexuality threatened property and progeny; but that it was considered as an obstacle on the road going to the power. Women therefore had to be replaced as a path leading towards the divinity. This door had to be closed. And it was, we can speculate, to this end, that the terrible misogyny, that we all suffer, was instituted.

The women formerly established the link between the three worlds. By his mother one entered this world. Through the mysteries or the rites of Demeter, or Isis, each one could go down in the Hades. By the sacred prostitution one reached the Divinity. The access remained personal and unconditional. But to supplant the women did not suffice for this new clergy. At the time of Qedishtu, each young woman served the god-or-demons as a holy prostitute, often for a year. This did not go at all with hegemony that this clergy tried to impose. These essential roads towards the three worlds were therefore blocked or degraded. The god-or-demons did not die at the time of Nietzsche, but many centuries earlier, with the end of the priestesses and the secularization or the degradation of the bodies, deprived of their sacred characteristic. Which were the consequences of this elimination of the sacred prostitution in the world? Not only the disappearance of certain rites, but ALSO the perversion of the consciences which resulted from this in an inescapable way. By opposing body to spirit, these priests separated God from Nature, and they caused a split between spirit and body. The world was deprived of its sacred nature. It is possible that the world such as we know it, dehumanizing, divided, coarse, is the result of this separation.

Like Deena Metzger says it very well:“ In a sacred universe, the prostitute by definition is…. a holy woman, a priestess. In a secular universe, the prostitute is a whore. In this distinction is the agony of our lives. The question is: how do we relate to this today, as women, as feminists? Is there a way through which we could sanctify again the society, become again the priestesses, put ourselves in the service of the gods and of Eros? In short how can we re-enchant the world?"

But what wants to thus say Deena Metzger precisely while speaking about re-sacralization of the world? That we must again act, as sexual and spiritual creatures at the same time, but that we must, first of all, begin with transforming us ourselves internally, in the most fundamental way it is. We will not be able to hold the means of starting this re-sacralization of the society if we are not yet really ready to become again these priestesses who serve the god-or-demons; not in theory and apart from every practice, but after having discovered fully precisely, our true nature.

However it is precisely this adherence to the principles of femininity which rises problems. The feminine was so devaluated or degraded, has so little power in the world, that it is difficult, if not apparently impossible, to promote femininity without we feel that rather as an incentive to more perversion. We are therefore placed here faced with a terrible paradox.

“As part of this new spiritual order, we must engage in two heresies. The second is to re-sanctify the body, the first even more difficult task is to return to the very early Neolithic, pagan, matriarchal perception of the sacred universe itself. But to overthrow secular thought can be the heretical act of the century. That is why we are in so much psychic pain.”

Said differently and to paraphrase somewhat Deena Metzger, in the love, we give up our character and we become the world. If we become the world through love, then the love is primarily a political

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act. If we become the world, by thus reaching the god-or-demons, then the love is primarily a spiritual act which honors the world.

How therefore, in this case, to become a holy prostitute? How to concretize this principle? How to change the temple? How to change, not only behaviors , but also consciences.

To become a holy prostitute, it is necessary to be ready to endure the true conscience anguish that this heresy implies. Because II is always extraordinarily difficult to live such a high design of the World, when the majority of people around us has another one. The holy prostitute of today must be ready to try to bring back the sacredness to those who are deprived from it. These ideas are old and well known, easy to say, but difficult to apply. However, as soon as they cease becoming simple ideas to become deep beliefs, then the external transformation too becomes inevitable. As our authoress writes it precisely: “The task is to accept the body as spiritual, and sexuality and erotic love as spiritual disciplines, to believe that Eros is pragmatic, to honor the feminine even where it is dishonored or disadvantaged. But all that inevitably leads us to questions of the type:

Whom do I close myself against? How do I reinforce the mind/spirit?

When and how do I denigrate the feminine?

Our reader will find below my personal and brief summary of this brilliant apologia of Deena Metzger, at least such as I understood it.

During one of these meditations (it is Deena who speaks) , I had the vision of a tall and luminous young woman, true image of the Goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, whereas I had never seen anything such before. I then felt at the same time amazement (as for her beauty) but also terror (as for her presence). I really felt this terror of the feminine itself about which I had so often spoken before, and I was frightened by my own nature.

However, if prostitutes houses were added to our temples and eighteen-year-old girls installed inside; that would be ridiculous and would not change anything, because nothing will change as a long time as femininity will be devaluated, the body disparaged or the belief in the sacredness of the universe dismissed . However the goal is not the sex for the sex, but something much deeper.

Therefore, even if I already wrote on this subject, and sincerely tried to live according to these principles, I must recognize that I am not yet really ready myself to adorn the dress of a holy prostitute. That afflicts me and frightens me, considering the vastness of the task.

Our conclusion on this subject will also be exactly that of our sister Deena Metzger herself, who finished as follows her article: But when the contemporary feminism will be established sufficiently to offer a real hope and offer new possibilities, women who had formerly considered themselves atheists will find again then the path of the spiritual interrogations (Deena Metzger. On the Return of the Holy Prostitute).

What to think of all this now retrospectively??

To return precisely about the sex priestesses in the mysterious Namnetian island evoked by Strabo (Book IV, 4.6).

It is necessary to signal three important differences with the Metzgerian design of the holy prostitution.

Let us notice, first of all, that the behavior of these women is that of the maenads, at least according to Strabo.

Then that these “excesses” occur probably only at the time of certain precise ceremonies and are neither daily nor permanent.

Finally, that unlike the classical ancient sacred prostitution, they are not the men who visit the holy prostitutes in precise places; but these priestesses of sex who move in to some extent “at home” in order to officiate. What were to think of that the legitimate wives?

On the other hand, Deena Metzger is right to make such practices dating back to the Neolithic or pre- Neolithic , therefore matriarchal, era, of the society ?

The prostitution which was so often called, wrongly, the oldest female trade, was undoubtedly, rather flourishing in antiquity, for multiple reasons, but we cannot call it a trade. The inquiry of Herodotus devotes a broad place to it and gives us multiple information which corroborates what we can learn from other sources and, nowadays, by the study of the psychology of the primitive societies. Its aims are multiple and we will try to release from it the principal ones.

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The two kinds of prostitution, to establish the most general classification which can exist about it, are the religious prostitution and the profitable prostitution. The first can be still subdivided in several categories.

In certain cases, the prostitutes are intended to remain throughout their life in the service of the deity by serving her in this way; this form takes on a certain lucrative, but nonindividual, aspect, because the material profit of the acts achieved by these maidservants of Aphrodite (or of another deity) goes to the treasure of the temple in which they officiate.

In other cases, it is a single act whose reasons can be explained by the desire of a consecration , or by the rests of certain primitive taboos about which we will speak again.

The second form of profit prostitution is more down-to-earth, but there also exist several kinds of it. Either the woman chose this trade to earn the most possible money, or she was sold as a slave; and, in this case, she is exploited by a third party; or even it is a momentary period which is authorized by law, religion, and morality.

We find, in the many habits reported by Herodotus, a mixture of these various kinds of prostitution. Still Let us notice that, in the Antiquity, the prostitute was not treated with the contempt which is affected, nowadays, by certain classes of our society about her.

We will firstly examine the sacred prostitution. There existed, in Babylon a habit that Herodotus rejects. “The foulest Babylonian custom is that which compels every woman of the land to sit in the temple of Aphrodite and have intercourse with some stranger [….] they sit down in the sacred plot of Aphrodite, with crowns of cords on their heads; there is a great multitude of women coming and going.” Once a woman has taken her place there, she does not go away to her home before some stranger has cast money into her lap, but while he casts the money, he must say, “I invite you in the name of Mylitta.” This goddess-or-demoness is also called Astarte or Ishtar, goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if it is preferred, of love and war, one of the greatest deities in Babylon. “It does not matter what sum the money is; Herodotus continues, the woman will never refuse, for that would be a sin, the money being by this act made sacred. So she follows the first man who casts it and rejects no one.” Most beautiful are therefore freed very quickly and can go home, but there are some of them who remain in the temple during three or four years, without being able to meet this obligation.

Herodotus signals us a similar habit in certain places of the island of Cyprus. We know that the temples of Aphrodite, in Paphos and in Amathous, housed holy courtesans, without being able to affirm nevertheless that the same law was in force there. What meaning is it therefore necessary to give to this habit? Perhaps it is an act of dedication of the virginity to the deity ; perhaps also is it necessary to see in it an act of ritual deflowering, practiced in most primitive societies , where virginity then was regarded as an embarrassment, because it was the evidence of an obvious lack of seduction; on the Malabar Coast, the girls could not find a husband as long as they remained virgin, to make the blood of a member of the tribe spilling being prohibited by a taboo (Durant. The story of civilization I. Our oriental heritage. Chap. 4. Sexual morality p. 85).

It is certain that many were the temples which had sacred courtesans. The temple of Mylitta, itself, about which we have just spoken, had a female clergy: hierodules, holy courtesans or prostitutes. The material profit of the activities of these prostitutes was going to enrich the treasure of the temple.

Undoubtedly, in the neighborhoods of the temples, there were also other women, self-employed in a way, who officiated there because the place was favorable to their trade. These, non-sacred courtesans, working for themselves, were sometimes themselves also in the obligation to contribute to the construction of some monuments, just as their colleagues of the temples piled up money for the religious treasure. We find, in the Inquiry of Herodotus, no information about the holy prostitution in Egypt, but his author informs us in book II, chapter LXIV, that it was prohibited to have intercourse with a woman in a temple.

In the history of Lydia (I, 93), Herodotus speaks to us about a very beautiful monument, “the most beautiful monument known, he says, “only inferior to the monuments of Egypt and Babylon.” And this monument, tomb of Alyattes, the father of Croesus, would have been raised “by the joint labor of the tradesmen, handicraftsmen, and courtesans, and had at the top five stone pillars, which remained to

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my day, with inscriptions cut on them, showing how much of the work was done by each class of work people. It appeared on measurement that the portion of the courtesans was the largest.”

It should be believed therefore that this kind of trade was of a positive ratio, in antiquity, but that the governments of then could impose all the professions, whatever they are.

In the same chapter, Herodotus reports another Lydian habit to us, to perhaps try to mitigate the effect which his previous declaration could produce, quoted above. It is true, he says, that “the daughters of the common people in Lydia, one and all, wishing to collect money for their marriage portions, prostitute themselves till they marry; and are wont to contract themselves in marriage.”

Let us not forget, before making a judgment, that there exists, nowadays still, many loose women who practice this trade during a certain time; until the day when they piled up enough money to buy a business assets, preferably a bar or a hotel, and to marry legally. In the following chapter (I, 94), Herodotus adds that “the Lydians have very nearly the same customs as the Greeks, with the exception that these last do not bring up their girls in the same way.” This seems to involve that this habit never existed in Greece. It should be admitted that the Lydian girl found there a certain emancipation, since that enabled her to choose herself her husband, which was rather rare at the time.

There also existed, like from time immemorial, poor people who practiced this trade to earn a living. Thus, in Babylon, since the capture of the city “which made them afflicted and poor, every one of the people that lacks a livelihood prostitutes his daughters.”

That is not, of course, a very special habit, but it happened that certain courtesans got an imperishable celebrity, such Aspasia, the mistress of Pericles.

In short, what to conclude from all that? That the prostitution always existed, at least that which is for profit. It was no more no less prosperous during antiquity than nowadays. What we should notice, it is that the prostitute was not considered then with contempt, like today, in the modern societies.

Moreover, it is necessary at least to add the various cases of sacred prostitution which, as for it, has completely disappeared, in Western civilizations, and which were regarded as very honorable. These techniques of yogini, as regards the body, are in nothing different from those which we know today under the name of neo-Tantrism.

EXCEPT THAT THEY REPRESENT THE UNION OF THE FEMALE PRINCIPLE AND OF THE MALE PRINCIPLE OF THE PRIMORDIAL COSMIC BIG CAULDRON NECESSARY TO THE REINTEGRATION WITHIN THE ORIGINAL ABSOLUTE IMMANENT BIG WHOLE. WHAT OBVIOUSLY MAKES A BIG DIFFERENCE!

And makes this prostitution unique compared to the other prostitution, with purely profitable or mercantile goals.

N.B. To say of a prostitute she is sacred is to recognize in her the sign of higher principles inspiring an absolute respect. Because of that this prostitute becomes different, separate from the things of comparable nature by a dignity which covers her entirely. A different nature pervades her. They were then simply systems and deeply religious practices, with a difference compared with our time, they agreed to sexuality as a creative power of the human life; and sought to integrate in the religion the sexual communion as the deepest interhuman communication.

N.B. The bonds which link the Celtic yoga and the sexuality (sexual techniques which do not presuppose necessarily besides the coupling with a Celtic yogini or dakini) do not aim the only satisfaction of the momentary needs, but the sublimation of the sexuality; the last objective remaining the liberation and the union with the immanent absolute.

By putting on an equal footing man and woman in a ritual sexual union, the Celts, about whom Strabo speaks (the Namnetes), behaved as revolutionists in advance over their time, and such a yoga of yogini was unique. The woman played there no longer a passive role, but an active role (the text of Strabo is extremely clear in this respect). However the increase of the woman as partner having the same rights as the man remains still necessary.

We were all so much castrated or victims of female circumcision , morally speaking, by 2000 years of Judeo-Christian civilization, that we are all today women or men psychologically mutilated as regards sexuality. The neo-druidism of which the goal is to cause a new man with the best of the former one, therefore will never cast the first stone on those who are unable to go as far.

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In the former druidism in every case, what is certain, it is that the erotic love was always a human reality going with saying. Sexuality is part of the nature of mankind. It is advisable to understand it and to control it, not to devalue it.

There is no need, as Judeo-Islamo-Christians do it, to penalize by a taboo the sexual interhuman experiments , and the language of the bodies can be taken over in the religious symbolic language. The “to become the same flesh” has nothing diabolical. It is not necessary to eliminate human sexuality from every religious sphere, because it is meaningful, it also refers to an experiment of the immanent absolute. The bodily love is the only natural reality being able to give us an idea of what can be the total release, or the access to the other world. The pleasure itself, instead of returning each one to his selfishness, can convey the communion in the joy of the individuals. The human energy of sexuality gives us an idea of what the bliss is in the Vindomagos.

The resurrection/transfiguration of the bodies in the other world strengthens the attraction of the latter in the druidism, and the druidiactio surrounds with honor the body itself during the funeral, because it was also the temple of the spirit.

The health of the body is an image of the integral salvation that will bring to us this true resurrection to come. The druidism likes the man in good health, whether it is on the physical level or the spiritual level; and if such an amount of ours were burned as sorcerers or witches in the Middle Ages, or later still (cf.at Salem) , it is because they continued to listen to the suffering of humblest persons; that they endeavored then to care them through all the means at their disposal (plants, or by other means of psychosomatic order - placebo effect - etc.).

The body is an essential part of the Man in his totality, this is why the druids respect the Mankind (the sacredness it is the Man) including as far as in his body dimension which is nemeta too.

The sexual difference, placed within our flesh, resounds in all the human beings. Heterosexuality, as aggressiveness besides, is one of the fundamental human energies. It is the source of a formidable instinct.Of a formidable research of the other, of an inexhaustible search for otherness. What more other indeed that a woman for a man or a man for a woman? In the human being such an energy can change, can sublimate itself. The druids always saw in sexuality besides a prefiguration of the future intimate union of fire and water, spirit and matter.

Love always inspired a large part of every culture, of every poetry, of the history of literature, of art and even certain political approaches. What in the beginning was marked by the instinct of pleasure and domination, becomes way of communion and of meeting body and soul.

Let us remind besides that, according to Henry Lizeray (Ogmius or Orpheus), our ancestors were distinguished especially from the other peoples by their sense of love; and that, according to his S.D.D., the Eros, or love, was the principle more improved by the Celts.

The initial “o” of the term ogham place the Celts within the feminist peoples because the alphabet, high manifestation of the intelligence, was thus placed under the consecration of women. This favorable appreciation of women is confirmed by the innumerable churches raised in honor of Our lady, in whom we can recognize the Morgan Lefey of the olden days” (Henry Lizeray, Ogmius or Orpheus).

Notice of Peter DeLaCrau. With all due respect to our old master, let us remind nevertheless s that the oghamic alphabet is relatively recent, and that it is not the oldest of the alphabets used by the Celts.

The oldest system of letters used by the Celts in order to notice their language, being an alphabet derived from the Etruscan system in North Italy, and used to notice the Lepontic. Henry Lizeray is right nevertheless as regards the latent feminism of Celtic mentality.

Therefore what is important for a celticist, it is to know to guide one’s desires in the line of one’s own calling, without ridiculing nature. The sexuality, meeting place of flesh and soul , of matter and mind, is also the place of all the weakness which encumbers our freedom. To reach in this field a true freedom, you sometimes need a long fight which is not necessarily an abstinence. This one can be made easier by a positive education without inflexibility, but without deviation. A healthy social climate facilitates the progressive channeling of the sexual instinct, rather disordered in the beginning. The Celts always had in what relates to them, a positive design of sexuality. The druidism prohibited the Man from scorning his body’s life. Man must on the contrary esteem his body what it is worth , that of a priceless means of knowledge [of the ineffable] and in this field the unity of the soul and of the physical body is so deep that in Mankind the soul and the matter are not two linked natures, but only the same nature. To be fully a woman, to be fully a man, are a healthy and good reality. Man and woman, in their “being man” and their “being woman” are a fruit from the nature and from its wisdom.

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Whatever the places, the response to love from the druidiactio was always a yes of the sunartion type because only flesh can give all its sense to spirit.

On the other hand, the non-religious prostitution (the trade which consists in being given to the sexual pleasures of others for money) is generally practiced by women or young people who live a true slavery, a true hell. The procuring therefore is to be denounced. The State is guilty when it does not fight sufficiently this social plague.

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THE ADULTERY OF PARTOLAN’S WIFE.

A day when Partholon went on the shore of the sea (as was his wont) to fish, he leaves his wife and his attendant together in the island. She sues intercourse of lechery of the attendant, and he made her no answer the first time. Such was her immodesty that she did not suffer that he should not lie with her, she being stripped ; so that he did her pleasure. A burning of intense thirst seizes them after that. Partholon had a vessel of excellent drink in the dwelling, from which nothing could be drunk save through the cup of red gold that he himself had. She takes it to herself then, so that they drank their fill of it. After Partholon returned from the chase on which he was, he asks for drink. It was brought to him. After tasting it, he found the taste of their mouths on the cup , and gave heed to the evil deed that they had done ; for the diabolic spirit that used to accompany him revealed it to him.

Then he said, "Though no long time I am away from you there is a thing arisen through you that I find hard, and a compensation is my due fort that." So he said this :

Counter-lay (neo-druidic commentary) No. 1.

The diabolic spirit. Spiorat deamhnacda. If it is a Christian influence, it would be in this case a little the opposite of a guardian angel . A guardian demon ?

" Great the story you have scattered abroad, O Delgnat, ye have caused us trouble ; many children in doubt, on the face of kings blushing, in the heart of champions swelling, peace will not give them sound hearts ; the evil deed ye have plotted little will not pay for great jealousy of a slave.

She answered Partholon and said, "I think that it is I who deserve compensation for the injustice you have worked ; for you it is who have caused the deed which I have done. For it is not right to neglect the guarding of desire of things for one another, for fear of destroying any of them. Just like honey to a woman, milk to a boy, flesh to a cat, food to the good fellow, a tool to a wright, so is a woman with a man ; it is not right not to interfere between them ; when desire of coition comes, it cannot easily be resisted."

This verdict of Delgnat is the first verdict of Ireland; so that thence people have a proverb from that onward, " The right of his wife against Partholon." So Delgnat said this :

Editors note. A poem in Gaelic that Henry Lizeray had visibly much difficulty to translate follows.

" O my fair lord Partholon, see your cattle speckle-hued,do they not ask to be united ? See your sheep of fair robe, do they not wait (?) their pairing master ? Now if you consider your lofty cattle, not a special bull they approach ; they approach bulls (?) from necessity. If you consider your pleasant sheep, when the heat comes they are very submissive

(to) whatsoever ram is first in pens. Calves have a tie (?) that they do not follow their milch-kine ; paddocks are closed (?) on the noble lambs that the lambkins do not suck. Foaming milk from cattle trust not to a kitten ; do not trust your very sharp axe with a lumberjack, for safety.”

Partholan answered and said :

" Great is the injury you have done, Delgnat ? Great are your deliberate crimes, your joint sin incurs penalties ; we ever guard you, you doing us treason. Enough to cause evil habits to all, seemly to all will appear your sinfulness. The sin of Eve you have found, second to it is what you have done

O Delgnat, or yet more.

While they were thus mutually disputing, the lapdog of Delgnat comes to Partholon to play with him ; Samer was its name. He strikes a blow of his palm on it, so that he killed it ; so that from it is named the island, namely, Samer's Island. That is the first jealousy of Ireland. Moreover, its first adultery was

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the lying of his serving attendant with Delgnat. Topa rises to flee from Partholon. He followed him, so that he destroyed him in punishment for his misdeed.

Counter-lay (neo-druidic commentary) No.. 2.

We are busy speculating about the significance of the “sacrifice” of the dog. Jews invented the notion of scapegoats, did the druids invent the notion of scapedogs ? The poor animal was, of course, innocent! But did Partolan perhaps consider that the dog had failed in his role which was that to stand guard while preventing any unknown people from approaching?? One can also think that Partolan quite simply got rid of the dog by making him flee with stones (a beginning of stoning for adultery?) To note, however, unlike Islam, only one of the two culprits of adultery crime is punished with capital punishment, the man. The woman (Delgnat) is apparently saved. What locates Celtic-Druidism halfway between Christianity and Islam on the matter. It is true that Topa as it happens had committed more than a simple adultery, he had betrayed the confidence of his lord what another crime quite as serious was.

Let us repeat nevertheless that all this it is former druidism, that the new one does not forget the plea of Delgnat in favor of the free, freeing and feed (cathartic), love, but that it also applies it to men, and therefore recommends getting rid of any middle-class feeling as regards marriage. Marriage is only a contract signed between a man and a woman, and the society must especially be concerned with the fate of the children who can be born from such a union of the bodies souls and statuses.

EDITOR’S NOTE.

In this connection [adultery] , a very witty remark is reported to have been made by the wife of Argentocoxus, a Caledonian, to Julia Augusta. When the empress was jesting with her, after the treaty, about the free intercourse of her sex with men in [Great] Britain, she replied: "We fulfill the demands of nature in a much better way than do you Roman women; for we consort openly with the best men, whereas you let yourselves be debauched in secret by the vilest." Such was the retort of the [Great] British woman (Cassius Dio. Book LXXVII. Chapter XVI.5).

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THE CELTIC MIND:THE SENSE OF SACRIFICE.

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SACRIFICES OF OBJECTS OR ANIMALS.

“Natio est admodum dedita religionibus” (Caesar, BG.VI, 16). The whole nation devotes itself in the religious matters.

ATEBERTAS OR OFFERINGS.

Irish ldpart, idbart, edpart (the Irish medieval orthography is often fluctuating). Word for word “offering, what is brought.” According to any appearance, the word is old and it was used to convey the entirety of the meaning of Latin sacrificium. It has clearly a pre-Christian meaning in the gloss of Saint-Gall 56 b, 7: “I. nomen dolestur chorthon bis oc edpartaib do deib: i.e., the name of a round bottom vase which was made for the sacrifices to the gods.”

The word remained in the Christian vocabulary and followed the same semantic evolution that Latin offerenda, of which it is the strict equivalent one, in Brittonic and Goidelic, to designate the mass.

Idpairt choirp Crist (offering of Christ’s body) is used to translate Eucharistiae mysteria besides, in the Latin lives of the saints of Ireland; while old Welsh aperth, plural apertou, annotates the Latin terms muneribus, sacra and victima, in a manuscript of the Ars Amatoria by Ovid in the 9th century. Let us remind, however, to prevent every mistake, that adpert is literally “what is brought” and nothing else.

In Mirebeau, French department of Cote-d’Or , basins dug in the sacred ground were used as a repository for hundreds of whole vases, often painted, which had been offered to the deity. [It was in this case perhaps to be an underground and therefore chthonian entity. Editor’s note.]. We see thereby that the diversity of such atebertas or offerings was to be extremely large, and that archeology is far currently from giving us an account of it.

The offering of the atebertas could take two main forms, the simple ateberta and the ateberta included in a sacrificial rite (the drink offerings: offering of milk, water, or fermented beverages).

Simple atebertas.

Offering of freshly collected plants: cereals, fruits, aromatic herbs, flowers, plants, tree branches and so on; or offering of products made with these same plants: drinks, cakes, porridge…

The Greek and Roman literature does not inform us directly about this kind of atebertas. Its use in Celtic country nevertheless is proven by the following quotation of Strabo (Geography Book IV, 4 , 6). “The come here, put a plank on an elevated place, and then throw on barley cakes, each man separately; the birds fly up, eat some of the barley cakes, scatter the others and the man whose barley cakes are scattered wins.”

Artemidorus reports us here very whimsical things, but what he says of Demeter and Kore on the other hand, is more serious. He writes indeed that there is an island opposite Armorica, on which religious ceremonies are celebrated, similar to those for Demeter in Samothrace.

However Demeter and Kore are deities who, in Greece, precisely receive this kind of atebertas: cakes or pancakes.

It was consequently an offering ceremony for the Celtic goddess-or-demonesses, or fairies if it is preferred, equivalent, symbolized by ravens, and Artemidorus understood nothing in it.

Atebertas included in a sacrificial ritual (beverages).

They are like the previous ones of those which leave few traces likely to be observed by the archeologist. They are not mentioned either in literary descriptions (which retain only the central act of the sacrifice).

We can only suppose their existence since such offerings exist in all the religions in the world, and because the pertaining to worship installations as we unearthed in the sanctuaries like in Gournay- sur-Aronde, lent themselves as well to such material gifts as to the sacrifice of bulls or of bovids.

The most common function of the pits of these sanctuaries was undoubtedly indeed to receive drink of liquids (water, milk), fermented beverages, plants, or manufactured goods endowed with a sufficiently fluid shape to be able to be poured starting from a container.

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If these various matters left no identifiable vestige in the ground, the use of the drink offering among Celts nevertheless is confirmed by the discovery of containers seeming to have had this function: broad and flat bronze basins. We know one of them in the burial No. 3 of Tartigny , which could have been that of a druid.

That could be even , in certain cases, small wine amphoras, symbolizing blood, that people gave up as is, of from which the content was poured the in an adapted place, after having opened them, or have ritually broken their neck. Perhaps with a gesture similar to that which consists, nowadays, in “cracking open ” a bottle of champagne.

With regard to the god-or-demons, or the goddess-or-demonesses, fairies if you prefer, the key word of the druids was always, we said, dugion, dugion and still dugion (they should be revered, it is necessary to pay to the gods the honors which are due for them).

There were other less precious objects, at least through their matter. As regards the wells or rivers, the usual offering was made up by coins of small changes, for the lakes, that could be more various objects. Jewels, precious metals, but also pieces of flax or cloth, fleeces, cheeses, breads, wax. “There was a mountain named after Hilary that contained a large lake. At a fixed time a crowd of rustics went there and, as if offering drinks to the lake, threw [into it] linen cloths and material that served men as clothing. Some [threw] fleeces of wool; many [threw] cheese and wax and bread as well as various objects, each according to his own means. That I think would take too long to enumerate. They came with their wagons; they brought food and drink, sacrificed animals, and feasted for three days. But before they were due to leave on the fourth day, a violent storm approached them with thunder and lightning. The heavy rainfall and hailstones fell with such force that each person thought he would not escape. Every year this happened this way, but these ignorant people were tied up in their mistake. Much later a priest from the city became bishop 1) went to the place. He preached to the crowds that they should cease this behavior lest they be consumed by the wrath of heaven. But their coarse rusticity rejected his preaching. Then, with the inspiration of the Deity this priest of God built a basilica in honor of the blessed Hilary of Poitiers at a distance from the banks of the lake. He placed relics of Hilary in the church and said to the people: 'Do not, my sons, do not sin before God!

For there is [to be] no religious piety to a lake. Do not stain your soul/mind [animas in Gregory’s Latin] with these empty rituals, but rather acknowledge God and direct your devotion to his friends. Worship also St Hilary, a priest of God whose relics are located here. For he can serve as your intercessor [for] the mercy of the Lord.'

The men were stung in their hearts and converted. They left the lake and brought everything they usually threw into it to the holy basilica. So they were freed from the mistake that had bound them. Next the storm was banned from the place. After the relics of the blessed confessor were placed there, the storm never again threatened this festival of God.”

(Gregory of Tours, De Gloria Confessorum, 2, St. Hilary, bishop of Poitiers ?)

BRATOU DECANTEM (EX-VOTO).

The Romano-British or Gallo-Roman bratou decantem , not very different by its shape from the bratou decantem or popular ex-votos we can see in many European chapels; seems an even more advanced form of these pertaining to worship practices, based on the exchange between men and gods, that are the human or animal sacrifices…

The ex-votos, as their latin name indicates it, are the product of a vow (votum). They are present for a deity in return of which the cooperation is hoped for. In a rather general way, it is the medicinal help of a deity which is asked in this way. And in the Romano-British or Gallo-Roman sanctuaries dedicated to healing god, the statuettes known as “anatomical”,out of wood or stone, abound. They represent the area of the body which suffers, sometimes in a realistic way the wound or the malformation which causes the illness. In some cases, it is even the complete image of the patient who is carved, it can also be that of the deity.

The bratou decantem or ex-voto, such as it appears in the Roman time in the form of stone representations, therefore has well a distant druidic origin; but its material expression is a purely Romano-British or Gallo-Roman creation; the result of a syncretism between Celtic religious tradition, official worship , and magic practices.

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ANATHEMATA.

Florus, Epitome, Book I, chapter 20. “Insubrian Celts […] during the reign of Viridomarus they had promised to offer up Roman armor to Vulcan.”

Plutarch, Parallel lives, Caesar, 48. “The Arverni show you a small sword hanging up in a temple, which they say was taken from Caesar. Caesar saw this afterwards himself, and smiled, but when his friends advised it should be taken down, would not permit it, because he looked upon it as a consecrated thing.”

This account confirms that the Celts in their sanctuaries devoted themselves to gestures perfectly similar to those of the Greeks: to suspend a sword on the wall of a temple or on the fence of the sacred enclosure. Archeological evidences are very few, but sufficiently explicit.

During the 2nd century before our era, the practice of the total trophy including the human remains and the weapons was gradually given up . The practice to keep weapons in the places of worship, this time as true anathemata, persisted nevertheless. Many weapons and ornaments of La Tene (2nd and beginning of the 1st century before our era) show this practice. On the sacred enclosure of Saint- Maur, in Belgian Gaul, many fragments of weapons had slipped into the footings trench of the palisade, at the time of its destruction; when the dry-rotten wood created a particularly receptive cavity in the ground.

The same case occurred along the Western wall of the temple of the final La Tene, in Gournay. By holding back the ground resulting from the leaching of the ground, it trapped fragments of weapons, as well as pegs which show well that the wall of the temple was a privileged support for the anathemata. But many objects were to be simply put on the ground or on perishable benches. The ground of the sanctuary in Ribemont, fortunately preserved, gives us a good idea of the density of the votive material which occupied the interior of the enclosure. Beside the weapons indeed appear many ornaments (fibulas, bracelets, bronze and glass beads), as well as elements of bronze buckets and cauldrons; which were to form strange odds and ends, hardly differing from those we found in all the sanctuaries of Antiquity.

The gold ornaments and weapons thus displayed in these places of worship were regarded as “irremovable” according to Polybius (Histories II, 32,2,6): The Roman armies threatening their temple the Insubres decided to take down from the walls in the temple of Minerva the gold sèmaia or sèmia , known as anathemata (irremovable) in order to withdraw them from the invaders.

Sèmaia or sèmia is Greek words; anathemata (“irremovable”) also, but this last term must be the word-for-word translation of the Celtic term.

We have mentioned above the treasures, they can be included in this category. Diodorus of Sicily. Book V, 27.

“A peculiar and striking practice is found among the upper (northern) Celts, in connection with the sacred precincts of the gods. As for in the temples and precincts made consecrate in their land, a large amount of gold has been deposited as a dedication to the gods, and not a native of the country ever touches it because of religious scruple.”

And it is a fact that the Celtic gods like gold. The ancient historians say it emulously. The only material offering which is liked by the cruel deities who, in the texts, seem to eat only human victims, is the gold torc. It is generally an offering in thanks of a victory and perhaps a tithe calculated on the gold booty. It can be the object of a vow before the battle, it is what Florus in connection with a certain Ariovistus reports to us who had made such a promise to the Celtic Mars.

Florus, Epitome, I, 20.

“ Soon afterwards, when Ariovistus was their leader, the Insubres vowed to dedicate to their Mars a torc made from the spoils of the Roman soldiers.”

The torc out of gold, of a disproportionate size compared to a man, is the attribute of the gods, either they are indigenous or foreign. Thus Catumandus, Justin reports, who after having seen Minerva in a dream, goes and offers such torc to her statue in a temple of Marseilles. [Editor’s note. This episode is rather obscure and is perhaps only an attempt to transform into a victory what was perhaps only a pathetic defeat in front of the troops of Catumandus].

Each expedition of mercenary warriors was to result in a profit of several hundred kilos of gold. And we imagine easily that a large part of this wealth was to be allocated to the gods who had led to the victory, it is what Strabo expresses when he says that they were consecrated (anatithenton).

Strabo, Geography, Book IV, 1.13.

“It was the lakes, most of all, which afforded the treasures their inviolability, into which the people let down heavy masses of silver or even of gold. At all events, the Romans, after they mastered the

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regions, sold the lakes for the public treasury, and many of the buyers found in them hammered mill- stones of silver. In Tolosa (Toulouse), the temple too was hallowed, since it was very much revered by the inhabitants of the surrounding country, and on this account the treasures there were excessive, numerous people had dedicated them to the gods and no one dared to lay hands on them.”

These enclosures with treasures and these sacred lakes offered an immense advantage, people could put down money in them but in all quietude: the gods and the people managing the sanctuary looked after the monitoring. But the most usual role, of course, of these places was to be to collect tokens of friendship that a people immortalized thus; in favor of the people guard of the sanctuary or in favor of the deity inhabiting and from whom they hoped to get the good graces.

[Editor’s note. Whence the spreading, sometimes very far from their center of origin, the worship of certain gods - to see clientelism-. As the great French archeologist, Jean-Louis Brunaux, signals it so precisely].

The sometimes distant relations between the Celtic peoples therefore had, of course, their anchor point in these divine places which gave them also means of opening out.

Ceramics of Armorican origin in Gournay, bronze objects coming from the Rhineland or the Bohemia in Ribemont, suppose longer distance relations, which are not necessarily of a warlike or political nature. They convey perhaps simply a friendship or a religious collaboration. The Celtic sanctuaries, so closed even secret that they were, constituted meeting places for the greats of this world, kings, priests and noblemen. Asylums in the Greek meaning of the term, they lent themselves admirably, behind the most material exchanges, those which are expressed by wealth, to exchanges between men when gods were always present.

ANIMAL SACRIFICES.

The animal sacrifice is a very old human….. practice. In many still current worships, the animal sacrifice is still supposed to cure a disease or to ensure a good health.

In the part Old Testament of the Bible, the Jews were to offer animals in sacrifices so that their sins are forgiven. “God” enjoyed then by smelling the smoke which was released from these sacrifices.

Leviticus III.

'If your offering is a fellowship offering, and you offer an animal from the herd, whether male or female, you are to present before the LORD an animal without defects. You are to lay your hand on the head of your offering and slaughter it at the entrance to the tent of meeting. Then Aaron's sons the priests shall splash the blood against the sides of the altar. From the fellowship offering you are to bring a food offering to the LORD: the internal organs and all the fat that is connected to them, both kidneys with the fat on them near the loins, and the long lobe of the liver, which you will remove with the kidneys. Then Aaron's sons are to burn it on the altar on top of the burnt offering that is lying on the burning wood; it is a food offering, an aroma pleasing to the LORD.

If you offer an animal from the flock as a fellowship offering to the LORD, you are to offer a male or female without defects. If you offer a lamb, you are to present it before the LORD, lay your hand on its head and slaughter it in front of the tent of meeting. Then Aaron's sons shall splash its blood against the sides of the altar. From the fellowship offering you are to bring a food offering to the LORD: its fat, the entire fat tail cut off close to the backbone, the internal organs and all the fat that is connected to them, both kidneys with the fat on them near the loins, and the long lobe of the liver, which you will remove with the kidneys. The priest shall burn them on the altar as a food offering presented to the LORD.

'If your offering is a goat, you are to present it before the LORD……This is a lasting ordinance for the generations to come, wherever you live: You must not eat any fat or any blood.'"

N.B. The principal function of the Temple in Jerusalem was to sacrifice these animals….

Exodus XXIX, 18. You shall offer up in smoke the whole ram on the altar; it is a burnt offering to the LORD: it is a soothing aroma, an offering by fire to the LORD.

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Genesis VIII, 21. The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.”

This practice was taken over besides by Islam. Particularly for the festival of the Eid al-Adha which marks each year the end of the hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca), the last month of the Muslim calendar. Each Muslim family, according to its means, sacrifices a sheep, or another animal, a camel for example, by cutting its throat, lying on the left side and its head turned towards Mecca.

Animal sacrifices in the former druidism…

With regard to the gods the key word of the druids always was, dugion, dugion and still dugion (it is necessary to pay to the gods the honors which are due to them, they are to be revered ).

Arrian. Hunting. XXXV.1. “ No human undertaking has a prosperous issue without the interposition of the gods.”

Each significant event of the life indeed needed the assistance of the gods, this is why the great decisions, as travels, lawsuits, going to war, migrations, agricultural work, required their agreement by means of atebertas or offerings. In other words, the famous Sanskrit “dadami se dehi me” : I give you so that you give (the deity is then in a way obliged to return the favor), expression coarsely translated by the Romans with their “do ut des.”

“According to them, Jupiter Taranis was the supreme god of the war and of the sky, and he was in earlier times human heads, but later offered to cattle as a sacrifice (Bernese Scholia glossing the Pharsalia by Lucan). The first, most spectacular, of the animal sacrifices, relates to only the bovids, of which we can reconstitute the main steps of the ritual which staged them . In Gournay-sur-Aronde in Belgian Gaul , about fifty bulls, cows and oxen in almost equal shares), all extremely old, so much so that their flesh was no longer consumable by the human beings, were sacrificed during nearly a century and half. Their kill was performed close to the hollow altar , of the bothros type, but with varied modes: blow of hammer on the frontal bone, blow of pole axe in the nape of the neck, throat cutting like the sheep in the Islam of today… The dead animal was then entirely thrown in the pit where it remained from six to eight month - in this way, it was supposed to feed the god-or-demons who were beneath it in the ground. At the conclusion of this period, the carcass, of which only the rachis was still connected, was withdrawn from the pit, and the bones were the subject of a rigorous division. The skulls were then exhibited, on the entrance porch of entry into the enclosure, for a determined period, the rachises were put down in the fence ditch, the remains of the skeleton left the sacred enclosure. This total sacrifice of animals thrown in a pit (bothros) where people let them rot, presents greatest resemblance with the sacrifice known as “chthonian” in Greece which, as we underlined it, is intended for the underground or infernal deities. The sacrifice of the bull resembles the sacrifices of the pigs offered at the time of the mysteries of Demeter.

The sacrifice of the horse was a special animal sacrifice, and his remains were treated a little like those of the human beings. The horse does not have the characteristics of a simple sacrificial victim. On the other hand, there is no doubt about the presentation of these remains in the form of a trophy. Horse has a fate exactly similar to that of man. We have of that , for the moment, of strong presumptions, which lead us to question us on the identity of these mounts and their possible relationship with the world of war.

It was the same thing, of course, for the mare, particularly as regards the skull, perhaps attached or nailed in various places of the sanctuary. In Ireland no doubt about her sacrifice, at the time of the royal elections,just as her temporary equating with a woman in the circumstance.

The commensality banquets.

Conversely, the bones of pigs and sheep concern a kind of more usual sacrifice, that of commensality between men and god-or-demons, the latter perhaps, this time, being some “celestial ones,” residing in the heavens. These two animal species, indeed, are represented by very young animals, lambs and piglets, of which a part, after being cut out, obviously was the subject of a human consumption. They were, of course, elite feasts among warrior chiefs who, sometimes, met in the enclosure.

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All the places of worship discovered in the North, among Belgian people particularly, present the more or less marked same warlike characteristic and reveal only these two types of religious activity, the animal sacrifice and the offering of weapons.

According to the Greek historian Arrian, the hunters, and neither the warriors this time, offered to their goddess-or-demoness of hunting [Artemis, or more exactly to the Celtic goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, hiding under this name… Arduinna? ? Andarta? ? ? Editor’s note] annual sacrifices prepared thus.

Chapter XXXIII.

They institute a poor box for their own church (a kitty), into which they pay two obols for every hare that is caught, —a drachma for a fox (because he is a crafty animal, and destroys hares, for this reason they put in a larger amount, on the grounds that an enemy has been caught) — and four drachmae for a roe deer ( in consideration of his size, and greater value as a game).

When the year comes round, on the return of the nativity of Artemis, the treasury is opened, and a victim purchased out of the money collected; either a sheep, or kid, or heifer, according to the amount of the sum: and then, after having sacrificed, and presented the first offerings of their victims to the goddess of the chase, according to their respective rites, they give themselves up, with their hounds, to festival and recreation, crowning the latter on this day with garlands, as an indication of the festival being celebrated on their account (Arrian. Hunting. XXXIII).

N.B. This detail shows the high repute in which the Celts held some of their dogs. But perhaps is it only a late evolution of the rite. What appears remarkable, on the other hand, it is the obvious meaning (since it is conveyed on a monetary level) of sacrifices of a domestic animal.

The sacrifice of the domestic animals is intended to compensate the goddess-or-demoness for the hunting of the larcenies that man took from the herd of the wild animals of which she has the load. In other words; and to take over the words of Caesar which explain this design of the (human in particular) sacrifice; the sacrifice of a domestic animal must repurchase the death of the wild animals.

SACRIFICE PROCEEDINGS.

The sacrifice is performed by a whole team of specialists (vates, etc.) chaired by a druid who supervises and controls the good progress of the operations.

The lay one, as for him, attends the sacrifice with his wife; he pronounces even some formulas, but his crucial role is to distribute the fees (which can be rather important).

We must imagine that, as in Greece or Rome,the victim was invited to lower the head towards the ground, by presenting to it something to drink or to eat. In this way, it appeared to agree with its sacrifice, and especially it took the posture which made it possible the killing.

The killing took various forms. Some found skulls show the characteristic trace that the blow of axe produces on the nape, classical method in the ancient world. Other skulls present an impressive impact on the frontal bone. The circular form of this impact indicates the use of a hammer. A trace of rhombus-shaped section proves that, in certain cases, a spearhead was used, spectacular and somewhat acrobatic operation. Several skulls bear no trace; it is therefore necessary to imagine a kind of blow which did not reach the bone,the throat slitting is probable.

The variety of these kills suggests a corresponding variety of the ritual. These various forms took a chthonian appearance and were intended to the deities usually concerned by this kind of sacrifice, but they fell within particular religious festivals, inside the liturgical calendar. Some required a fast death without bloodshed, others on the contrary wanted that the throat slitting of the victim abundantly bloodies the altar or the sacrifice pit. It is possible, in this last case, that the ateberta or offering intended to the god was limited to this only drink offering.

The famous stone found at Suevres in France was perhaps an altar intended for this kind of operation and the animals were to be there completely emptied of their blood . When the victim was dead, its very whole corpse was withdrawn from the altar and was slipped into the bottom of the pit.

It remained there approximately six months. The effect sought by this process was a slow but total rotting of the flesh. The rotting made possible the infiltration in the ground of what was regarded as a food for the underground deity. At the end of this period, the carcass was completely without flesh (after decarnization) only bones assembled more or less well assembled by desiccated tendons remained in place. People carried out then the cleaning of the sacrifice pit by the removal of the carcass. Only the rachis kept its anatomical ties. The remains of the osseous frame delivered untied parts. The cleaning was neat. The ground was even finely scraped. The exhumed bones were the

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subject of a sorting. A part was immediately laid down in the fence ditch, used as a sacred dump. They are particularly the spinal columns, the coasts and most of the legs. The skulls were the subject of a special treatment. It is probable that they were exhibited with the weapons and the human skulls on the entrance porch of the sanctuary during several years. But then, they joined the other remains in the ditch, often after having received a slicing blow on the end of the upper maxilla. The ends of the legs and the tail were to leave the space of the sanctuary, because they were not found.

Here are in short the broad outlines, those which are material and which left traces, of a rite which was spread out over several years. Inside this period of time were intercalated the cycles inaugurated by the previous sacrifices and those which followed, with intervals of at least six months. The inescapable sequence of these operations constituted the very life of the sanctuary. It did not exclude other forms of sacrifice, nor other ritual cycles.

In the case of the sacrifices intended for deities of the chthonian type, the carcass of the animal immolated in this way or what remained from it, was to stay six months in the sacrifice pit.

In the case of the sacrifices intended for deities of celestial or air type, the carcass of the animal immolated in this way or at least what remained from it, was to be burnt in a stone hearth, rustic but especially designed for this purpose.

The indelba of the Irish tradition (the Sanas Cormaic) are not nevertheless without being problematic. Indelba: I. anmandna n-altora na n-idal sin. I. arindi dofornitis intib delba na ndula adortais and, uerbi gracia figura solis.i figuir na grene.

Indelba: names of the altars of those idols, the reason why they are called so is that they had the habit to paint above the representation of the elements which they adored, for instance the figura solis, in other words, the figure of the sun.

Moreover, why this plural in the definition given by the glossary? The Irish language dictionary (old and middle Irish), defines as for it the indelb as a cell formed by four large stones. Perhaps is it then necessary to think of something like the small circles made of standing stones called horg in the Scandinavian religion.

EDITOR’S NOTE.

LET US LEAVE ASIDE NOW THIS FORMER DRUIDISM AND LET US SAY SOME WORDS ABOUT OUR CURRENT RELATIONSHIP WITH THE ANIMAL SUFFERING.

Many researchers got together to affirm that it is impossible to do without the tests on the animals, but that everything must be implemented to limit the number of “guinea pigs” used, and to reduce to the maximum their sufferings. It is particularly what explains François Lachapelle, who is research director as chairman of the group of information, of reflection and of communication about research.

Weekly The Point: Are you shocked by the “sacrifice” of these macaques?

François Lachapelle: It is still complicated for the public to measure the interest of a new study relating to a marketed drug. And I understand that the associations of animal protection wonder. But it is a very particular situation since a new activity of this product was identified and that, if it were confirmed, it would make it possible to treat a fatal disease of the young child. It is well necessary to validate this indication before giving the treatment to the young patients.

I point out that the regulations envisage testing on at least three animal species the possible risks of the drug and of the administration method. It is therefore very difficult to avoid proceeding with monkeys before to use it in the human being.

Does the animal model allow a rather precise extrapolation?

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The studies on the primates are very important, because the results got with them are found in 40 to 70% of the cases among the human beings. The rodent models let predict only in 5 to 15% (20% to the maximum) of the cases, what will occur with the man.

It should be known well that the rodents are very homogeneous populations genetically speaking, raised in a very protected environment. That simplifies the analysis of the results, but at the same time, that impoverishes the answers.

The primates are like the man, very heterogeneous genetically speaking, they are also confronted with multiple viruses and bacteria (not inevitably pathogenic), including in a laboratory. And their cellular biology, just like the organization of the great systems - of which the nervous or reproductive system - is comparable with ours. This is why they constitute an irreplaceable stage in the adjustment of treatments.

What about the methods known as alternative, preached by the animal rights activist ?

Generally, the cultures of human cells result from a single individual; therefore they cannot represent human variability. Moreover, they are often changed in order to be able to be preserved for a long time, they are in a way “cancerated”; their genome was modified, therefore their biology, and their physiology. Nevertheless, the cellular system has an advantage: as it is very simplified and that it was built to answer a given question, it will be very sensitive in a specific field. But only in that one. All in all, the results got in culture are reproducible with the human being only in 1 to 2% of the cases only.

As for the bioinformatics and the mathematical modeling, they can bring invaluable information. If the animal experimentation cannot be avoided, is it at least controlled?

Many progresses were made and it is framed by a very strict regulation, validated by an ethics committee. For example, whether it is in toxicology or infectiology, some experts defined “end points” intended to stop the experiment (therefore to kill the animal) as soon as the sought evidence is visible and before the suffering settles.

All surgical operations are done under anesthesia and the postoperative pain is taken on, because an animal which suffers does not react normally. Lastly, techniques of medical imagery are used as much as possible. Nevertheless, according to the very serious Swiss federal veterinary Office of animal protection, approximately 7% of the procedures involve pains.

N.B. The Swiss legislation on the protection of animals is one of the most advanced in the world and the field of the animal experimentation is strictly regulated in it. The researchers must prove that the benefits for the society are more important than the sufferings inflicted to the animals during the experiments.

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PSYCHOLOGY AND ETHICS OF THE SACRIFICE.

Most civilizations practiced human sacrifice. We find for example in the Bible the sacrifice of Isaac (stopped at the very last moment by the will of God if all that is well factually true) and that of the daughter of Jephtah, because of an imprudent promise of her father: to offer through holocaust the first person who would leave one’s house to meet him. We will return there. It is therefore important, first of all, to define as a preliminary exactly what a human sacrifice is.

This one consists in the killing of a human being, man or woman, prisoner of war or member of the community within the framework of a RELIGIOUS RITE. The sacrifice is distinguished in that from the massacre, perpetrated by revenge, collective exaltation or overflow, or from a death sentence within a legal framework (for example, following a judgment of Inquisition).

HUMAN SACRIFICES AMONG HEBREWS.

It is generally allowed that the sacrifice, non-performed finally, of his son, by Abraham, is the last attempted by the Hebrew people. It is without reservation indeed that the people of this single Book reject this practice which is an insult to the human intelligence and freedom, completely absurd because the child that God claims from Abraham, it is precisely the only child he had himself given at the time when this one despaired of having posterity. The least you can say consequently is that this abdication or submission of Abraham hardly encourages to the respect of the human rights.

Another episode of the Old Testament, however, evokes a human sacrifice gone to completion : that which is achieved by Jephtah, one of the “Judges” as mentioned above. Its circumstances can bring it closer to that of Isaac; it is indeed his own daughter whom Jephtah gives to God in the counterpart of a victory. And yet, she is his single child.

The difference with the sacrifice that Abraham almost carried out is that the holocaust in this case is indeed carried out. It also lies in the fact that Jephtah is not presented to us as tested by his god but as the victim of a promise that he made himself.

This human sacrifice, however, makes it possible to Jephtah - or, at least, he believes it - to win the favor of his God in the battle.

HUMAN SACRIFICES IN ROME.

If the Romans prohibited to the peoples they subjected to sacrifice human victims, they also devoted themselves to such practices nevertheless, in certain cases. It is besides the observation of such a paradox which is at the origin of one of the Roman Questions of Plutarch, the number 83.

“When the Romans learned that the Celtiberians called Bletonesii had sacrificed a man to the gods, why did they send for the tribal rulers with intent to punish them, but, when it was made plain that they had done thus in accordance with a certain custom, why did the Romans set them at liberty, but forbid the practice for the future? Yet they themselves, not many years before, had buried alive two men and two women, two of them Greeks, two Celts, in the place called the Forum Boarium.”

Three times indeed during the period of the Republic, in 228, 216 and 114/113, the Romans buried alive, in the Forum boarium, two couples of strangers.

Here the account of it that Plutarch makes (Marcel. 3,3,7), for the first of these cases.

“Still the position itself, and the ancient renown of the Gauls, struck no little fear into the minds of the Romans, who were about to undertake a war so near home and upon their own borders; and regarded the Gauls, because they had once taken their city [….] The great preparations, also, made by the Romans for war (for it is not reported that the people of Rome ever had at one time so many legions in arms, either before or since), and their extraordinary sacrifices, were plain arguments of their fear. For though they were most averse to barbarous and cruel rites, and entertained more than any nation the same pious and reverent sentiments of the gods with the Greeks; yet, when this war was coming upon them, they then, from some prophecies in the Sibyls' books, put alive underground a pair of Greeks, one male, the other female; and likewise two Celts, one of each sex, in the market called the cattle

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market: continuing even to this day to offer to these Greeks and Celts certain ceremonial observances in the month of November…..”.

Let us also quote the passage of Titus-Livius (22, 57,2-6) relating to the sacrifices of 216. “They were terrified not only by the great disasters they had suffered, but also by a number of

prodigies, and in particular because two Vestals, had in that year been convicted of unchastity. Of these one had been buried alive, as the custom is, near the Colline Gate, and the other had killed herself. […] Since in the midst of so many misfortunes this pollution was, as happens at such times, converted into a portent, the decemvirs were commanded to consult the books […..] some unusual sacrifices were offered; among others a Celtic man and woman and a Greek man and woman were buried alive (sub terram uiui demissi sunt), in the Cattle Market, in a place walled in with stone, which even before this time had been defiled with human victims.”

Let us signal still that, according to Pliny the Elder (Nat. 28.12), such ceremonies still took place in his time, in the 1st century of our era therefore.

The origins of these human sacrifices made a lot of ink flowing among the modern ones.

It is obvious that the burial of living beings represents an expulsion at the same time symbolic and material, from the world of the living; the alive buried people are given up to the world of the dead and of its deities.

In addition, the context of these rites shows us in an indisputable way that it is a question of diverting an external danger felt as particularly threatening and imminent.

The unfortunate Celts victims of this practice represent the whole of their fellow men.

Curiosity now. The two oldest sanctuaries of Diana are that of Capua, and that of Aricia (on the shore of the Lake Nemi, close to Rome), where she was called Diana Nemorensis: the Diana in the Wood. This Diana of Nemi was the Artemis in Tauris, brought to Italy by Orestes. What explained the brutality of her rites.

Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities by Daremberg and Saglio (1877).

REX NEMORENSIS. This title, in the old writers, designates a kind of priest in charge of the worship of Diana Aricina, in the wood of Nemi, on the slope of the Alban mount. Diana herself is usually called nemorensis…

It was a strange habit and which stinks of the primitive most cruel barbarity, this custom which presided over the establishment of the king-priest in Nemi. It is a single combat between the sitting priest and the applicant for the succession which decided on the priesthood indeed. The place was for the one who struck the other with a branch gathered on certain hidden trees deep in the wood [some mistletoe?]. The kingship in Nemi being thus a brute strength bonus, there were only fugitive slaves who ventured themselves to dispute it. During the reign of Caligula, whose madness was after any superiority, the place was occupied by a true colossus who kept on there for years; the emperor did not rest until he finds to him a more vigorous competitor. The habit was still in force in the time of Pausanias.

But in reality, the character installed by such means, was no longer a priest in a strict sense of the term. The evidence of it is that sometimes the pontiffs of Rome came in this place to perform personally the religious ceremonies which concerned the State. J. - A. HILD.

REPLACEMENT SACRIFICES.

Many of these civilizations nevertheless, ended up in disavowing these practices, by substituting the immolated human beings with some prisoners under sentence of death (case of the druids) some animals, images or symbols.

AMONG GREEKS.

Iphigenia is one of the daughters of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. Agamemnon, alas, having incurred the anger of Artemis, the fleet of the Greeks, for lack of wind, remains blocked at Aulis.

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Questioned, the soothsayer Calchas answers that the anger of the goddess can be alleviated only if the king sacrifices to her his daughter Iphigenia.

Overpowered, Agamemnon is opposed to the sacrifice then, urged by Menelaus and by Ulysses, he accepts. He convokes his daughter at Aulis, under the fallacious pretext to promise her in marriage to Achilles. The maiden, thus made confident, approaches the altar. The sacrifice will be perpetrated, when the goddess or the fairy, suddenly stricken by pity for the girl, substitutes her with a hind as a victim. She takes her along in Tauris where she will become one of her priestesses.

This type of substitution inspired perhaps (perhaps) the writers of the Bible, in the passage of the sacrifice ordered to Abraham, but without the Jewish, Christian, or Muslim, readers, unlike Greek text, knowing why God required from Abraham such obedience. This simple fact obviously shows the distance which separates the mythology of one of the main revealed mass religions (these last calling on the faith, i.e., on a belief), from the logic of the myths in the paganism of the philosophical and thought out type.

TARANIS’S LAUGHTER * IN ROME.

In the famous dialog between Numa and Jupiter (Taranis) reported by Valerius Antias (quoted by Plutarch), we see the second king of Rome trying to outwit the god, in order to get that the victim to offer, to be protected from the effects of the thunderbolt, is not human. When Jupiter requires a head, Numa proposes an onion head. The god specifies his request then: “a man’s head”; the king answers: “You will take his hair” but the god requires a life. Numa retorts: “a fish’s life.” The god started to laugh and says: “ By these things you do expiate my bolts, O man whom none may keep from converse with the gods !” (Ovid. Fasti. 3,339-342).

Nota bene. What refers us to the typically Celtic notion of druids speaking the same language as the gods (they are homophonon, in the writings of Diodorus, V, 31).

According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus (1, 38.2), it is Ogmius, therefore in fact Hercules in the interpretatio romana, who would have put an end to the human sacrifices that the Ancients offered hitherto on the site of the future Rome.

“And lest the people should feel any scruple at having neglected their traditional sacrifices, he taught them to appease the anger of the god by making effigies resembling the men they had been wont to bind hand and foot and throw into the stream of the Tiber, and dressing these in the same manner, to throw them into the river instead of the men, his purpose being that any superstitious dread remaining in the minds of all might be removed, since the semblance of the ancient rite would still be preserved.” This historian also specifies that the Romans still performed this rite at his day, in May; it corresponds to the ceremony of Argei, during which the vestals threw in the Tiber mannequins representing men. Macrobius (Sat. 1,7,31) ascribes the same “civilizing” role to Ogmius. Before his arrival in Italy, the Pelasgi offered human heads to Dis Pater and human victims to Saturn, because of the oracle which said in Greek language: “Offer heads to Hades and send a man to the father.”

But later Ogmius returning through Italy, with Geryon’s cattle, would have reinterpreted one of the words of this oracle: phota, so that Saturn from now on is honored with candles, since phota meant as well “light” as “man.” Macrobius concludes by also giving a more rationalizing second version, according to which Ogmius would have left them from a life plunged in the darkness of ignorance by introducing among them the enlighting of arts and sciences.

AMONG CELTS.

Diodorus of Sicily, V, 32. “Chapter XXXII.

“For their criminals they keep captive for five years and then impale in honor of the gods, dedicating them together with many other offerings of first fruits and constructing pyres of great size.”

Lucan. “Hesum Mercurium credunt, if quidem has mercatoribus colitur, and praesidem belloreum and caelestium deorum maximun Taranin Iouem, adsuetum olim humanis placari capitibus, nuc uero gaudere pecorum”. “They believe Hesus to be Mercury…….and Taranis, the ruler of wars and the greatest of the celestial gods, him who was accustomed formerly to be appeased with human lives, but now glad of those of animals, to be Jupiter.” (Bernese Glosses or scholia of the text by Lucan).

Different therefore from that of Merlin. But let us return to the human sacrifices accomplished by the druids of the Old druidism.

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CANNIBALISM AND ENCEPHALOPHAGY. LITERARY TESTIMONIES.

Various ancient texts evoke the cannibalism among Celts, some by underlining the absolute need for this act at this time.

Caesar. De Bello Gallico VII, 77 reporting the speech of the Calgacus or Boudicca in the Continent: “If you cannot be assured by their dispatches, since every avenue is blocked up, take the Romans as evidence that their approach is drawing near; since they, intimidated by alarm at this, labor night and day at their works. What, therefore, is my design? To do as our ancestors did in the war against the Cimbri and Teutones, which was by no means equally momentous. Driven into their towns, and oppressed by similar privations, they supported life by the corpses of those who appeared useless for war on account of their age, and did not surrender to the enemy. If we did not have a precedent for such cruel conduct, still I should consider it most glorious that one should be established then delivered to posterity. For in what was that war like this? The Cimbri, after laying our Celtica waste, and inflicting great calamities, at length departed from our country, and sought other lands; they left us our rights, laws, lands, and liberty. But what other motive or wish have the Romans than, induced by envy, to settle in the lands and towns of those whom they have learned, by fame, to be noble and powerful in war, and impose on them perpetual slavery? For they never have carried on wars on any other terms. But if you do not know these things which are going on in distant countries, look to the neighboring Celtica, which being reduced to the form of a province, stripped of its rights and laws, and subjected to Roman despotism, is oppressed by perpetual slavery.”

Polybius. Histories, I, 84: “ Finally, he managed unexpectedly to beleaguer them on ground highly unfavorable to them and convenient for his own force; and reduced them to such a pitch of seizures that, neither venturing to risk an engagement nor being able to run away, because they were entirely surrounded by a trench and stockade; they were at last compelled by starvation to feed on each other: a fitting retribution at the hands of Providence for their violation of all laws human and divine in their conduct to their enemies.”

Polybius. Histories, I, 85: “But when they had used up for food the captives in this horrible manner, and then the bodies of their slaves, and still no one came to their relief from Tunes, their sufferings became too dreadful to bear and the common soldiers broke out into open threats of violence against their officers. Thereupon Autaritus, Zarzas, and Spendius decided to put themselves into the hands of the enemy and to hold a parley with Hamilcar, and try to make terms .”

Encephalophagy was a practice rather largely demonstrated in Europe during the Paleolithic era, but more especially the Neolithic Era. The most serious ancient accounts attest the upholding of these practices, in the use of skulls converted in drinking cups. The high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) believed indeed that the soul/mind and the life ultimately laid in the head, and not in the area of the heart. From there the importance of the rites and practices which surrounded the head in their tradition.

Credible testimony.

Silius Italicus, Punica, XIII, 482: “The Celts have a horrid practice: they frame the bones of the empty skull in gold, and keep it for a drinking cup.”

Half credible testimony.

Ammianus Marcellinus, Roman History XXVII, 4: “Part of this region was inhabited by the Scordisci, who now live at a great distance from these provinces: a race formerly savage and uncivilized, as ancient history proves, sacrificing their prisoners to Bellona and Mars, and drinking with eagerness human blood out of skulls.”

Incredible testimony.

Orosius, History against the pagans, V, 23. “In the meantime, Claudius was assigned by lot to the Macedonian War. At that time the various tribes, which were hedged in by the Rhodopaean Mountains, were most cruelly devastating Macedonia. Among other brutalities, dreadful to speak of and to hear, which these tribes inflicted upon captives, I may mention this. When they needed a cup, they were wont to seize and use greedily and without any feeling of repulsion, in place of real cups,

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human skulls, still dripping with blood and covered with hair, whose inner cavities were daubed with brain matter badly scooped out. The bloodiest and most inhuman of these hordes were the Scordisci.”

Florus, Epitome, I, 39: “ The Thracians left no cruelty untried, as they vented their fury on their prisoners; they sacrificed to the gods with human blood; they drank out of human skulls; by every kind of insult inflicted by burning and fumigation they made death fouler; they even forced infants from their mothers' wombs by torture. The cruelest of all the Thracians were the Scordisci.”

Not easily credible testimonies.

Strabo. Geography, IV, 5.4: “4. Besides some small islands round about [Great] Britain, there is also a large island, Ierne, which stretches parallel to (Great) Britain on the north, its breadth being greater than its length. Concerning this island I have nothing certain to tell, except that its inhabitants are more savage than the [Great] British, since they are man-eaters as well as herb eaters, and since, further, they count it an honorable thing, when their fathers die, to devour them, and openly to have intercourse, not only with the other women, but also with their mothers and sisters; but I am saying this only with the understanding that I have no trustworthy witnesses for it; and yet, as for the matter of man-eating, that is said to be a custom of the Scythians also, and, in cases of necessity forced by sieges, the Celts, the Iberians, and several other peoples, are said to have practiced it.”

Pausanias. Description of Greece, X, 22.3: “ Every male they put to the sword, and there were butchered old men equally with children at their mothers' breasts. The plumper of these sucking babes the Galatians killed, drinking their blood and eating their flesh.”

Saint Jerome. Aduersus Iouinianum, Book II, chapter VI: “Why should I speak of other nations when I myself, a youth on a visit to Celtica, heard that the Attacoti, a British tribe, eat human flesh, and that although they find herds of swine, droves of large or small cattle in the woods, it is their custom to cut off the buttocks of the shepherds and the breasts of their women, and to regard them as the greatest delicacies? “

St. Augustine. The City of God. VII, 19. “Then Varro says that boys were wont to be immolated to him by certain peoples, the Carthaginians for instance; and also that adults were immolated by some nations, for example the Celts— because, of all seeds, the human race is the best. [By the way the sacrifice of Abraham on Isaac, the witch hunting (Exodus, 22.17) and the Inquisition, what it is in this case? And the sacrifice of his daughter by Jephtah??? Book of Judges, chapters 10,11,12).

Half-credible testimony.

Gaius Julius Solinus. Polyhistor XII: “[Great] Britain is surrounded by many significant islands, of which Hibernia comes closest to it in size. The latter is inhuman in the savage rituals of its inhabitants but, on the other hand, is so rich in fodder that the cattle, if not removed from the fields from time to time, would happily gorge themselves to a dangerous point; on that island there are no snakes, few birds, and an unfriendly and warlike people. When the blood of overcome enemies had been drained, the victors smear it on their own faces. They treat right and wrong as the same thing.”

NB. On the other hand, snakes are yet not found there! That’s which puts in perspective (that of the myth) the miracle of the ousting of the snakes out from Ireland, ascribed to St. Patrick. Still a lie, moreover, in the mouth of our Christian friends.

The account of Strabo on the victims pierced with arrows, impaled in the temples.

“They would shoot victims to death with arrows, or impale them in the temples…” is to be mentioned separately.

Because the Greek term anestauron means “to suspend or hang on a post.”

We are entitled to wonder whether it is not quite simply the description of human trophies built with corpses of warriors died in action. At the time of Posidonius, the clothes building of gigantic human trophies was already no longer in use on the Continent. It is therefore by an intermediate source, a

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Greek traveler of the end of the 3rd century perhaps, that the ethnographer had heard about this habit.

The author of his source, or his informer, did not, of course, see the achievement of the funeral rite which was to be performed in the secrecy or the narrow circle of the comrunos and of the initiates; he therefore saw only the result, some corpses almost without flesh still fixed on posts, and it is starting from this observation that he rebuilt a probably imaginary sacrificial rite.

The term “to impale” must thus in this case only mean “to hang on a palisade” or “on stakes,” and is to fall within the scope of a rite of the consecration of the spoils of the warriors died in the fight.

Caesar VI, 17.

“When they have conquered, they sacrifice whatever captured animals may have survived the conflict, and collect the other things into one place. In many tribes-states you may see piles of these things heaped up in their consecrated spots; nor does it often happen that any one, disregarding the sanctity of the case, dares […..] take away those deposited; and the most severe punishment, with torture, has been established for such a deed.”

Diodorus of Sicily. Book V, 29.

“When their enemies fall they cut off their heads and fasten them about the necks of their horses; and turning over to their attendants the arms of their opponents, all covered with blood, they carry them off as booty, singing a paean over them and striking up a song of victory, and these first fruits of the battle they fasten by nails upon their houses, just as men do, in certain kinds of hunting, with the heads of wild beasts they have mastered.”

Strabo (Geography IV, 4.4 to 6) adds a specification: “They hang the heads of their enemies from the necks of their horses, and, when they have brought them home, nail the spectacle to the propylaea (entrances)”.

The text in Diodorus of Sicily is therefore to be corrected in this senses, the homes of the Celts about which he speaks THEY ARE THEIR SHRINES.

In connection with this habit, Caesar speaks of spolia (spoils) and the Greek authors of tropaion (trophies).

It appears to us preferable to speak, concerning the druidic rite , of a consecration of the spoils.

In many cases indeed, the spoils taken from the enemy are consecrated in the Celtic sanctuaries in a rite much more complex than that we see in Greece; a habit very different from that of the anathemata or warlike ex-votos, but rather similar in its principle to that of the hunting trophies.

“Just as men do, in certain kinds of hunting, with the heads of wild beasts they have mastered,” Diodorus notices.

This habit of the consecration of the spoils takes among Celts so surprising forms that it appears indeed necessary to distinguish it from a simple votive deposit. The best documentation is of an archeological nature and it is due, essentially, to the discoveries in the sanctuary of Ribemont-sur- Ancre in Belgian Gaul. On this site the weapons do not present the characteristics which enabled us to call those of Gournay anathemata, i.e., of some sacred deposit of prestigious panoplies generally fixed on the walls of the hallowed enclosure of the temple.

THE SHRINES PRECISELY.

“Conchobbar’s palace was wonderful and had three houses , to wit, the Cróeb-ruad and the Téite Brecc and the Cróeb Derg (Red Branch). In the Red Branch used to be the heads and the spoils of the enemies of the king.”

It results from this text that the pertaining to worship complex called “Conchobar’s castle ” in Fort Navan close to Armagh, undoubtedly surrounded by a palisade and a ditch, non defensive because located inside the circular enclosure thus delimited, was composed of three main buildings named: Cróeb-ruad, Téite Brecc and Cróeb Derg (the red branch).

The Cróeb Ruad was the place where the chiefs met to discuss and feast.

The Cróeb Derg or red branch (a stylized tree?) was the place where the corpses of the warriors defeated by the tribe were exhibited.

The Téite Brecc was the place where were displayed the warlike panoplies, of the living (a cloakroom or an arsenal) even there too those of the warriors defeated by the tribe.

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Our personal assumption is that the Téite Brecc was not a cloakroom or an arsenal for the alive warriors but a place of exhibition of the weapons of the warriors killed in action under the blows of the men of the tribe. In other words, resembled that of Corent and Ribemont or Gournay (Belgian Gaul) joined together.

But it is only an assumption the exact place of this pertaining to worship ensemble remaining to be determined.

The Celts of early time, in a more general way besides, did not represent their god-or-demons by anthropomorphic statues; they also did not need a temple which is, as in the world Greco-Roman world, their dwelling. These deities did not express less to men their presence on earth through sacred wood , or groves, some small groups of trees and shrubs planted or kept inside sacred enclosures.

These sacred surfaces, true divine properties, were communal to men and god-or-demons during the time of the sacrifice (devoxdonion); in their design, they differ by no means from the Greek temenos or from the Roman templum.

At Gournay-sur-Aronde , in the department of the Oise, in France, archeologists discovered an enclosure of a rectangular plan, forty to fifty meters sided ; materialized by a ditch preceding a powerful wooden palisade.

Inside was to be a sacred grove because it is beside such a vegetable installation that the altar was; which, as all those which were discovered in the other sanctuaries excavated thereafter, was of quite a particular nature. It appears in the form of a pit, four meters long and two meters deep, dug in the original ground. The sacrifice proceeded on the edge of the pit, at the bottom of which the victims were laid down. Such altars known as “bothros” exist in Greece where they are described as “chthonian,” i.e., they are intended for deities supposed to reside under the ground , to whom men offer whole victims. At the time of the foundation of these sanctuaries, from the end of the 4th to the end of the 3rd century before our era, the altar therefore had only this antiquated and simple shape; that of a pit carefully dug in the ground and which was to be covered with a lid intended to protect it from the bad weather. As time went, they were equipped with a roof; a five to six meters sided square building appeared then, with the look of a Mediterranean temple, with the difference that the hollow altar occupied almost all the interior space: the cella of the temple .......................

The other characteristic of the sanctuary of Gournay is its military vocation that the presence of thousands of iron weapons reveals, initially deposited in the entrance porch of the enclosure and on its walls. On about thirty excavated sanctuaries these last years, many present an entrance carefully arranged, a building often imposing and spanning the fence ditch. They were true propylaea – a word that Strabo uses besides to designate these gates - where our ancestors fixed the heads of the bodies of their defeated enemies. In Gournay, many remains of human skulls agree with Strabo. The archeological vestiges and the very rich material discovered at this place indicate that the building materializing or defending the entrance in the enclosure of the sanctuary, were built on big wood posts and had a floor, where weapons, skulls of men and horses, remains of chariots, had been piled up. Obviously some trophies collected after the battles which were previous to the arrival of the Bellovacian Belgians, builders of the sanctuary, in the beginning of the 3rd century before our era.

In Gournay, all the animal bones are rejected in the periphery of the sanctuary into the fence ditch , they are mixed there with metal atebertas or offerings which were beforehand displayed in the honor of gods. This ditch therefore looks like a huge dump, nevertheless sacred. The bones presenting consumption traces belong to sheep, pig, and dog.

A more precise examination reveals than they are in a very large proportion remains corresponding to shoulders of lambs and to legs of young pigs, in other words, to meats of high quality.

At Ribemont-sur-Ancre, in the department of the Somme, still in France therefore, archeologists discovered an enclosure of quadrangular plan, fifty meters sided; materialized by a ditch preceding there too probably a powerful palisade out of wooden. A well was discovered in the center of the sacred space. It dates back at least to the beginning of the 1st century. That proves that water also took part and for a considerable share in the pertaining to worship activity. This water was undoubtedly used for the purification of the priests and of the participants but it could also be the object of an offering as such.

In Ribemont, the remains of eaten animals come for their greater part from the fence ditch. However, unlike that of Gournay, the ditch in Ribemont was already filled at the time, and the animal bones were

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discovered on the site of removed posts. We must therefore believe that these remains had been leaned against the aforementioned posts (of the fence) and that they were naturally buried at the time of the disassembling of the latter. But, approximately, the situation is the same one as in Gournay, the bones were rejected to the limits of the sacred surface. They are here, and in a very large proportion, split into two skulls of pigs. Can we imagine that on these two sanctuaries people gave up in the eyesight of the practicing believers and on the ground of the divine property, the leftovers of a human consumption? It should be believed, at the very least, that these selected meats had been the object of a feast [devoxdonion according to the inscription in Vercelli i.e.] communal between men and gods. Each god had his culinary tastes, at least according to his believers. Yahweh preferred the meat to the vegetables according to the Biblical story of Abel and Cain (see Genesis 4.3).

According to the practices of the place and the time, for the druids, the deity who took care of the enclosure in Ribemont appreciated the brains of pig.

The famous stone found at Suevres in France was undoubtedly an altar, and the animals were to be there completely bled to death on the triple square which was engraved on its surface, before being eaten. It is an about rectangular block of stone, of a volume of approximately 1 cubic meter whose top is very polished, very smooth, but whose remainder is rather irregularly cut.

On the polished top being used as a sacrifice table five holes, irregularly spaced out, and of which the diameters are different.

The pentacle made up of three squares is at approximately 30 cm of the largest cupula, at the other end of the stone. The first square of this triple square, the largest oner, is 27 cm sided, the second one 19 cm sided, the third 11.

They are formed by a fluted groove 1 cm wide and 3 mm deep. The grooves of the squares are joined together and adjoin between them by other similar grooves going from the perpendicular of the middle of each side of the main square, to lead in the middle of the small central square. From the higher angle of the great square on the left, and from the lower angle on the side opposite but located on the same face of the stone block, leave in opposite direction two broader grooves, polished, less better engraved, but deeper; which are flow drains of the sacrificial blood. By following a a little curved line they go to join up, one with the edge of the block forming its length, the other with the edge forming its width, where they dig a notch.

One loses oneself in speculations about the exact meaning of the five holes dug beside the triple square. These cupulae perhaps were to act as a sacrifice pit and it would be then a chthonian symbolism.

Conclusion: the discoveries of archeology learned to us many things about the sacrifice among ancient Celts; but we should not forget that what is restored to us in this case, it is only the background of the ritual. A ritual which had immaterial or perishable ornaments, incantations, songs and prayers perhaps, music undoubtedly, not forgetting the pomps of the decorum. Clothing of the druids, possible ornaments of the victim, decorations of the altar and of the sacred space.

We should not forget that we still do not know either how the deity, or the deities, in question, were invited to the sacrifice. Were they represented materially by visible effigies? Were they, as in India, supposed sitting down at the bottom of the pit on a grass laid down beforehand for them and on which they remained invisible? Or did they remain hidden in the caves of the ground, waiting for their food? In the case of sacrifices in the honor of chthonian deities; the participants met to the sound of the carnyx which attracted the demons (the wyverns and the gigantic anguipedes called Andernas on the Continent, Fomorians in Ireland); and the ceremony took place in full nature, or close to the sacred grove growing inside the sanctuary, at nightfall , on altars ridges equipped with drains intended to make the blood running on the ground or into a hole dug in the ground (sacrifice pit); whereas the soul of the animal, itself, joined the Universal Big Psychic Tank.

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THE CLASSIFIED X FILE OF THE HUMAN SACRIFICES AMONG CELTS.

(Text found crossed out by Peter DeLaCrau himself, but kept by his children.)

The basic text in fact is that of Caesar. B.G. VI.16. “The nation of all the Celts is extremely devoted to religious rites; and on that account they who are troubled with unusually severe diseases, and they who are engaged in battles and dangers, either sacrifice men as victims, or vow that they will sacrifice them, and employ the druids as the performers of those sacrifices; because they think that unless the life of a man be offered for the life of a man, the mind of the immortal gods cannot be rendered propitious.”

This testimony of Caesar has probably a relatively old origin, the 2nd even 3rd century before our era. It gives an account of a set of very structured beliefs. This enough mechanist design of life and death finds obviously its origin in the primitive mentality. It was preserved as an archaism in a field where the magic and the irrational will prevail a long time, that of the illness and of the death.

“They who are troubled with unusually severe diseases, either sacrifice men as victims, or vow that they will sacrifice them….”

The only reservation to be made, but it is important to make it indeed, is that the human sacrifice, from this perspective, was undoubtedly very rare. The human sacrifice as mean used in the vow with therapeutic goals indeed had to be given up very early. The practice of the bratou decantem or of the ex-voto at the beginning of the Romano-British or Gallo-Roman, period, gives us the evidence of it.

This perfectly symbolic practice could not directly replace a sacrifice as little ordinary as the human sacrifice; it supposes intermediate practices among which the animal sacrifice was to hold a special place.

We must avoid in fact two extreme attitudes in fact: either to detest these cruel rites but according to our Western ideas of the civilization, or to feel indulgence, even for some ones, admiration, for a liberating rite freeing ”from the end that comes by slow rotting, by the miserable condition of dissolving illness, or consumption by age, or slow reduction to total impotence –the highest good to which the mortal can attain who is incapable of preferring to these the rite of sacrifice “ (cf the life of Diego Rivera, in connection with the human sacrifices among the Aztecs); in the name of the antiracism and of the right to be different or of the respect of all the civilizations in all their aspects (cultural enrichment).

We should simply adopt the position of the modern druid, who seeks to understand, therefore to compare; but while agreeing to compare only what is comparable (particularly by taking account of the context). The gramya pasu ( domestic animals suitable to be sacrificed) were for example, in India, by order of importance, men, horses, cows, sheep. The druidic list was to resemble to that, except for a detail, among Celts, people could also sacrifice pigs and dogs.

On the cauldron of Gundestrup, the three victims of sacrifices are represented, a bull a stag and a man.

Pomponius Mela. Chorography III, 2.18 to 19. “They used to believe that to the gods the best and most pleasing sacrificial victim was a human being.”

We should not mistake on this subject. What this author simply wanted to say, it is this: the man is a higher victim. And consequently thereby an EXCEPTIONAL victim.

Nothing indicates - in every case not the texts - that these rites had then a larger frequency among Celtic peoples than among Italic or Greek peoples. It is necessary to take care not to believe that these sacrifices were the butcheries that some authors (cf. above Orosius St. Jerome and so on) pleased to imagine.

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The use of the sacrificial mud pits (a sacrifice which consisted in putting down men in the marshes) is attested for the northern areas in Europe. We found indeed in certain peat bogs some corpses which could have been sacrificed to the Goddess or fairy, if you want, Nerthus.

The case of the Cimbri and of the Teutones.

What we know about the Cimbri, we learned it from the peat bogs or from the sacrificial mud pits, these cemeteries of antiquity. They preserved the bodies until we find them, by extracting them from the peat. One of these mummified corpses of then is famous: that of the man in Tollund.

The man of Tollund is the corpse naturally mummified discovered on May 8, 1950, in Denmark, in the peat bog of Tollund. Its perfect state of conservation made even believe, to start, that it could be a relatively recent crime, because the body had still around his neck the braided leather rope with which he had been formerly strangled. This cord is 1 meter and 25 cm long. It ends in a loop passed around the neck.

Specialists nevertheless could determine, thanks to the pollinic analysis, that the man had lived in the 4th century before our era (towards - 350). His fingers, perfectly intact, suggest that he was not to be a manual worker, therefore that he was to be a high-ranking man. The rope which he had around his neck, as well as other details, let suppose that he died at the time of a human sacrifice. He was then forty years old.

In his stomach, some biologists found, apart from a little of oats and hazel nuts, especially some weeds seeds. The researchers who reconstituted this kind of muesli, found it uneatable. It was, however, here the last meal of the mysterious man of Tollund.

Medical examiners noticed that somebody had carefully closed his eyes and his mouth for his “eternal sleep” in the peat bog. The man of Tollund therefore was the subject of a sacrifice. Perhaps for Nerthus, the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if this term is preferred, of fertility, from whom people required good harvests. From these clues,we deduce that the Tollund’s man was perhaps one of the priests who guided or accompanied the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy therefore, during festivals of the spring sowing. After having escorted the sacrosanct chariot, and having swallowed the ritual meal, he played his part until the end and was sacrificed so that the ground can make a new life spouting out.

He testifies, with many other corpses of men, women, and animals, found in the surrounding peat bogs, of a sacrificial worship dedicated to the deities of Fertility or Fecundity. These human sacrifices practiced at the time of the spring revival ceremony in a sacrificial mud pit were reported by Tacitus. (See the Panth-eon part.)

The man of Lindow Moss.

The case of the human sacrifice discovered in 1984 in the marsh of Lindow Moss (Cheshire), undoubtedly also concerns this kind of practice. The man had been ritually strangled, whitewashed with blue, and had been immersed in the peat bog. A kind of death which we find in the legends of Leu Llaw Gyffes and Lailoken.

The maiden of Windeby is the naturally mummified corpse of a fourteen-year-old teenager. She still held a branch of birch in her hand. Some stakes fixed her body in the peat bog. Was it feared that she is changed into a walking dead, or a ghost? We found parts of her skeleton under her wrinkled skin.

We know therefore today exactly what she resembled: a medical examiner reconstituted her face. The physicist Roland Aniol sought in the bones what it is called of Harris lines, some signs of disorders in the growth, or of malnutrition. Result of his examinations: the growth was delayed or even completely stopped. We can see twelve zones of underdevelopment in the girl of Windeby. She therefore underwent twelve winters of starvation in only fourteen years of existence.

It probably vas the same thing for everyone as for the maiden of Windeby in the North at that time: winter after winter, famine and misery. How to survive?

Thanks to the mummies of the peat bogs, the scientists can therefore affirm it today: it is not a disastrous rise in the water level, but the hunger which drove out the Cimbri and the Teutones from Denmark.

Under no circumstances nevertheless , we will claim that the druids did not practice the sacrifice: a religion cannot be more imagined without sacrifices than without symbols. The reason is that the rite,

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meticulous and regulated, remains essential: it keeps the cosmic balance and makes it possible the human society to purify itself, therefore to stay alive , or then it has a propitiatory value.

Besides believing in the immortality of the soul, the Celts thought that the lifetime was regulated by precise laws which must be respected in order to find one’s place in the Walhalla of the gods and of the ancestors.

“Those who sacrifice to the gods go to the gods and it is not a small achievement that to find the gods.” The oldest known druidic definition of Mankind can be stated as follows. “Man is the only animal proceeding to sacrifices” in other words “what distinguishes the Man from the other animals, it is his relation with the parallel universe called hereafter.”

As we have said it, the former druidism knew and practiced the human sacrifices. It is useless to deny it. The dunces or the swindlers doing it, prove thus besides, and by the very fact, the abyssal depth of their ignorance of the history of Mankind; as their total absence of philosophical reflection about the human status (the level zero of their philosophical reflection on the human status).

There existed two main modes of sacrifice.

The sacrifices of the chthonian type (offered to the underground entities) or the sacrifices of the uranian type (offered to the air gods).

There can be therefore divinatory sacrifices of chthonian type or of air type, propitiatory sacrifices of chthonian type or of air type, sacrifices of Thanksgiving of the chthonian or air type, etc.

There existed, on the other hand, 5 main categories of sacrifice.

-The divinatory sacrifices (to know the future).

-The expiatory sacrifices (to calm the anger of the god).

-The sacrifices of communication or the propitiatory sacrifices (to get assistance).

-The sacrifices of foundation.

-The sacrifices of thanksgiving (thanks intended for the deity). Primarily the immolation of the prisoners of war. The immolation of the defeated person had to be the very first of human sacrifices.

The declaration of war according to Caesar , Book V, 56 (a law common to all has it that all the adults come with their weapons, that the one who arrives the last will be killed after having undergone the cruelest torments); involved an execution coming more under the human sacrifice than under the capital punishment and therefore constituted an exception to the general rule of life safeguarding enacted by the druids. The killing in question was therefore a true human sacrifice and this quotation from Caesar therefore proves that with regard to the Celtic “holy” wars, people always started with a sacrifice of this kind.

This concilium armatum (gaisata datla in Celtic language?) extremely ritualized, probably had of a council only the name. Caesar describes it in a completely exceptional way in his work. It is one of the very rare descriptions of ethnographic nature out of the digression in Book VI; it has the advantage also of connecting a religious practice directly with dated events.

As opposed to what implies the Roman conqueror, the rite is old, in every case previous to the 1st century, and it is revealing. Its meaning is perfectly comprehensible. It is a question of notifying to all the participants, in the most solemn form that is, that from now on their life belongs no longer to them ; that it is in the hands of a fate which will leave them alive or which will make them some dead promised to a heroic Walhalla. The one who tried to withdraw from the collective duty must not only die in honor of the gods; but he must do it slowly, in degrading treatments, and in the eyesight of everybody; so that his death appears the reversed image of the death of the warrior, rapid, in full glory, at the cost of the suffering and sometimes of the death of his enemy. Perhaps this is to this solemn execution that Chateaubriand alluded while writing, in his “genius of Christianity”: may the infamous one is buried in mud.

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It is proven that the Celts sometimes tended to make no prisoners, slavery being in their eyes a lot worse than death to inflict to the defeated warrior. They found indeed nobler to die in action, such a death having the advantage, moreover, to make them reach the parallel other world considered as the paradise of warriors, directly.

The difficulties encountered by the Romans in their submission attempt of the Spanish Galicia prove it, for example. The reduction of every resistance was there indeed the subject of violent and pitiless fights (the Cantabrian wars) in the reign of the emperor Augustus between 26 and 19 before our era. The resistance was savage: collective suicide rather than surrender like in Massada, mothers who killed their children before committing suicide, crucified prisoners singing warlike anthems, rebellions of prisoners who killed their guards and returned on their premises, etc.

The first of the human sacrifices therefore had to be that of the prisoners of war. The offering of human lives to the war deities after the victory. There too, the principle is extremely simple. It is for example obvious that a deity of war, insofar as it exists of course (the Buddhism knows only “wrathful” deities after the death ) can only delight with human blood like the famous Kali of Hinduism or the Yahweh Sabaoth of the Hebrews in the Bible.

There existed various types of sacrifice and particularly that of the offering of human lives to the war deities after victory. Arrian. Hunting. XXXV.1. “No human undertaking has a prosperous issue without the interposition of the gods.” Therefore, people offer to them in exchange the warriors defeated and made prisoners during the battle. There too the principle is extremely simple. See what we wrote concerning the principle of reciprocity in the case of revenge. It is obvious that a deity of war, insofar as it exists of course (Buddhism has no one of them, for example, but the Bible knows one of them called Yahweh Sabaoth) can only delight in human blood, like the famous Kali in Hinduism. In the Welsh version of the Quest for the Grail, i.e., the tale of Peredur, the Grail is still a cut head, bathing in blood, and carried on a plate. The very idea of these human sacrifices was therefore simple, even simplistic. It was only an application of the Jewish law of retaliation.

Diodorus of Sicily. Book XXXI, 13. (At the time of the third war in Macedonia, first half of the 2nd century before our era.) “

The general of the barbarous Galatians, returning from his pursuit, gathered the prisoners together and perpetrated an act of utter inhumanity and arrogance. Those of the prisoners who were most handsome in appearance and in the full bloom of life he crowned with garlands and offered in sacrifice to the gods [……] all the rest he had shot down.”

However, Diodorus reports, several of them were acquaintances known to him through prior exchanges of hospitality.

There is again a diagram which indicates a rite no usual , but known, whose rules are complied with, what excludes any fit of anger due to circumstances. The Galatian chief proceeds methodically. He chooses most handsome of the young people, those who incarnate best the warrior qualities, but also of the young aristocrat. He consecrates them by crowning them, the crown being among Celts a sign of friendship or respect, before to sacrifice them. This sacrifice of Thanksgiving, according to every probability, comes to conclude a preliminary vow, before the fight. Here is given back to the gods what had been promised to them. The human sacrifice is limited to the men who were consecrated. The other prisoners are killed apart from any rite, because the Galatians left for a long campaign, cannot bring back these prisoners in their country to draw a ransom from them.

Diodorus, in his general information of the Book V, indicates that they use the prisoners of war to offer them to the gods. What must be a postponed manner to give thanks for a victory, by replacing it in the ferial calendar. The same rites existed a long time in Rome, the killing of Vercingetorix, strangled in his cell on order of Caesar, six years after, is the evidence of it. But the prisoners generally were promised to a very different destiny. They were given back to their family in exchange for a good ransom.

A whole part of the economy, particular that of the exchanges with the southernmost close people, was based on such a trade of the prisoners of war.

In the event of burial, or as in the case of the cremation (see the text of Caesar on the funeral), it also happened that the prisoners of war of the late one were sacrificed.

“Round about Fiachra’s grave the pledges whom they had brought out of the south were buried and they alive. Every man of them, as they were put quick into earth, said: “It is for uch that these tumuli are being founded"; and so said they all. Quoth a druid there: “Even such shall be the name of the place, Forrack to wit.” (Aided Crimthaind Maic Fhiddaig. The death of Crimthann son of Fidach).

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There still, the principle of these cruel executions was simple. It was not a judgment strictly speaking. They delivered the man to the ground, not through punishment - the notion of punishment is unfamiliar to the Celtic religion - but only in order to restore the mystical balance. “Unless the life of a man be offered for the life of a man, the mind of the immortal god-or-demons cannot be rendered propitious” Caesar says (B.G. VI, 16). The hostages belong to the late one: not more than some protected people or some slaves,they can prolong their life beyond his whereas their death, as a national of an enemy people, balances that of the missing king.

In other words. “We had some dead persons – many dead persons - therefore we also put to death in order to compensate for this imbalance a certain number of the prisoners we have captured.”

There existed other types of sacrifices than the simple postponed execution of the prisoners of war or of the prisoners under sentence of death, among the Celts; but always in the event of great danger for the nation as we will see it. They were to be exceptional circumstances similar to those of the various human sacrifices practiced by the Greeks, the Romans, or the Hebrews.

Diodorus of Sicily, V, 31: “They also observe a custom which is especially astonishing and incredible, in case they are taking thought with respect to matters of great concern; for in such cases they devote to death a human being and plunge a dagger into him in the region above the diaphragm, and when the stricken victim has fallen, they read the future from the manner of his fall, from the twitching of his limbs, as well as from the gushing of the blood; having learned to place confidence in an ancient and long-continued practice of observing such matters.” Practiced by the vates according to Strabo. (The - Greek - word used by him being “hieropoie” and meaning “overseer of sacred rites.”)

Strabo (IV, 4.5).

“They used to strike a human being, whom they had devoted to death, with a sword [ in the false ribs] and then divine from his spasms of death throes, but they would not sacrifice without the presence of the druids.’

In any case, the text of Diodorus is categorical: they strike a man who before was consecrated. The word used (kataspeisantes) has a precise primary sense which means “to spray, to sprinkle, to make a drink offering.” It is not known if we have to retain this primary meaning ; it is sure in every case that the victim had been the subject of a preliminary rite which “consecrated him” to the gods, who made him a sacred being.

This rite resulted therefore in establishing on the highest level a contact with the divine world. The victim will become for a few moments the intermediary or rather the spokesperson of the gods who will express their will through him. The authenticity of this kind of human sacrifices among Celts in this case appears undeniable. It does not remain less an exceptional act, justified by great interests which can concern only the war, some epidemic, all in all a danger which threatens the whole nation.

Sacrifices of communication.

There are cases when , conversely, to communicate with the god-or-demons, to better inflect them, to transmit to men vital information; it is better to send in the other parallel world which exists after death, a human mind rather than a simple animal spirit. The messenger in fact being worth almost as much as the message.

Last type of sacrifice finally, the sacrifices of foundation.

Intended to provide an invisible guard or protect tor for the house the castle or the city which man wants to build.

We did not find any obvious trace of it in the documents concerning former druidism.

There are some of them, on the other hand, in the Bible. At the time of the foundation of Jericho by Hiel the Bethelite (1 Kings, 16.34). “In his days Hiel the Bethelite built Jericho; he laid its foundations with the loss of Abiram his firstborn, and set up its gates with the loss of his youngest son Segub, according to the word of the LORD, which He spoke by Joshua the son of Nun.”

Nothing like it, on the other hand, in former druidism (except for the very doubtful legend evoking the foundation of the castle of the traitor Vortigern, on the hill of Ambrosius, in Wales: Dined Emrys). This kind of human sacrifice intended to secure the future of an unspecified construction, therefore had to be very early replaced by a simple animal sacrifice.

CONCLUSION.

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Apart from the case of the prisoners of war, the human sacrifice, true leitmotif of the ancient texts – which shows that the schizophrenic hypocrisy of the opinion makers it’s nothing new, on the other hand, is nowhere attested by direct eyewitnesses. We have only the passage of Strabo on the subject (IV, 4.5) undoubtedly reporting former traditions.

“The Romans put a stop to these customs, as well as to all those connected with the sacrifices and divinations, that are opposed to our usages. They used to strike a human being, whom they had devoted to death, with a sword [ in the false ribs] , and then divine from his spasms of death throe [But they would not sacrifice without the druids] . We are told of still other kinds of human sacrifices; for example, they would shoot victims to death with arrows, or impale them in the temples, or, having devised a colossus of straw and wood, throw into the colossus cattle and wild animals of all sorts, even human beings, and then make a burnt offering of the whole thing.”

Either its goal is divinatory or that it is the result of a vow, this human sacrifice appears above all as a warlike rite or a conjectural rite in a perilous situation.

Thereby it is in no way different from the examples of such sacrifices that we know in the former Greece thanks to the tragic poets or in Rome up to a very late time finally. We are within the ancient human sacrifices whose Iphigenia is the symbolic figure. Greeks and Romans also practiced a long time such sacrifices before going to war, all drawing on the sources of the mancy.

The primitive beliefs on the appetite of the gods for human victims were very spread at the time during antiquity and even still nowadays. See all the ramblings of some people about the anger of God. But they could be, on the other hand, diverted from their primary form and there is of it here a very good example. The penal putting to death of the criminals was institutionalized by the druids as a human sacrifice, claimed more pleasant to the gods.

By thus ritualizing death sentences, druids acted on two levels: they confined the human sacrifice within a strictly penal context and they strengthened their control on the political and social life by withdrawing from the lay men the right to life and death.

Do we have indeed to regard as a true human sacrifice the postponed execution of the men or women prisoners under sentence of death by the secular arm??

“They manifest a strange impiety also with respect to their sacrifices; for their criminals they keep prisoner for five years and then impale in honor of the gods, dedicating them together with many other offerings of first fruits and constructing pyres of great size” (Diodorus of Sicily, V, 32).

“ Having devised a colossus of straw and wood, they throw into the colossus cattle and wild animals of all sorts, even human beings, and then make a burnt offering of the whole thing.” Strabo about the same subject (IV, 4.5).

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SECOND COLLECTION OF THE MISTLETOE OF PRINCIPLES.

Heroic literature is a literary genre that has its own rules. Such literature does not directly reflect the reality of the society that produced it. But the stories must be sufficiently in line with social reality to be intelligible.

The Viking heroic sagas are limited in scope, but those of Ireland are not different, except that they are older. It is even the oldest literature in Europe if we set aside classical literature or the Judeo-Greek- Roman continuum. Many aspects of social life are left out. These narratives mainly concern the second function, warriors, kings and their servants; other social classes play a limited role. Nor do they speak much about economy and trade, family and social life, or women and children.

Most studies of the concept of honor in ancient Ireland have focused on the price of honor as described in legal treatises. Only a few scholars have studied its manifestation in literary sources.

The primary function of all this literature was, of course, to entertain the nobility during the long winter nights, but also to limit the violence of situations; a little as Diodorus of Sicily points out, in the case of the Continent and with regard to sacrifices.

"They keep their criminals prisoner for five years, and then impale them in honor of the gods" (Diodorus of Sicily book V 32).

Heroic literature deals specifically with the honor of warriors, the code of honor of warriors. It does not deal with the law or the complexity of legal actions, as disputes are usually resolved on the battlefield. The law and the price of honor depending on the case are therefore hardly mentioned. However, there is a great deal of discussion of honor in the literature for the second function. Regarding the glory of fame, or about what to do in order not to lose face.

The sagas depict individuals caught between contradictory injunctions or novel situations that force them to make painful choices.

But history is always made by the victors (uae uictebo) when it comes to honors, and the victor always has a better chance of reaping them than the vanquished. One can even legitimately think that our bards deliberately ignore the dark side of all these feats when it comes to the winners. The end therefore often justifies the means in sagas, which sometimes show a keen sense of casuistry.

The key concepts due to Jung's numerous analyses on the subject explain the resonance of these sagas in the culture of their time. These archetypes constituted for whole generations models of self- realization.

"The exploits of the hero correspond to the first stage of the differentiation of the psyche, the integration of the aspects of the shadow and the anima. If the individual does not manage to reach a certain degree of autonomy at this stage, he will be unable to enter into a relationship with his adult environment."

At least according to Sister Marian Davis. In the biannual publication of the Society of Friends of J. R.

R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis and Charles Williams: Mythlore).

The principle being that of reciprocity, honor consisted in behaving with others in accordance with what society expected in this matter, for better or worse.

Setanta Cuchulainn, for example, always adapted his behavior and actions to the adversary and the situation. In the saga of the rustling of Cooley's cattle, he will have to deal with powerful opponents, weak opponents, average opponents, contempt and ridicule, deception and betrayal. He will have to fight against friends, a beloved foster brother, and even his foster father. In doing so, he will suffer terrible injuries.

ANALYSIS OF THE TAIN BO CUAILNGE IN MATTERS OF HONOR.

See on this subject the fantastic work of David Noel Wilson published in Melbourne in 2004. La Tain bo Cuailnge or The driving off of Cooley's cattle features three main characters.

Setanta Cuchulainn, Maeve the Queen of Connaught, and Fergus Mac Roich.

These three characters have significant actions, reactions or interactions.

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Setanta Cuchulainn appears as a superhuman warrior with a mysterious birth (Setanta is a name of the Continent, but let's start once is not customary by the end, a little in accordance with the story itself, so by the easiest, the case of Queen Maeve.

MAEVE.

Maeve's honor is in no way problematic SINCE SHE HAS NOT! Everything she does and does not do is dishonorable.

IN THE STORY OF THE RAID OF COOLEY‘S CATTLE IN ANY CASE. But it is not much better in the other tales and legends of Ireland.

In the Tain bo Cuailnge Maeve is presented to us as a wife competing with her husband, competing on everything with her husband, greedy for wealth and power and seeking to get all this without grace or subtlety. The cause of the war that will be waged against the Ulaid will be, moreover, that Maeve will claim one evening that it was she who was the richest, even that it was she who, contrary to the custom, bought King Ailill from his father to conclude their marriage.

Maeve's way of acting is the absolute counterexample of the hero's behavior with a great sense of honor. In the Jungian sense of the term, Maeve represents the shadow aspect of individuals rather than their anima because her characteristics such as gratuitous violence or an inflexible will to dominate, are elements of the personality that Cuchulainn as for him learned to master (at Queen Scathache). Although in his case, they will resurface when it comes to defending his country against her.

According to Sister Marian Davis (in the biannual publication of the Society of Friends of J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis and Charles Williams: Mythlore) Queen Maeve is the archetype of the powerful aggressive but also sexually unbridled woman. With Ailill and Fergus, she forms a threesome.

As far as we are concerned, our point of view will be more square; Maeve is the archetype of the ... it's up to you to complete.

Because contrary to traditional schemes where female characters are presented either as damsels in distress or as supporters of the elderly, the manuscripts of the Red Branch cycle stage strong-minded and independent women. Their atypical behavior shows the difficulty of establishing precise parallels between the stages of the individuation process and the adventures of a particular hero and raises fascinating questions about the Jungian concepts of shadow archetypes and anima....

It will be Maeve, however, who will reveal Setanta Cuchulainn to the world (thank you Milady Gregory) by giving him the opportunity to surpass herself.

Let's come now to the case of Fergus.

FERGUS.

Former king of the Ulaid and tutor of Setanta Cuchulainn. Exiled to Connaught after a terrible civil war that ravaged the country because of a woman. Put himself and his last followers at the service of Queen Maeve, whose bed he also shares. He is torn between contradictory injunctions from which he will somehow manage to escape. One understands the difficulty of his position.

Let's end a contrario with the choice piece of this saga, Setanta Cuchulainn.

CUCHULAINN.

Sister Marian Davis sees in Cuchulainn the very process of individuation at work. Certainly, but the outcome of this process will have been to make Setanta Cuchulainn herself an archetype from elsewhere.

A large part of the saga of the rustling of Cooley's cattle is only made up of singular fights between our hero and warriors belonging to the invaders' troop. Setanta Cuchulainn always wins thanks to his incredible powers, but it was not only his incredible powers that made Setanta Cuchulainn immortal (according to the prediction made to him on the day he took up arms for the first time by the way and even before ("Daig conceċlabat fin hErend ⁊ Alban inn ainm sin, ⁊ beats lana beóil fer ṅ-hErend ⁊ Alban din anmun sin "), no, what also made Seanta Cuchulainn immortal was his unbridled quest for glory, whatever the cost. In this he was on the verge of the madness of berserkers. His end is Christlike, at least surrounded by (black) magic. The refusal to put anything above his supreme and universal quest for glory was intrinsic to his heroism. He exceeded all the other warriors of his tribe by miles, even though they were the best of their country.

We will speak here only about the fight of Setanta Cuchulainn with Orlam because it will be the occasion for him to remind of two of the great principles of the rights of man (in arms).

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While the invaders were advancing on the territory of the Ulaid, Setanta Cuchulainn meets for example the coachman of Orlam, son of Ailill and Maeve, repairing his chariot. The unfortunate man does not recognize him and panics when Cuchulainn reveals his identity. Setanta assures him that he doesn't kill coachmen, messengers or unarmed men, but nothing helps.

Cuchulainn then asks him to go and warn his master, what he hastens to do, but our hero precedes him and beheads Orlam after having killed him (there, the comparison with the jihad is really justified).

First teaching for the warrior function. It is not honorable for a true warrior to attack messenger coaches or unarmed men.

The second lesson: it is not honorable to attack someone without warning him. This is what Muslims call da'wa when it comes to jihad.

Heroic literature by definition is usually limited to the heroic acts of our heroes,

But if one wants to understand what honor was in this Celtica Litavia (because the civilization of La Tain in Ireland matches that of La Tene in Switzerland, we must also look at acts that are considered dishonorable.

Ambushes aimed at an isolated warrior are frowned upon. A man named Dubthach suggests setting one of them intended for Cuchulainn, but Fergus answers him with a kick in the ass.

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THE CHIVALROUS MIND.

Recognizing whether or not in the ancient Celtic society some feudalism before the word is invented depends by definition on the meaning given to this term, in this case on the existence or not of the land ownership according to the Marxist or bourgeoise historiography.

The still more or less collective character that real estate property had on Celtic land then, according to Albert Bayet, has as a result that individuals could not freely have at their disposal the land as a salary to pay for personal services. It needed the agreement of either the tribe-state on the continent or the family in Ireland. And that it was by donating or lending livestock and furniture that nobles like Orgetorix in Switzerland attracted clients and rewarded their dedication. The case of Lucterios, who had an entire city in its clientship, is, however, more troubling.

Let us therefore admit that there existed among the Celts both island and continental, alongside the political relations which subordinated the members of each tribe-state to their respective chiefs, bonds of protection and individual dependence between the members of the noble class and their clients (soldurii, ambacti) some of whom were companions in arms, others farmers or servants; BUT THIS WAS DONE WITHOUT THE ESSENTIAL ELEMENT THAT WAS THE CONCESSION OF LAND IN THE EYES OF MARXIST OR BOURGEOISE HISTORIOGRAPHY.

This situation was frozen by the Roman conquest but reactivated by the German conquest in the 5th century, and symbolically by the end of what then remained of the Western Roman Empire or of the Roman Gaul in 486 in Soissons before the Franks of Clovis . France was born!

New institutions appeared with these German conquerors but still devoid of the essential characteristic in the eyes of Marxist or bourgeoise historiography, land ownership.

The individual ties which once again united the faithful, comites, antrustiones, buccellarii, gasindi, vassi - a term of Celtic origin, moreover - to their chief or their boss (senior) only resulted from the personal man-to-man commitments and were not based on a certain state of land ownership. The faithful, in return for their assistance, could perhaps receive land as well as movable objects; but the concession of the land was then only the accessory of the relations established between the persons, whereas, in the feudal regime, it is precisely this very concession which creates the personal bond.

IN ORDER TO ESCAPE FROM ANY VAIN AND BOOTLESS POLEMIC WITHOUT INTEREST IN THIS FIELD FROM OUR EX-MARXIST COMRADES; WE WILL THEREFORE TALK HERE NOT ABOUT THE FEUDAL, OR SEIGNIORIAL (allodial) SYSTEM, AS SUCH; BUT OF THE KNIGHTHOOD AND OF THE KNIGHTS, BEGINNING WITH THE FIRST OF THEM: ARTHUR.

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THE HISTORICAL ARTHUR.

The role of the warlike class is undoubtedly to protect its people as some of the last words of the Hesus Cuchulainn show it very clearly: La araid airitiud. la errid imdegail. la cunnid comairle. la firu ferdacht. la mná mifre. It is up to the charioteer to drive the steeds, to the (chariot) warrior to protect, to the people who know to give advice, to the men to be virile, to the women to cry (?)

La errid imdegail.

Errid they are the professional warriors, very exactly the chiefs of a chariot or warriors got in a chariot. Imdegail implies an idea of protection of defense, clearly.

Let us specify, first of all, that contrary to what Hollywood suggests generally about his subject, the true Arthur did not live in the full Middle Ages but at the end of late Antiquity, after the Romans had left Great Britain.

Habits costumes and armaments are therefore to be re-examined in this direction.

The historical Arthur would have lived during the 6th century, in the west of England, the borders of Wales, of Wales in the broader sense. Fighting the Saxons, he is sometimes compared to a war leader named Ambrosius Aurelianus, “King of the Brettones” i.e.: of the Romano-British people, the whole of the Romanized Celtic populations in Great Britain). Unfortunately, we know only few things about this chief. For others it would be in fact a great landowner member of the Romanized Breton aristocracy having formed - as it was then usual at the time - his own private army (especially made up cavalry men ?!) which would have then come to assistance to the Britton kings against the Saxons as the chronicle of Nennius (9th century) shows it, which designates him as a '' dux bellorum ''' (war leader) fighting “with the Breton kings.”

As for the druid Merlin…

Firstly, we better grasp his personality. There are two possible historical figures: Myrddin Wyllt (especially legendary) and Lailoken (less legendary, well no more than Saint Kentigern).

Secondly: these two characters have rather lived on the border with Scotland. Thirdly: they seem to have nothing to do with the Arthurian legend at the outset.

And finally, cherry on the cake, Merlin's father is an anguipede (old French aquipedes enquipedes, equibedes, engibedes) in the works attributed to Robert de Boron.

Good luck !

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THE QUEST FOR THE GRAIL.

Most important is not the exact etymology of the word “grail.” What matters is to see how an ancient pagan concept (we will see which) how an ancient Celtic truth (the olla or the cauldron, of plenty , of the Suqellus Dagda Gurgunt) also became a Christian “truth.” For your information let us remind shortly that this legendary object (the saint grail) appears for the first time around the end of the 12th century in the romance of Chretien de Troyes entitled “Perceval or the story of the grail” (chapters VIII, XV and XIX).

The quest for the grail is the main activity of these legendary knights. The expended energy as well as the ordeals met make growing or being revealed the qualities of the men in question, possibly enable them to get news of them. It is therefore an initiatory search and a personal revelation.

The quest for the Grail makes it possible, when it is successful, to get in touch with this inner self hidden at the bottom of us and which is our true personality. The Grail, as it happens is the dispenser of this divine energy which transcends the being by building a bridge between our human nature and the divine nature.

The quest for the Grail is therefore a search of oneself and of the divine part which is in us: to learn how to know and live.

Because the man as regards his body is also an animal but it is not only that. Because the man is also an animal but it is not only that.

Because the man through his psychic and emotional aspect is subjected to the weakness * but it is not only that.

The story of the quest for the Grail is a very good example of the clearness it is necessary to show in every analysis of a religious fact in order to extract from it true substance .

This Grail which produces a miraculous food which is renewed each day is in fact a distant memory of the vases and containers of plenty with an inexhaustible content, suppliers of dishes and drink, that the Celtic mythology and the legends of other Indo-European civilizations often mention (the pattern of the horn of plenty for example, in Greek mythology). Its preservation in the house of the king and its exhibition during the festival guarantees for the society the renewal of the wealth from year to year . In what concerns us, in our interpretation of this Pagan-Christian myth, what matters is not that notion of plenty but the fact of wondering : PERCEVAL FAILS BECAUSE HE REMAINS SILENT INSTEAD OF ASKING EVERY TIME THE NECESSARY QUESTIONS.

Who are we?

From where do we come?

Where do we go?

What is the goal of the life?

What means to make a success of one’s life?

Is there a life after death?

Are we embodied souls, some beings pertaining to the Divinity?

Does GOD exist, and if yes WHO he is and how to find him?

Why so much injustice and suffering in the world?

Such is besides also the topic of the Irish tale entitled Ces oinden Ulad. TRUE HISTORY OF KNIGHTHOOD.

Around the year 1,000, the Latin word miles (warrior) is spread. It designates the knight then. This knight is characterized by the fact that he is a warrior riding a horse, but he is only seldom designated by the word equites meaning cavalryman. At the time when the feudal system spreads itself, the seigniory is the basic structure of it. It is a system having to keep order and justice and having for center the fortified castle.

The knight is then a warrior member of the household of the lord: this one having to surround himself by a group of professional soldiers who help him to keep order and to protect the inhabitants of his seigniory, and the travelers. They take part in the control of the populations and share with the lord the profits of the seigniory. As of the 11th century, miles becomes synonymous with vassus, the vassal.

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The knight is the armed servant of the lord of the manor: he begins his military career against the enemies of the lord and against the rebellious farmers (the villeins).

The 11th century is a turning point and it is a big change because it marks the rise of the lords of the manor and of the milites, those competing with the royal power. Indeed, these two entities become increasingly autonomous and hold a considerable power.

The knighthood will be gradually distinguished, be dissociated as a social group separate, with its own values and standards but also thanks to a particular lifestyle, a certain ideology which it asserts and defends. Moreover, this category will become gradually an ideal to be followed, a model.

The knighthood which is formed during the 11th century is really defined starting from the following characteristics: first of all it forms a full social category even a social and economic category. The latter is socially below the nobility. It gathers all those who have neither the notoriety of a noble lineage, neither the wealth of a great landowner, nor the ban (power to command) of a lord. In other words, a man is a knight who is not resulting from the nobility from a hereditary point of view, who does not have considerable wealth, whether it is in lands or money; finally who does not have the power to summon the vassals who are in his service nor to order, to force, to summon the host (seigniorial power). However, a knight has the right to carry weapons, the armament characteristic of the knight, is made up of a lance and of a sword in the 11th century. In addition, the knight fights on horse back, what can appear unimportant but has a real importance because a horse is expensive and is thereby a mark of prestige, wealth, superiority.

The access to the knighthood forms a good means to climb the social ladder. However, this promotion is not systematic. The title of knight could be lost if the knight in question were sick for example and that consequently, he could no longer carry out his military function. Moreover, the knight could have undergone serious wounds during a battle or a confrontation and to be no longer able to fight thereafter. In fact, he lost his status and was gradually forgotten by the society. During the Middle Ages, the knights came closer and unified during the engagements, in the war, and ended up forming a true separate social order. During the tournaments, the knights clashed to win prestige and fame and to hope to get a social ascent by a marriage with the daughter of a lord, for example. But this major process in the history of the knighthood took place over several centuries, it was a long and slow process which led to an equating of the two social groups in the 14th and 15th centuries. This process started during the 12th century: from then on, the knighthood tends more and more to merge with the leading nobility, and asserts itself as a model by its prestige and its cohesion, as a group.

These knights show then a growing interest for the literary events, particularly for the most refined poems (such Wolfram von Eschenbach, author of Parzival or the knights-errant who are the troubadours like Gui d’Ussel, William IX), or for history, in every case that of their own lineage (the counts of Guines near Calais make their history written by the magister Lambert of Ardres).

These well-read knights learn as of their childhood how to read in Latin in the psalter of their mother then read the Latin classics, what enables them to speak about literature with the scholars and incites them to repress their violence (the such knight Gervase of Tilbury who will become lawyer). In the same way, poetry and courtesy refine these knights, going until making them more charitable towards their fellow being.

From a military point of view, the knighthood will impose its preponderance gradually on the battlefields, and that as of the middle of the 11th century, particularly in France. Indeed, the knights become the fighters, the archetypal warriors, the elite of the army, a prestigious military order which builds its fame on its military feats and victories. Its action appears increasingly decisive at the time of the battles; it is it which decides on victory or defeat. Consequently, its prestige is increased by it. The battle of Bouvines which was held on July 27, 1214, is a good example illustrating this new reality.

Indeed, the action of the knighthood decided on the victory mainly. But this central place that the knighthood occupies at the battlefield relies on a past which already predisposed it to impose itself. Indeed, as of the Carolingian time, the cavalry held a central place in the army. The frank kings, as of Charles Martel against the Muslim invaders during the battle near Poitiers, had privileged the use of the cavalry during the confrontations.

The Role of the Church.

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At its beginnings, the knighthood was by no means developed by the Church as Jean Flori specifies it. Indeed, if the latter supported and defended entirely the knights leaving in a crusade, she denounced those who not risked their life for God but for money during the tournaments particularly. By definition she considered the knights as men obeying their lord and using violence to impose or apply their authority in the fields that they were to control and supervise. There was also the mistrust inspired by the knight-errant, without goal nor precise objective, who plundered and perpetrated thefts and other misdeeds to earn his living.

But the Church nevertheless strongly contributed to influencing knighthood and to modify its values, its duties. It used this order to make it the defender of its own causes. In that it encouraged the secular knights to become Milites Christi, in other words, some “Knights of Christ” in the service of God. With this intention, the Church promised the absolution of their sins to all the knights wishing to fight the infidels in Holy Land. The Crusades therefore played a central role in the meeting, in the “reconciliation” in a way of Church and knighthood. It was from now on possible as from the 12th century, particularly at the time of the first crusade preached by Urban II in 1095, to be a knight and to fight for God. There will be therefore consequently a clear opposition between the knighthood of Christ and the lay knighthood, the first being developed and being defended by the Church, the second scorned by it.The example of the Templars illustrates well this opposition. The latter are indeed “new knights” because they are permanent crusaders, some kinds of warlike monks. They are therefore supported by the Church because they are knights serving and defending a cause considered as righteous by the latter, namely the fight against the Muslims having taken possession of Jerusalem and of the Holy Land. If they kill, they do not risk the damnation according to the Church because it is for Christ that they do it, in other words, for a righteous cause. As a fighter for Christ, the Church guarantees to the latter an eternally blessed life after death.

In Short, after having begun by being savagely hostile against it, the Church in the Middle Ages will develop the warlike function, by making so that it servers its own interests (crusade).

The golden age of the knighthood.

The knighthood opens out therefore particularly during the 13th century in all Western Europe.

It is also the time when the image of the model knight endowed with all the virtues peculiar to knighthood develops much thanks to the many writers and poets who glorify the chivalrous values in their writings. So emerge the emblematic figures such as William Marshal in the 12th century, Ulrich von Liechtenstein in the 13th century or Geoffroi de Charny in the 14th century. These knights embody communal values, some behaviors and mentalities characteristic of the knighthood, namely the warlike value, the audacity, the thirst for glory, the concern of the reputation, the sense of honor, the respect of the promises and of the personal commitment but also the generosity, the prowess, the courtesy.

This last virtue became gradually indivisible from knighthood. The Knights of the Round Table played a main part on the mentalities of the knights who regard them as the archetypal models of knighthood.

Consequently, they are taken as examples and imitated in their feats. The epics which become very popular in the12th and 13th centuries glorify the knights and raise them on the level of some heroes. The Church, as for it, uses these epics to promote and guarantee the Holy war against Muslims. See the epic stories of the knights having taken, the Cross then who fight against the infidels settled in Jerusalem. The feudal ties between knight and lord is also very present in the epics. The vassalic service is in the center of the chivalrous duties. Generosity is one of the other virtues that must practice a knight. It is regarded as an aristocratic and even royal value in the beginning. It consists for the knight in redistributing wealth of all kinds, in giving horses, or invaluable fabrics, for example. The knight must be generous. This ideal is opposed to the middle-class which, getting more and more power during the 13th century and 14th century and approaching the kings, is seen as an adversary or a competitor.

One of the aspirations of the knight was to marry with a wealthy heiress because that meant for him the access to lands, to an estate but also to the aristocratic society. By the marriage, the knight could indeed hope “to start his own business.”

Who could become knight?

Even if the courtly romances designate the knighthood as an “Order” (ordo), the knighthood is socially mixed. It has rather complex relationship with “nobility” (aristocracy). The nobility in the Middle Ages

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indeed is not a status or a privilege but a “quality of variable intensity.” Nobilis is an adjective: you can be more or less noble; whereas miles is a substantive: you are a knight or you are not. And if all the knights are not noble, far from it, all the nobles soon say themselves knights. Feeling invested with chivalrous ideal, sharing the values of prowess and honesty, aristocracy little by little identified itself with knighthood.

All the knights were not “ full-time warrior” there were farmer-knights living in bands in large strong hold.

The knight remains downwards, he sometimes eats at the table of the lord, shares his adventurous life with his sons, but he is very often of less social origin. The knighthood was for certain men in the Middle Ages a social mobility, but many knights result from former noble families: they are the unmarried and without inheritance juniors of them, even the illegitimate sons. At the beginning of the 13th century, royal legislation in France, Germany and other kingdoms stipulates than a man can reach the chivalrous honor only if he is himself from chivalrous line.

Whatever the origins of the knight, the chivalrous life has an increasingly important economic price. In the 12th century, the basic equipment of a knight (horse, great helm, coat of mail, sword) represents the annual income of an average seigniory of 150 hectares. Three centuries later, the necessary equipment swallows the product of the work of 500 hectares.

How does a man become knight?

The teenager, son of knight, reaches himself this title and this status after training and a ceremony called dubbing.

Before the dubbing: when he is about seven years old, he is placed at a lord who will be his godfather. He climbs there all the degrees of the education which aims at making him a warrior: lad (he cleans the stable), page (he deals with the horses, is in the service of the lady of the castle, follows an equestrian training, learns how to hunt) and finally squire (he helps the knights in the tournament and war, and he has the immense privilege to carry his shield).

Around 17-21 years old, he takes the dubbing, official ceremony to which many noble ones were present and which consisted in consecrating a man as knight . The dubbing was a ceremony which marked the passage of the status of squire to that of knight. This ceremony took place generally in September or in October.

The Church wanted to give an ideological significance to this ceremony without, however, reaching that point fully.On the night previous his dubbing, the future knight prays in a chapel accompanied by his godfather, dressed with a white tunic, marked with a red cross, the white symbolizing purity and the red symbolizing the blood the knight is ready to shed. Then the lord organizes a festival in his castle, to which the vassals are invited. In the back of the castle, on a platform, the young man ready to be made knight. Knelt, he swears the knights oath loudly, his hand on the Gospel; his weapons of knight are then given to him by his lord and godfather, blessed by the Church which supervises the ceremony. Once covered with his equipment, the new knight kneels again to receive the accolade.

After the ceremony: tournaments are organized in which the newly dubbed knights and the vassals of the lord take part and banquets to celebrate the event.

The dubbing guarantees the admission in the militia, i.e., the knighthood. The handing-over of the weapons has a major importance because it means for the knight there are certain duties and functions to respect. Indeed, the handing-over of the sword means for the knight the practice of the armed force, namely the peacekeeping and the law enforcement but also the support and the protection of the Church and of the weak, this duty having a central place in the exercise of the functions of knight. Lastly, being a knight, it is also to defend the kingdom against the external enemies, often compared with the pagans.

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This religious character of the dubbing is very marked. The knights as their weapons are blessed by the ecclesiastics. There is also the prayer vigil which is previous the ceremony or a ritual bath. In short, the knights are in the service of God, of their lord and of their king. To this moral ideology, a nobiliary tone is added. Indeed, by becoming a knight you enter a higher order, near to the aristocracy. De facto, the knight tends to rise in the society and to approach the nobility, therefore to move away from the lower classes.

During the Middle Ages, the nobility must justify the divine origin of its power by an irreproachable behavior. Its role is the protection of the lands and the practice of justice, the noble man has a duty of equity. ParticularLY, in the war, it is necessary for him to fight heroically, hand to hand. The fight is proscribed on Sunday and the flight causes a deep disapproval. So the military setbacks of King John of England involved the enactment of the Great Charter in 1215 (which established a monarchy controlled by a Parliament of barons).

Duties of the knight.

In the service of the Church: the knight must put his sword in the service of the pope (crusades) and of the weak: he becomes then knight of Christ (Miles Christi).

Towards his lady: The courtesy is initially the whole of the qualities of the noble man , the elegant behavior of a knight; then around 1150, the courtesy is charged with a love dimension, embodied in the character of Lancelot. The courtly love is sung by the troubadours in the south and the trouveres in the north.

However, these duties are secondary compared to the duties towards the suzerain. His “virtues” are idealized by the courteous literature in the service of a class, the aristocracy, a form of government in which the power is officially held by an elite (sometimes by a caste, a class, a family, even some individuals).

The way of life of the knight.

The knight is especially a man-at-arms, a man-of-war, a man of prowess. The qualities of ideal knight are wisdom, prowess, generosity and fidelity. The knight often lives in the castle and must be faithful to his lord, when he is vassal. Nevertheless, we should not mix up vassal and knight.

Wars in the Middle Ages are not so frequent. Moreover, people don’t fight during the winter, nor during the holy periods (Advent, Lent). The Church established since the end of the 10th century peaces of God and truces of God to limit the wars.

The knight is a professional of war; he is the owner of offensive and defensive weapons that it is necessary for him to often replace after a fight. He must therefore earn money. The tournaments are a manner of earning money and of having fun.

The tournament is an opportunity to win a ransom, to confiscate horses and weapons of the defeated knights. It is also a way of not losing his touch during the periods without combat and of being distinguished with a lady. The knights like the tournaments because they have fun there and feel worthy to die there with their sword in their hand.

Equipment of the knight.

The equipment being as heavy as expensive, the knights could not put on their armor single-handedly, and the price of the equipment was in itself a big obstacle at the time when everyone could become knight.

Around the 14th century, each part of the equipment started to have a symbolic value.

The swords, forged during several weeks by a blacksmith in the castle: force, power and sacrifice. It fights Evil, injustice and ignorance, it is constructing when it keeps the peace of God and does justice. It symbolizes the tie of Heaven and Earth (because it is the polar and axial symbol par excellence) and many other things, moreover.

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Shields: faith, advice, protection against hubris, vice and heresy. Lance: charity, wisdom, truth.

Helms (helmets): hope, intelligence, decency.

Body armors (breast plates): prudence, piety, protection against vice and error. Gauntlets: justice, science, discernment, honor.

The parts which form the complete armor are arranged with skill. The weight of the armor reaches 20 kg to 25 kg, what corresponds to the middleweight of the equipment carried by the soldiers of all the time. There are about fifteen main pieces and a hundred in total.

The quality of the mount also played a significant role because, dismounted, a knight equipped moved more slowly and lost most of the impact force of his charge. However it is not rare that by strategic choice during a battle the knights fight on foot.

Tournaments and chivalry.

The tournaments, true sporting events par excellence for the knights but also means of training to the head-on charge of the battles to come, were very liked by the medieval society, contrary to the Church which was reluctant to them. They made it possible to the knights to get all kinds of profits: prizes, horses, harness (armor of the knight), weapons, money. The tournaments enrich the victorious knights but the latter seek and sometimes gets glory, prestige and fame through these confrontations. It is for the knights an effective means of upward mobility. The tournaments resemble truly war situations, in order to plunge the knights into the conditions of the next battle in which they will have to take part.

But these competitions take the form of spectacles. The jousts as for them are distinguished from the tournaments in the sense that they oppose only two adversaries. Less fatal, the latter appear around the 13th century and are in fact better accepted by the civil and religious authorities.

Conclusion.

The 12th and especially the 13th century were undoubtedly the golden centuries of the knighthood. This one was structured as a true class with its codes, its values and its lifestyle. In the late Middle Age , the dubbings became fewer and, in parallel, the cavalry lost its primacy on the battlefields, because of the re-use of former tactics (compact formations of pikemen) or of the working out of new armaments (long bows); the battles of Courtrai and Crecy were in this respect indicative of the vulnerability of the armored cavalry used separately. If the heaviness of the armors of the cavalrymen and of the mounts could, a time, mitigate its weaknesses, the spreading of the firearms on the battlefields as of the second half of the 15th century dealt a fatal blow to the knighthood as military force.

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JOUSTS AND TOURNAMENTS.

The origin of the medieval tournaments and jousts being, of course, also to be sought on the side of the indubitable propensity of the Celts to fight in a duel, let us, come at this point of our talk, to say again a word about them.

The use to resort to duels in order to solve litigious questions is common to Celtic nations. When the Greek philosopher Poseidonius explored Celtica in the beginning of the first century before our era, it was told him that in the pageantry feasts the use existed formerly to give to the bravest warrior the leg or ham of the animal which was the piece de resistance of the meal; and when two warriors disputed this sign of preeminence, they resorted to weapons; there was between them a single combat, and the winner received as a crown the piece of meat which had been the subject of the ambition of the two rivals.

It was therefore allowed at the time that two human beings want to settle their disagreements or their dispute by resorting to duel, especially as regards honor besides.

D’Arbois de Jubainville, this great Celticist of the 19th century specialist in the Irish literature even thought of having found among Celts the origin of the fights of gladiators. Here indeed what he notices in the volume first of his studies about the Celtic law.

As we have had the opportunity to see it, in the disputes between private individuals, there was no obligatory jurisdiction. The duel was a softened form of the private war, a way of saving the blood of the parents ( friends, clients). The adoption of this form of solution of the litigation resulted from a formal contract and instead of the legal duel like later in the Middle Ages, there was then the conventional duel. One of the oldest historical examples of this ancient species of duel is offered to us by the Celts in Spain, in the year 206 before our era.

P. Cornelius Scipio, who owed later to his victory against Hannibal the nickname of Africanus, was then in Spain, and he had gotten there against the Carthaginians multiplied successes. He wanted, in Cartagena, to discharge a vow which he had made to honor the memory of his father and of his uncle, both killed six years before, in -212, when they were leading Roman armies and while fighting like him, in Spain, against the Carthaginians…

Scipio had no expenses to pay. His skill had detached the Celtiberians from the party of the Carthaginian and had made them embrace the cause of the Romans. Among his new friends, he found without expenses as much as he wanted warriors who got to him the satisfaction to kill one another before his eyes without asking other wages that the pleasure and the honor to fight the ones against the others.

But the gladiators provided free by the quarrelsome ardor of Celtiberians did not fight all only for the pleasure and the honor: in some of the pairs in question, the duel had a practical interest, the glory of success was not the only stake: the two adversaries had a lawsuit, and not having wanted either to compromise or to rely on the judgment of an arbitrator (of a druid) they had agreed that the object of their contention would be allocated to the winner. Of this category, as strange as the other for the Roman spectators, two great Spanish lords were members: Corbis and Orsua, both sons of a king. Their fathers were brothers and had reigned one after the other according to the primogeniture order: the question was to know who of the two sons was to succeed the last deceased of the two brothers. The father of Corbis, being the elder, ascended first the throne; the father of Orsua was the second and had succeeded his brother on the throne. Orsua claimed that the throne was comprised in the inheritance that his father handed down to him. Corbis, older than Orsua, wanted to exert his birthright like his father had set the example of it. Scipio made, to reconcile them, useless efforts; they refused to accept his arbitration: “We do not want,” they said, “another judge that the god of war. ” Corbis, thanks to the superiority of his age, was more vigorous than his cousin. Orsua, dominated by the hubris, which is so often the main passion of young people, did not realize the chances of success that his cousin had. Each one of them preferred death to the humiliation of obeying his relative. Corbis, more trained in the handling of the weapons, more skillful and stronger than his opponent, did not have difficulty to overcome him and to kill him. It was therefore him who got the crown.

This duel, so contrary with the manners of the Romans, captured their imagination highly. More than two centuries after, Valerius Maximus, who wrote, as we know, during the reign of Tiberius, spoke

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about it in his collection of memorable deeds, and to make the impiety of this fatal combat more shocking, he made the two opponents two brothers who disputed the paternal succession; the elder, according to Valerius Maximus, would have readily taken the peaceful advice of Scipio. It would be the younger brother who would have refused to accept it, and his death would have been the right punishment of his perverse obstinacy.

The part of the work of Valerius Maximus where this arrangement of the ancient account preserved by Livy is, dates back to 32 of our era, or is little later. Fifty or sixty years later, Silius Italicus, who wrote during the reign of Domitian (81-96), embellishes still more this tragic anecdote. He is not satisfied to make the combatants two brothers as Valerius Maximus had imagined it: to make their fight still more horrible, he makes them kill each other ; he describes the two swords piercing each one the chest which is opposed to him; he shows us the two brothers laid dying on the ground and showering each other with reciprocal abuses , with their last sighs cries of hatred are mingled. People then wanted, said Silius Italicus, to join together their corpses on the same pyre, but the flames which went out from these funeral remains raised while dividing, and the ashes of the two brothers refused to rest in the same tomb.

In spite of this purple passage worthy of a journalist or a politician of today, Silius Italicus admits, however, that this duel was in conformity with the national uses of the two fighters: is gentis mos dirus erat.

The nation in question is the Celtic nation, in its Celtiberian part. Corbis, name of the elder of the two cousins, is a Celtic word.

Corbis is the man’s name which explains the place name Corbio. Corbio is a town in Spain, it belonged then to the Suessetani and the Romans captured it twenty-two years after the duel of Corbis and Orsua. The Suessetani lived on the banks of the Ebro River ; their capital, called Suessatium by the Antonine Itinerary, is named with a mistake of copy Suestasion by Ptolemy; it is a place name, relative of that of the Suessiones whose modern form is Soissons….

It is therefore not bold to recognize a Celtiberian in the person of the Spanish Corbis who, in the year 206 before our era, fought in a duel in Cartagena in the presence of Scipio, the future victor of Hannibal, and to attribute the same origin to his cousin, to his unfortunate opponent, Orsua, killed by him in this single combat.

A part of the voluntary gladiators who, in 206 before our era, killed one another in the games given by

P. Cornelius Scipio in Cartagena, were therefore Celtic litigants who resorted to the conventional duel in order to put an end to their lawsuits.

………………..

To return about the Irish Law which appears here to date back to early antiquity, the duel, in two circumstances at least, does not expose the winner to pay the financial composition for murder and guarantees his triumph in the pending dispute; it is what takes place:

1° When the duel was fought after a contract made with the assent of the family of the defeated and which determined the legal effects of the victory; then, whoever the winner, whether it is the applicant or the defendant, it does not owe a composition for the murder of his adversary.

2° When the duel is due to the refusal by the defendant to let a seizure be carried out against him in the forms established by the custom; in this case, the seizing applicant who kills his debtor will not pay a composition if beforehand he gives notice to the family of the debtor to do him justice.

The Irish applicant had three ways of proceeding to get justice: 1° the seizure of the personal property, aithgabail; 2° the seizure of land and building property, tellach; but also 3° the duel, comrae.

In the Irish law of the Early Middle Ages It is licit indeed to challenge to a duel the debtor who resists by force a seizure undertaken regularly, and before Christianity in Ireland no law prohibited this resistance to the debtor. This prohibition does not apply to the creditor who resorts to force, who practices the seizure with weapons and to whom the debtor opposes force and weapons. Thus for this creditor the duel is lawful in canon law as in civil law.

The two parties can also, by an agreement, decide to fight in a duel in order to give a solution to a pending lawsuit. In this case, it is needed that the two adversaries, speaking in a loud voice in front of witnesses, determine previously the consequences that the defeat will have for the beaten, i.e., for example, the restitution of a determined object to the applicant if he is victorious, or the final giving up of this object to the defendant, if the latter gets the victory; generally, determining of the object in litigation and of the solution that the result of the fight will give to the disputed question. This duel, of which a preliminary convention specified the consequences, can be called conventional. Its name, in

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Irish, had to be “duel after an oral contract,” comrac iar curaib bel, in opposition to the “duel without contract” comrac cen curu bel, which is regular only in the case specified above, of resistance by force to a seizure carried out in the forms prescribed by the use.

The origins of the chivalrous spirit in the West are obviously to be sought also on the side of the fir fer or code of honor of the old warlike class whose Cuchulainn was the archetype in Ireland.

Cuchulainn who never killed the charioteers neither the messengers nor the unarmed men. Cuchulainn who, unlike the Muslim warriors and the surah devoted to the division of the spoils (the number 8), did not behave as a thénardier (cf. Victor Hugo) robing the corpses.

Dáig níbá miad nó níba maiss leiss echrad nó fuidb nó airm do brith óna corpaib No marbad. Because it did not seem to him honorable to take the horses the clothes or the weapons from the corpses of those he had killed.

Not forgetting either the famous motto of the Fenians.

“Firinde inàr croidhedhaibh, 7 neart inàr làmhaibh, 7 comall inàr tengthaibh.” “Glaine ár gcroí, neart ár ngéag agus beart de réir ár mbriathar”

What means roughly speaking

“Truth in the heart, strength in our arms, and the art of good speech.”

“Purity in the heart, strength in our limbs, and respect of one’s word”

So much it is important indeed not to order the good (as the Quran does it so often) BUT TO SET ONESELF AN EXAMPLE.

Because the Hesus Cuchulainn had many budisms (charisma). : the gift of beauty, the gift of forms, the gift of purity ( ?) the gift of making knots or bonds, the gift of swimming, the gift of horsemanship, the gift of playing tablut and brandub, the gift of battle, the gift of fighting, the gift of conflict, the gift of sight, the gift of speech, the gift of counsel, the speed in the races, the women .

Ra bátar trá ilbúada ilarda imda for Coin Chulaind: búaid crotha, búaid delba, búaid ndénma, búaid snáma, búaid marcachais, búaid fidchilli & branduib, búaid catha, búaid comraic, búaid comluind, búaid farcsena, búaid n-urlabra, búaid comairle, búaid foraim, búaid mbánaig.

Closer to us still.

“Am fear a thug buaidh air fhein, thug e buaidh air namhaid.”

He who conquers himself, conquers an enemy (still current motto of the Cateran Society)

And to control oneself nothing like praying before the engagements.

The prayer was always or will be still , a double human experiment: a psychological technique combined with a spiritual process. These two functions of the prayer can never be entirely separate. “Nate, nate, mento beto to devo” unceasingly repeated his mother to the future noibo Symphorian of Autun.

The enlightened prayer must admit that the higher Being is including and impersonal*. But in many cases, a more effective technique will consist in fact in considering that the deity to whom you speak, is a kind of interlocutor, exactly as the primitive mind was used doing it. For example, Cassibodua and her favorite animal the crow, or Andarta/Andrasta, even Ogmius or Mabon/Maponos/Oengus. The divinity is also in the Man (Gdonius), so that the Man can speak, so to speak, face to face, with the divine one who inhabits him.

The prayer very often carries out material and durable changes in the one who prays. The lorica for example often generates much relief, mental peace, calm, courage, self-control, even joy. In any case in those who are spiritually Celtic minded and don’t fear the hell or the punishment by a jealous and avenger god-or-demon like Allah or Jehovah.

The prayer is a subjective gesture, but it establishes the contact with objective powerful realities of the human experience; it is a significant try to reach supra-human values. It is the most powerful stimulant of the spiritual growth.

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The words have hardly importance in a prayer; they are simply the intellectual channel that the river of our supplications takes. The verbal value of a prayer is socio-suggestive in the collective devotions, but purely self-suggestive in the individual devotions. It can involve in these cases (Cassibodua, Andarta, Ogmius…) important productions of adrenalin or endorphin in our organism, being able even in the extreme cases to lead to a true murderous madness (vergio/ferg).

Adrenalin is at the same time a hormone and a neurotransmitter. It takes part in the fight/flight reflex. It accelerates the speed of breathing, dilates pupils, and increases heart rate. A strong amount brings the body to the highest state of alert. Adrenalin also plays a significant role in the enthusiastic reaction to a challenge; but an excess of adrenalin in the normal life involves nervousness, even paranoia.

The endorphins are endogenous morphines, which perform the function of neurotransmitters. Their crucial role is that of a painkiller, but they also involve a feeling of happiness or euphoria. The state of intoxication which can occur after a great bodily effort is caused partly by the endorphin emission in the organism.

Although being able to be personally felt in a personal form.

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APPENDIX No. 1.

FOR COMPARISON SEE BELOW. THE BUSHIDO.

The caste of the Samurais who was then only a little lettered military caste, found itself idle after the peace imposed after the accession to power of Tokugawa. The code of honor defined by Yamaga, a ronin of the Edo period, made it possible to redefine their role and to find to them a new reason for being. With this pacification, the fighting function of the warriors decreased and those became civil servant. They gave up the warlike side for the ceremonies, and started to be interested in arts, especially writing. As from this period, the word Bushi and Samurai were no longer absolutely synonymous, the bushi being distinguished from the samurai by his membership of the higher class of warriors.

The Hagakure is a compilation of the thoughts and lessons of Yamamoto Jōchō, a former samurai vassal of Nabeshima Mitsushige, which was written between 1709 and 1716.

Formed by 11 volumes, the Hagakure characterizes the Bushido as a code governing the life of the samurai, honor, loyalty, humility and especially the training and the improvement in the art of war, life and death.

The spirit of the Hagakure can be summarized in the four following thoughts.

Never forget the bushido.

Be always ready to serve your master.

Respect your duties towards your parents.

Be merciful constantly and assist the others.

Here below now the seven great Confucian virtues linked to the Bushido. Even if they are numbered, there is no hierarchy between them. Theoretically, these seven virtues are equivalent, but in the facts, that was seldom the case. Human nature being what it is, a large number of samurais showed benevolence only towards the members of their caste or even only towards samurais of their clan in distress.

Sense of Justice.

Sometimes also called uprightness or rectitude; it is the precept which requires to follow the moral rules that we regard as just, without never deviating from them. A famous warrior defines it as follows: The rectitude the power to make, without weakening, a decision dictated by the reason. Dying when it is well to die, striking when it is well to strike. Uprightness is based on the self-respect, and generates the respect with regard to the others and from the others. Courage helps to be faithful to one’s commitments, one’s word, and the ideal which one chose for oneself.

Courage.

The young samurai was hardened and familiarized continuously with the notion of courage. During their education, the young samurai's apprentices were sometimes forced to go alone, at midnight, on the spot of an execution , and to bring back from it the head of one of the sentenced to death persons in order to test their courage. The courage therefore is not the absence of fear, but the fact of facing the ordeals in spite of our fears and our dreads. A famous samurai said: It is the particularity of true courage to live when it is necessary to live, and to die only when it is necessary to die. Courage also urges us to make respected what appears to us just. Confucius defines courage thus: Knowing what is just, not to do it shows the absence of courage. Therefore, courage is to do what is just.

Benevolence.

Benevolence, or compassion, is a basic virtue according to the Chinese Confucianism. It encourages us to be attentive towards our fellow being, to be respectful of life. The samurai must give assistance to those who need it. If he has a katana that other men do not have the right to have, it is to use it instead of them and not to use it against them. We find here the topic of compassion in the warrior, bushi no nasake, who could, of course, use his saber to solve any problem being presented to him, but who also had the possibility of calming the minds without taking life. Certain followers of the

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Bushido could reach a high level of leniency . Such Ogawa: “When others speak all manner of evil against you, return not evil for evil, but rather reflect that you were not more faithful in the discharge of your duties.” Conceived as a female characteristic, benevolence comes to balance uprightness, a characteristic considered as being male.

The respect.

The respect is only the expression of the sincere and real interest brought to others, whatever their social status. It is necessary to avoid the criticism and the denigration of the others, because the unconscious purpose of this harmful practice is to show oneself in advantage. To belittle the others is an easy means to increase his own stature, relatively inexpensively. Such practices are unworthy of a true samurai. It does not matter the social position, qualities and weaknesses of the others, the true samurai must treat the people and the things with respect. To respect the others, it is necessary to be able to resist his own emotions: impatience, anger, desire, fear, etc.

Sincerity

Sincerity is paramount in the warrior engagement: the Bushido holds the lie or ambiguity for cowardice. Although there are various oaths and rites accompanied by promises in the life of a samurai, it is considered in the everyday life that his word is equivalent to an act. A samurai does not need to swear an oath when he declares that he will do something. The simple fact that he says it commits him, and the fact of questioning this commitment amounts insulting the samurai in question.

The sense of honor.

Most samurai dedicated their life to the Bushido which required loyalty and honor to death. If a samurai failed to keep his honor intact he could get it again by committing the seppuku, a ritual suicide, that we know better in the West under the term of harakiri or cutting one's belly. However, it is necessary to underline the difference between seppuku and harakiri. The seppuku made it possible to a defeated warrior to give death to himself and to be thus able to die while keeping his honor intact, the winner shortened then his sufferings. The harakiri, on the other hand, was a way of giving death to oneself where you “lost” any honor after this gesture. In the feudal Japan, it was spoken about harakiri for a person giving oneself death after a large humiliation for example, and about seppuku for a person taking responsibility for a defeat by giving death to oneself.

Any infringement to the honor of a samurai was felt intensively and called renchishin, or sense of shame. Disobedience to the code or to a superior produced a feeling of guilt and of shame. A deserved reproach was more to fear that death itself. A samurai refused one day to let his reputation by dented by a however minor compromise of principles because, he says, dishonor is similar to a scar on a tree that time, instead of erasing it, increases every day.

The honor is linked to the manner of being, to the fidelity, to his word, to a friend, a master, an ideal, or to the truth. This is why the duty of loyalty is another pillar of the Bushido.

Loyalty.

The duty of loyalty is not only an attitude towards the others, but also towards principles and values. There is no honor without loyalty with regard to certain ideals, and to those who share them. The word samurai comes from the verb saburau which means to serve. The samurai must therefore serve and could not escape what determines up to the name of his caste. The samurai serves his lord and also his clan, his loyalty must be unfailing. The interest of the clan, of the family goes first, goes before the individual. In Japan the first place was allocated to the Emperor who embodied for the Japanese, the Yamato, the very soul of the Japan. However, even the Emperor was to yield in front of the will of the Heaven and a samurai could not do less than those who are above him. Today, it is advisable to show fidelity and loyalty, for example with regard to one’s homeland, including, in order to defend it, the possible sacrifice of one’s life. The one who shirks this duty is regarded as a coward or a traitor.

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APPENDIX No. 2. THE RAJA YOGA.

Below the eight “limbs” (anga), rungs or branches of the raja yoga, according to the Sutra Yoga * 1- Yama, elementary moral duties towards the others as towards oneself (right attitudes).

Ahimsa: not to kill nor to wound living beings, in thoughts, words and acts, either directly or indirectly

(a basic rule : the nonviolence).

Satya: to have an impartial view of the events (principle of truth).

Asteya: to distinguish what is legitimate from what is not so (respect of property, absence of theft, honesty, probity).

Brahmacharya: to find the golden mean in all the fields of the life (moderation). Aparigraha: to remain free from superfluities and possessions.

Niyama, to discipline oneself and to train in daily practicing (moral code).

Shaucha: cleanliness and external as internal respect (purity). Santosha: to take the events such as they come (to be positive). Tapah: to show ardor and will in practicing (discipline).

Svadhyaya: careful thought on the motivation of our acts and study of the sacred texts. Ishvara-pranidhana, to dedicate one’s acts to the impersonal self.

Asana: the postures which people adopt during the practicing. To be firmly and quietly established in the feeling to be in this world and not in another one. That also includes the mudras (work on the meridians), kriyas (methods of cleaning and purification), relaxation (Yoga nidra and Shithilikaran) and the yogic massages (Malish).

Pranayama or work on breathing; to breathe no longer unconsciously. Patanjali defines yogic breathing as being long and flowing.

It can appear surprising that the Yogasutra gives no indication on respiratory postures and practices. Indeed, asana and pranayama caused a later development of practices and training (Hatha yoga). But it should well be understood that they are only stages making it possible to eliminate the mental disturbances preventing the peace you can feel in the natural positions of the body and the breath flow. Starting from that, the sincerity will involve in the daily practice increasingly automatic reflexes likely to be in synergy with the other branches of the yoga. What will show the effectiveness of the undertaken work on oneself?

Pratyahara, wellbeing independent from the conditioning of senses (harmonization or withdrawal from the senses).

Dharana. Dharana is the focusing (an aptitude to sustain attention without letting oneself be distracted) on the activity of mindset, emotions, posture, or breath. It is the subtle listening to the feelings, to the breathing, to the thoughts which pass, or do not pass.

Dhyana, in other words, meditation. The Pratyahara (withdrawal from the senses) is combined with the mindset, the dhyana (major meditation) is combined with the awareness of oneself.

Samadhi: access to the cosmic awareness. It is the aptitude to be at one with the perceived object, the sprawling of the consciousness, the unity state, the serenity. The consciousness reached the Absolute, whereas dhyana is still in the duality. It is the state of major contemplation. Mircea Eliade calls this state of mind “enstasy”, by contrast with ecstasy.

Theoretical Author of these 195 sutras: an Indian scholar named Patanjali having lived between - 200 and + 500.

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APPENDIX No. 3.

JUDAISM.

For comparison below the 7 laws given to Noah according to Orthodox Judaism (Sheva mitzvot B'nei Noa’h), more often called Noahide laws and sometimes Noachide laws.

Do not practice other worships. Do not blaspheme God.

Do not engage in illicit unions (incest adultery pederasty bestiality). Do not murder.

Do not steal.

Do not eat of a live animal.

Establish courts to guarantee obedience to the law.

If we leave on one side the stupidity of eating flesh of a live animal (what to do with the infinitely small, with microbes?)

It remains 4 commandments interesting in themselves without details on the way to practice them. Establish courts to guarantee the obedience to the law.

Do not engage in illicit unions (incest adultery pederasty bestiality). Do not murder.

Do not steal.

and 3 extremely debatable commandments Do not practice other worships,

Do not blaspheme God

Do not engage in illicit unions (incest adultery pederasty bestiality).

The assessment is therefore paltry.

Some courts very well yes but justice is an extremely old notion in mankind and which varied much over the ages; therefore which will vary again much, it is enough to see the evolution of certain currents of thought born in the 18th or 19th century and which now manage to support sometimes in good faith, the exact opposite of the ideas of their spiritual ancestors in the previous centuries.

The notion of murder would also deserve to be specified: is there murder in the event of self-defense, is there murder in the event of war (when for example a soldier kills by surprise an enemy???)

As for the concept of theft, it is clear that it depends completely on the notion of, personal or collective, property, which varied much also even which continues to much vary, in the field of the copyrights, for example we passed from the complete lack of such rights (the oldest literatures are generally anonymous) to the tendency to place more and more things and more and more a long time under copyright. Fortunately that the one who invented fire the wheel even “two plus two = four” did not have the idea to prohibit to the others to copy him or to be inspired from him because we would be still then to pay billions of small pennies to his descendants. While waiting for that one day a fellow

...... to see the current definition of the author and the justification of the copyrights…also claims himself inventor owner of the air which is breathed even of all that is alive.

The not-Jews (Goim) who will not be satisfied with the lot that the Jewish eschatology reserves for them, of course, may always hope to find better in Christianity. Waste of time, it is hardly better as we will see it.

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APPENDIX No. 4.

THE PROPHECY OF THE HIGH QUEEN.

The last two paragraphs of the Second Battle in the Plain of the burial mounds (Cath Maighe Tuireadh).

Now after the battle was won and the corpses cleared away, the Mara Rigu/Morrigu/ Morgan Le Fay daughter of Ernomos proceeded to proclaim that battle and the mighty victory which had taken place, to the royal heights of Green Erin to the hosts of the sidh and its chief waters and its river mouths.

And hence it is that Bodua also describes high deeds.

‘Have you any tale?’ says everyone to her then. And the Bodua said:

‘Peace up to heaven, Heaven down-to-earth, Earth under heaven, Strength in everyone, etc. ’

Then, moreover, she was prophesying the end of the world, and foretelling every evil that would be therein, and every disease and every vengeance. Wherefore then she sang this lay below:

‘I shall not see a world that will be dear to me. Summer without flowers,

Kine will be without milk, Women without modesty, Men without valor, Captures without a king.

………. ?.............

Woods without mast, Sea without produce,

……….. ?...............

……………………

…………………..

Wrong judgments of old men, False precedents of judges, Every man a betrayer,

Every boy a robber.

The son will enter his father's bed, The father will enter his son's bed, Cliamain cach a bratar,

Everyone will be his brother's brother-in-law or father-in-law????

…….. ?............

An evil time!

The son will deceive his father,

The daughter will deceive her mother.

And after all that only fire and water will prevail (cf. Strabo IV, 4).

This end of a cycle (or end of a world??? The druids always saw further their historical time, the text in any case speaks to us about the last world); will be the result of an inexpiable war between opposed forces (and therefore opposed god-or-demons) .

“There are three periods at which the world is worthless: the time of a plague, the time of a general war, the dissolution of express contracts ” (Senchus Mor, or “Great Antiquity”: Dublin, 1865-1901, v. III, 1873, p. 12).

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The same topic is dealt in a much longer and detailed way by the velede Ferchertne in the Dialog of the Two Sages (Imacallam in da thuarad, Book of Leinster).

In spite of its obvious Christianization, this text remains an invaluable testimony about the ethics and the values of the former druidism. The notion of judgment, included at the end, is not necessarily Christian. In any event, the rest is impressed with obvious pre-Christian design. Even if it is difficult to understand each one of the lays composing this long poem, it comes out from it the impression of a gigantic conflict opposing all kinds of opposed values, and even enemies in flesh and bone. We find there indeed at the beginning (in the part which is previous the prophecy itself) some allusions to the three god-or-demons of Danu (bia), but also to Lug, Noadatus/Nuada/Nodons/Llud, Mabon/Maponos/Oengus; as to the White Lady called Damona Vinda on the continent, or Bo Enda in the Netherlands (Borvoboenda) even Bo Vinda in Ireland.

As the great Breton celtologist Christian-Joseph Guyonvarc'h reminds it to us with relevance in his book devoted to this subject: “One day only fire and water will prevail ” (Strabo IV, 4).

Then all will start again, and from this fire and from this water will re-appear a new world as well as a new land, even more blue and greener than the previous one. At least can we hope for that by following the example of the writers of the Germanic Ragnarok.

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APPENDIX No. 5.

THE DIALOG OF THE TWO SAGES.

Lines of verses 175 to 310.

“I have indeed: tidings terrible evil the time which will always be: wherein chiefs (elected officials of the political system supported by the taxes from the taxpayer??) will be many, wherein honors will be few: the living will quash fair judgments. The cattle will be barren. Men will cast off modesty. Men will be bad: good kings will be few: usurpers will be many. The disgraces will be crowds: every man will be blemished. Chariots will perish along the race course. Foes will burn Niall's plains. Truth will not safeguard excellence. Every art will be buffoonery. Every falsehood will be chosen. Everyone will pass out of his proper state through hubris and arrogance, so that neither rank nor age, nor dignity, nor art, nor instruction will be served. Every skillful person will be broken. Every noble will be contemned: every ignoble will be set up. Good princes will perish before usurpers by the oppression of the men of the black spears.

Belief will be destroyed. Offerings will be disturbed. In a stingy manner storeroom will be laid waste. Inhospitality will destroy flowers. Through false judgments fruits will fall. His path will perish for everyone.

Hounds will inflict conflicts on bodies….so that everyone will be injured by his following through darkness and grudge and miserliness. At the end of this world poverty and stinginess and grudging will come from everywhere.

Many controversies will there be with artists.Everyone will buy a lampooner to lampoon on his behalf. Everyone will impose a limit on another. On every hilltop treachery will adventure, so that neither bed nor oath will protect. Everyone will hurt his neighbor: so that every brother will betray another.

Everyone will slay his companion at drinking together and eating together, so that there will be neither truth nor honor nor soul there.Misers will shrivel one another for their number. Usurpers will satirize one another with a storm of every darkness.Ranks will be spilled: the teaching from the learned men will be forgotten: sages will be despised. Music will turn into boors. Wisdom will be turned into false judgments. Evil will pass into the points of the crosiers (of bishops?????). Every sexual connection will turn into adultery.

Great hubris and great freewill will turn into the sons of peasants and churls. Great miserliness and great inhospitality and great parsimony will turn into landholders, so that their poems will be dark. Great skill in embroidery will pass to fools and harlots, so that garments will be expected without colors. Wrong judgments will pass into men in high places kings and lords.

Impiety and anger will pass into everyone's mind so that neither kings nor lords will hear the prayers of their tribes or their judgments; so that the erenaghs [estate managers] will not listen to their tenants and pupils will not rise up (respectfully) before their teachers.

223. Everyone will turn his art into false teaching and false intelligence, so that the junior may like to be seated while his senior is standing , so that it will be no shame with a man who is eating after closing his house against the artist who sells his honor and his soul for a cloak and for food; greed will fill every human being: so that the proud man will sell his honor and his soul for the price of one scruple (the twenty-fourth of a silver ounce: in other words a very small sum of money).

Modesty will be cast off: folks will be contemned: lords will be destroyed; Letters will be forgotten: poets will not be produced. Righteousness will be removed: false judgments will be manifested by the usurpers of the final world: fruits after appearing will be burnt up by a flood of outlanders and rabble. On every territory will be an excessive number.

Districts will be extended into uplands. Every forest will become a great plain: every great plain will become a forest. Everyone will slave with all his family.

Thereafter will come many hurtful diseases: sudden awful tempests: lightning with cries of trees (struck by thunderbolts). Winter leafy, summer gloomy, autumn without crops, spring without flowers Mortality with famine.Diseases on cattle: bedgacha (staggers?), consumption, murrains, dropsies, lumps, agues.

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Estrays without profit: hiding places without treasures: great goods without men to consume them. Extinction of the championship. Failure on cornfields. Perjurers. Judgments with anger. A death of three days and three nights on two thirds of human beings. A third of those plagues on beasts of sea and forest.

Then will come seven years after lamentations. Flowers will perish.In every house there will be wailing. Men will tend men. A conflict will go round Cnámchoill*. Fair strangers will be slain. Daughters will conceive to their fathers.Contests will be fought round famous places. There will be desolation round the heights of the Isle of meadowy plains.The sea will break over every country at inhabiting the Land of Promise.The country will be left seven years before the Judgment. It will be mournful after slaughters. Thereafter will come some signs. In every tribe monsters will be born.Stream pools will turn against streams. Horse dung will turn into gold colors. Water will turn into taste wine.Mountains will turn into perfect plains. Bogs will turn into flowery clover. Swarms of bees will be burnt among uplands (?)The flood tides of the sea will delay from one day to another. Thereafter seven dark years will come.They will hide the lamps of heaven. At the perishing of the world, they will go into the presence of the Judgment. It will be the Judgment, my son. Great tidings, awful tidings, an evil time!” (Ferchertne. Primate of the druids in Ulster).

*Annotation by Whitley Stokes : the flying or rowing wheel (roth ramach) of Mog Ruith then will proceed until it is in contact with Cnamchoill.

The imacallam in da thuarad, or dialog of the two sages, is a small druidic catechism having the form of an imaginary dialog between two druids; one having age and seniority, called Ferchertne, a small young person beginning in the trade, called Nede.

This single text is our principal means, if it is not our first opportunity, of understanding a pre-Christian Celtic pedagogy, that one even of which Caesar spoke in his short paragraph of the De Bello Gallico (VI, 13) devoted to druids. This pedagogy exists, identical, in Ireland, but it is more complex than Whitley Stokes had supposed.

For the origin it is necessary to think of an oral tournament, in a difficult and complicated language, the iarnberle, or berla féné (language of the god-or-demons), a hermetic text learned by heart by the velede candidates or druid candidates; and becoming to them comprehensible only as the Master explained or commented on the words of it. There remains a trace of this mode of teaching in the glosses (counter-lays). The gloss, at least in this respect, is, of course, the equivalent or the written consequence of a very old Celtic habit of “commenting” on a basic, “text.”

At the time of the transcription by the Christian monks, all had to be simplified or truncated partly and, all being no longer understood perfectly, the whole was changed into a more accessible language, sentence for sentence, and almost word for word; but with mistakes, cacography, orthographic repairs, and especially omissions, inherent in the passage from orality to writing. Let us add the later Christian censorship and we have there the explanation of the sometimes defective state of the handwritten versions which came to us. The original dialog had to be appreciably different from what we currently have before our eyes and, especially, it had to be more complete.

Christianization was probably the cause of the cleansing of the dialog. It is visible that most remarks or words contrary to the principles of the Christian faith were removed or softened, and a Christian packaging was put a little everywhere. That explains some clerical formulas as well as the mention, also become usual up to in the epic texts, of the last Judgment (not to be mixed up with the notion of an end of the world or of a cycle). The text, of course, was thus bowdlerized or made blander.

There are the glosses therefore which became now the most delicate to be clarified part, if it is not to be translated. Some are close to inconsistency. The drafting of some others proves that all that was no longer very well understood by last transcribers.

Let us underline here that this “druidic” end of the world is initially and especially a decline, or an inversion of the values, plunging in chaos the society. The natural disasters come only afterwards.It is indeed remarkable that, in the disasters which will mark the end of the world, the dialog, by the mouth of Ferchertne in fact, enumerates, in the order: the multiplication of the chiefs, i.e., of the rulers or of the elected officials; the scarcity of the honors paid to the righteous and honest people (with as a corollary, the generalization of the dishonesty among the politicians) and the destruction of the good judgments, i.e., two essential points. On the one hand, the perversion of the notion of sovereignty, on the other hand, the corruption of justice. The text insists on a point, of which people seldom think in the

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other evocations of the end of this world; the denial or the loss of the notion of law through treason, falseness, lie or breaking of one’s word.

The sterility of the cattle, the natural disasters, the physical or intellectual disgraces, the diseases, the accidents of all kinds, are considered, generally, as some inescapable consequences of these two breaking of the cosmic order. In other words, all that can be looked as the various forms of punishments for all the varieties or kinds of lies which the society tolerates or practices.

What is remarkable in this sequence, and which stands out of all the rest of the questions and answers, it is the very general look of the definitions or aphorisms. The worst disasters are without culprit nor person at fault designated by his name, and all the speech is immersed in general information to which Ireland hardly accustomed us. The whole is rather difficult to classify, but is let be divided in several categories which it is possible, roughly speaking, to define as follows.

Maliciousness of mankind.

Bad judgments.

Bad chiefs and bad kings.

Abundance of usurpers.

Widespread lie and ignorance.

Absence of every respect as well as every honor.

Arrogance and hubris.

Reversal of the sense of beauty or Art.

Absence of every decency.

10.

Non-observance or reversal of the true hierarchies.

11.

Destruction of all the social classes through a reversal of the functions.

12.

Sterility of the animals and of the plants.

13.

Inversion of the seasons.

14.

Climatic disasters and epidemics.

It is not mentioned expressly, in the Dialog, the final catastrophe contemplated by the high-knowers according to Strabo IV, 4: “One day only fire and water will prevail. The only allusion to a final tidal wave is contained in the line of verse 294: “The sea will break over every country at inhabiting the Land of Promise.” Nevertheless it should be specified that the expression used to designate the next world “the land of Promise” (Tir Tairngire) is characteristic of the Christianization of the Irish lexicon. It is only the faithful translation of the evangelical Terra Repromissionis. The antichrist either is not forgotten, his name is rather strange here: Ancrist, literally the “non-Christ.” But if the Christianization is categorical and with no return, it is also very surface since it is only used to justify, in the name of the purest Christianity; an idea of the social and human relationship which has nothing to do with Christianity in what shape that it is and which, even, is completely unfamiliar to it. It is based on the denunciation of a supposed degradation of the human relationship and functions compared to the beginning of the mythical ages (Hyperborea) , which is a traditional way to viiew the downward evolution of the societies. For the traditional veledae the evolution of Mankind is that of the progressive moving away, accelerating over time, of an initial hyperborean state (islands north of the World) in which the perfection of the sid, the Irish next world; was enough to make useless all the hierarchical orders and to avoid the use of techniques with their dangerous pernicious effects . The modern and typically modern illusion of the double progress, of the techniques but also of the human intellect, didn’t prevail in medieval Ireland.

[Editor’s note. It is there the point of view of the great Breton celtologist Christian-Joseph Guyonvarc'h, nobody is obliged to share it. Let us say that ignorance, non-observance of moral codes, and illusions, are the main factors of decline of every human society and speak no longer about it!].

Reminder for our readers. As we already had the opportunity to notice it, Peter DeLaCrau uses much the word “ignorance” to explain some of the aberrant or sordidly egoistic behaviors of his human fellow creatures. The first word which comes spontaneously nevertheless in his mouth for that is much stronger, stronger than human stupidity or human foolishness but it is also much cruder or more popular!

Peter DeLaCrau, by courtesy, therefore avoids employing it such as it is, but that doesn't stop him thinking!

Our readers are consequently requested, each time they deal with the word “ignorance” in the writings of Peter DeLaCrau; to restore automatically in their mind the much more expressive word that he almost used in its place and which remains in a way implicit; Peter DeLaCrau being by no means Buddhist and Zen, but of a much more ebullient temperament. End of the reminder notice.

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More still than the negation, it is the reversal of the true hierarchical orders or of the true values which, added to lie, to maliciousness, as to ignorance, generates chaos and, in the long term, the death of the human societies. They are no longer directed by wise men, by able leaders or kings, but by usurpers, liars, thieves or worthless people (technocracy was not invented yet!) This point of view has, of course, nothing abnormal. And it would be easy to find it in all ages - and more still in ours -; in philosophers or thinkers, sociologists of all tendencies, even theologists of all denominations; who had to give an opinion about their contemporaries.

The reversal or denial of the values or of the human hierarchies are found in the change of the climate, geographical, natural elements. It is not destruction, it is the change of a nature into its opposite. The mountains will become plains, the peat bogs will become fields of flowers, the horse droppings will have the color of gold and water will take wine taste, with, apparently implied, a sad color of illusion.

Editor’s note. Reminder. Let us not forget therefore, as we have already said it in our introductory considerations, that the first of the sources of druidic ethics, was nevertheless the system of gessa (almost magic injunctions or taboos).

These druidic curses, at least such as they appear in the Irish legends, were a means used by the druids to force their fellow citizens to comply with or follow a certain number of rules of life. Contrary to the sacrifice which was intended to the god-or-demons, these druidic spells, themselves, were intended to men.

The druidic curses called gessa fit thus at the same time in the religious practice and in the exercise of sovereignty. In fact, it is one of the means, if not the single one, that the spiritual authority has to force the temporal power to be in conformity with the traditional standards, preventive or prescriptive constraint and not sanction or punishment like the satire itself.

The fate or Tokade (Middle Welsh tynghed, Breton tonket, intended, old Irish tocad, fate, toicthech “fortunatus,” tonquedec in Breton language. The labarum is its sign) for the druids, is not a blind mechanism which controls the world, it is a power which tends to become moral, without, however, ceasing being still mechanical. The reward of works IN THIS WORLD is indeed rigorous and inescapable; between the cause and the effect, there is an intimate and constant bond, the same cause produces mechanically the same effect (in other words, it is the very idea of poetic justice: we reap what we sow).

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APPENDIX No. 6.

POSSESSION AND PROPERTY WITHIN GAELIC CLANS.

Ancient Celts seem to have practiced a certain form of sharing of the land according to various historians.

……The Celts at this time were besieging Clusium, a Tuscan city. The Clusinians sent to the Romans for succor desiring them to interpose with the barbarians by letters and ambassadors. There were sent three of the family of the Fabii, persons of high rank and distinction in the city. The Celts received them courteously, from respect to the name of Rome, and, giving over the assault which was then making upon the walls, came to a conference with them. When the ambassadors asking what injury they had received of the Clusinians that they thus invaded their city, Brennus, king of the Celts, laughed and made the following answer. “The Clusinians do us injury, in that, being able only to till a small parcel of ground, they possess nevertheless a great territory, and will not yield any part to us, who are strangers, many in number and poor. This is the same wrong which you too suffered, O Romans, formerly at the hands of the Albans, Fidenates, Ardeates, and now lately at the hands of the Veientines, Capenates, and many of the Faliscans or Volscians….. (Livy 11. Camillus).

“ Of the tribes neighboring upon the Celtiberians the most advanced is the people of the Vaccaei, as they are called; for this people each year divides among its members the land which it tills and making the fruits the property of all, they measure out his portion to each man, and for any cultivators who have appropriated some part for themselves they have set the penalty as death...(Diodorus of Sicily, Book V, Chapter XXXIV.)

BUT, FIRST OF ALL, WHAT’S A CLAN? The roots of this system undoubtedly date back to the Celtic deep past of Scotland or Ireland.

Cassius Dio. Roman History. Book LXII. When she had finished speaking, she [Boudica] employed a species of divination, letting a hare escape from the fold of her dress; and since it ran on what they considered the auspicious side, the whole multitude shouted with pleasure, and Boadicea [Boudouîka in the Greek text, Boudicca in Celtic language] , raising her hand towards heaven, said: "I thank thee, Andrasta, and call upon thee as woman speaking to woman; for I rule over …. [Great] British, men that know not how to till the soil or ply a trade, but are thoroughly versed in the art of war and hold all things in common, even children and wives, so that the latter possess the same valor as the men. As the queen, then, of such men and of such women, I supplicate and pray thee for victory, preservation of life, and liberty against men insolent, unjust, insatiable, impious— if, indeed, we ought to term those people men who bathe in warm water, eat artificial dainties, drink unmixed wine, anoint themselves with myrrh, sleep on soft couches with boys for bedfellows— boys past their prime at that— and are slaves to a lyre player and a poor one too. Wherefore may this Mistress Domitia Nero reign no longer over me or over you men; let the wench sing and lord it over Romans, for they surely deserve to be the slaves of such a woman after having submitted to her so long. But for us, divine Mistress, be thou alone ever our leader."

The [ Great] Bretons of Antiquity were defeated by the Romans then by the Anglo-Saxons but the Celtic spirit which blows on this land for more than twenty centuries, did not die out.

“Besides German and ancient Roman relations, Old Maurer has only studied oriental (Greek-Turkish!) ones. As though we did not possess a Celtic (Welsh) book of laws from the 11th century which is entirely communist” [Perhaps an allusion to the laws of Howell Dda. Editor’s note]. (Letter from Marx

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to Engels, 14 March 1868, quoted by Engels in his book entitled “the origin of the family private property and the State.”)

It is there as usual excessive words. Engels is more well founded. The Celtic-druidic reality was more moderate (a mixed economy where private possession but also collective ownership of the tribe or of the clan coexisted). In Addition to an original role held by the women, polyandry combined with polygyny is explained primarily by the will not to divide the community properties of the family (lands, house, women, children). Only British Isles appear to have kept this sociocultural characteristic, implying a clannish society (a family or a group of individuals having very strong family ties), at the origin of the known more tardily clans in Scotland and Ireland.

Gaels thus handed down from generation to generation an art of life imbued with a spiritual energy which perhaps gave them the force to resist the foreign intrusions. Their thought contrasts with the linear or rational philosophies, because the fantastic one, the magic one, the unreal one and the irrational one have a place as important as their opposites. The relation which exists between the men is one of the other original features of the Celtic society whose clan is the cement.

The Gaelic word clanna means children. The clan, it was initially a family with the father for chief. His son succeeded to him. Who says clan, says kinship . This social structure is particular neither to only Highlands, nor even to Scotland, but it survived it more a long time than everywhere else, and it left there a tradition which cements the unity of the clan forever.

The blood relationships thus gathered groups of individuals whose ancestors occupied the same piece of land. The word “clan” applied only to the family of the chief and to the collateral members who could prove their filiation ; then the word took scale until extending to all those who admitted or accepted the authority of the chief, and placed themselves under his protection. The interest of a chief was indeed to gather the greatest possible number of men-at-arms and, sometimes, certain chiefs enticed foreigners to make them enter their dependency, by allowing them to bear the clan’s name. These real or supposed ties consolidated each community from the chief to the humblest of its peasants.

The clan of the Scottish Highlands was a kind of independent principality, a group of individuals who owed fidelity only to its chief; whereas the chief, like the monarch of an independent State, was to adopt the policy best corresponding to the interests of the clan. Everyone owed loyalty to the head of the family or of the clan. On the other hand, this one was to accept his role of chief and guard, and to ensure justice between the members of his clan.

The chief of the clan, considered as the father of his subjects or of his people, was obligatorily a man reputed for his courage, like for his understanding, settled their conflicts, protected them from the enemies, took the lead in the engagements. In return, he exercised over them an absolute authority. The question of his succession seldom caused disagreements. After him, the most important character was the tanist (heir), who defended the interests of the group for posterity. The chief was not selected, but the ancient Celtic habit to elect a successor, among the “male heir apparent,” persisted in certain clans. When, for example, the succession of a chief caused controversy, this one was solved by the tanistry laws. Sometime , a direct heir could be rejected in favor of a more powerful warrior or of a wiser chief.

The younger sons as well as the grandchildren of the chief who started a family received a share of the ancestral estate sufficient to their support. These collateral branches multiplied quickly and the marriages inside as outside the family community therefore wove a complex network of alliances which did nothing but consolidate the solidity of the clan. It was a classless society, but the degree of relationship with the chief was not without being taken into account.

We can thus regard the clan a variable unit consisting not of a group of individuals from the same stock, but as the whole of those who followed the same chief. In the old texts, it is often a question of the chief with his “ children, friends, servants, auxiliaries and associates.”

At the origin, the clan was therefore well formed by a mixture of family ties and relations of neighborliness.

When the community widened, it was divided into several branches or septs (families, related or not, profiting from the protection of the clan and accepting the authority of the chief), directed by important members of the clan, often the sons of the chief. They exercised their power on their subjects, by admitting the authority of their own “father.”

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The cohesion of the clan was strengthened by certain social practices, like the daltachas or altrom. A habit consisting in sending a child, even if it was not an orphan, in the home of a distant relative , of an ally or of a vassal; so that he brings him up and educates him as his own son, so as to develop a feeling of fidelity towards the clan as strong as the blood relationships. This way to do was usual in the Middle Ages, in the Celtic and Scandinavian countries. This tradition had as a result to offer to the child a second family, ready to protect him if the need were felt .

Moreover, the branches or the members of the clan could contract between them commitments safeguarding reciprocal protection and assistance. The membership of the clan also imposed financial obligations with respect to the chief, particularly the calps, kinds of death taxes.

To defend themselves against the attacks, and perhaps also to dazzle their neighbors and the members of their own clan, the chiefs built fortified castles located in place keys of their territory, usually on the site of a former fort. Each clan had meeting places which were used for the appointments in time of war and the meetings in times of peace.

The main characteristic of this way of life was that the lands, considered as the community property of the group, were managed on behalf of all by the chief of the tribe. However, when Scotland was subjected to the influences of the south, the basic governmental structure changed and thus appeared the feudal system, based on the property of the lands started under Malcolm III (1058-1093). This evolution developed under David I (1124-1153) when many Norman lords were established north of the border. In the feudal world, the king, owner of all the lands, granted them on his subjects in compensation of their loyalty. However Scotland worked out a particular system, admitting the coexistence of the two systems, feudal and clannish. There existed between the sovereign and the chiefs of clans a relation of the feudal type, but inside the clan, the old structure continued to live.

In the High-lands, where the feudal structures never succeeded in being established deeply, the old Gaelic system of the clans, based on the family solidarity in the broad sense, therefore remained a long time.

The battle of Culloden (April 16, 1746) will spell doom for this original system, and the beginning of an intensification of the pressure against the traditional lifestyle of Highlanders (clans, tartans, even bagpipe).

It is not without interest to note that occurred three years only after that the “last wolf” had been shot down in Scotland, the local extinction of a species predicting, significantly, the civilization disintegration which followed.

From the simply military point of view, Culloden is a tactical victory of the Hanoverian infantrymen and guns, facing an army formed for most by Scottish Highlanders, resulting from the clans remained faithful to the Jacobite dynasty. The spontaneity of the furious charge, with their sword drawn, of the Jacobite warriors, will be defeated by the rigor and the discipline of the riflemen of the duke of Cumberland.

In the intention to avoid the continuation of the rebellion, the pacification of the clans became the priority of the British State, which comprised the Englishmen, the Scots of Lowlands, and the subjected chiefs of clans. A process known under the name of “proscription” (Act of proscription) was set up to extirpate the heart of the traditional culture of the Highlands, while leaving intact, for purely administrative use, many external structures.

Highlander, following the example of the native in America or Africa, was presented as a non-civilized barbarian. A traveler, John Leyden, returning to Perth in 1800, writes, for example “ I may now congratulate myself on a safe escape from the Indians of Scotland….” Rare were the travelers of formerly who could escape these anti-highlanders racist stereotypes… The Swiss geologist Louis Albert Necker de Saussure is an exception when he expresses the astonishment that caused to him the discovery, in 1807, on Iona “under so foggy an atmosphere, in so dreary a climate,” of a people

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animated by that gaiety and cheerfulness which we are apt to attribute exclusively to those nations who inhabit the delightful countries of the south of Europe.

Besides under other terms - “civilization,” “education,” “Christianization” - a similar process also became the cornerstone of the English colonial policy throughout the world. In this kind of colonialism, the newcomers insert themselves by force into the civilization context of the other communities then, without admitting the potential of those, impose on those they invade their own vision of the world, thus inhibiting their creativity… Civilizational colonialism is an act of violence against the men or women of the dominated civilization, who thus lose their authenticity as heir personality. Besides they end up in interiorizing the values, the standards and the aims of the new elites… It is indeed paramount that the men or women aimed by this kind of civilizational colonialism end up being convinced of their intrinsic inferiority, of the insufficiency of their language even of their culture; the language become dominant being, of course, increasingly more handsome, more precise than theirs, and so on. Because we can always trust the social hierarchy of a subjected people as regards servility or conformism towards the dominant ideology; in short as regards betraying his in order to be in fashion, or on the winning side, as some of my French pen friends nostalgic of the “Auld Alliance say.” Let us say that between the hammer and the anvil, the pseudo-elites (the social hierarchy) always choose to be… on the side of the hammer.

The English legislation intended to break the clannish system will therefore succeed in changing the surviving clan chiefs, Jacobite or even Whig, in simple landowners.

It resulted from that, between the end of the 18th century and the middle of the 19th century, a massive desertification of the Highlands; Iain Crichton Smith besides evoked, in his epic poem heading “Spirit of Kindness,” these soldiers who, on their return from Waterloo, discovered that their family had been expelled in their absence; an eviction campaign supported at the same time by the government and the Presbyterian Church, which appointed as clergymen Scots originating in the lowlands, completely unfamiliar with the way of life of the area.

With the money the thirst for the goods and the advantages it provides. When the power of the birth disappears, the only hope of influence which remains is that which fortune gets. Power and fortune supplement one the other: the power makes it possible to satisfy our desires without the assent of the others. The power supposes that who holds it, uses it at the expense of others. The power delights the violent one and the conceited one. The financial godsend enchants the peaceful one and the timorous one. This is why the young man flies towards power, and the mature man creeps or crawls towards fortune. Stripped from their prerogatives, the clan chiefs necessarily turned all their energy towards the increase of their incomes; receiving less homage, they wanted more money.

Easiest was to get into sheep breeding. As this activity required vast stretches of lands, at the end of the 18th century and during the first half of the 19th century, they cleared, they expropriated, and they ousted the small farmers,

“Your sheep that were wont to be so meek and tame, and so small eaters, now, as I heard say, be become so great devourers and so wild…..that they eat up, and swallow down the very men themselves. …” Thomas More, Utopia, 1516.

The land is then rented to foreigners, who put perhaps more animals, but who, paying the use of the land at full price, deal on an equal footing with the Laird; that they regard no longer as a clan chief but as a simple landowner. The estate wins there in productivity, but the clan is destroyed… The fact that some Lairds wiser or less greedy than the others did not have the number of their vassals decreasing at the time; allows us to say that the causes of the desertion of the Highlands are well to be directly imputed to the rich owners in question.

Patrick Sellar, manager of the Sutherland estates in 1815.

Lord and Lady Stafford were pleased humanely, to order a new arrangement of this country. That the interior should be possessed by Cheviot (sheep) Shepherds and the people brought down to the coast and placed there in lots under the size of three arable acres, sufficient for the maintenance of an industrious family, but pinched enough to cause them to turn their attention to the fishing (waged labor). I presume to say that the proprietors humanely ordered this arrangement, because, it surely was a most benevolent action, to put these barbarous hordes into a position where they could better associate , apply to industry, educate their children, and advance in civilization.

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To all these apologists of the expropriation process who maintained that they were practiced with benign intent (so many holy men and so few results, isn’t it, dear Patrick Sellar! Hypocrisy and selfishness, on the other hand, they are only words in the dictionary), John McGrath, author of “The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black Oil,” one day will retort what follows.

The fact remains that the intensive (sic) methods of cultivation of the Gaels had maintained a far greater number of people per acre than had been maintained elsewhere that the standard of living was not the sole criterion of happiness or worth, and that although many would have indeed left voluntarily as they already had before the clearing began the majority of these people did not want to go.

Furthermore, the fact remains that the fertile ground which had kept so many people through the centuries was now turned into useless land fit only for sheep. The cruelest and most important fact of all is that the criterion for the best use of land ceased to be the number of people it could support, and became the amount of profit it could make.

The first wave of expropriations, during the second half of the 18th century, drove on marginal lands a formerly autonomous country population. It was a question of giving off the grounds of the inland for the ovine breeding, while causing a paid workforce for the fishing and the production of soda starting from the kelp. The introduction of black headed Cheviot sheep , in the years 1760, was the engine of this agricultural “improvement” (sic), making it possible to make substantial profits on lands which were used before only for the subsistence farming.

To quote only one of the innumerable cases, 300 people for example were expelled in 1826 from the island of Rum, which is today a nature reserve entirely emptied of its indigenous population. The owner, MacLean of Coll, spent 5 pounds 4 shillings for the voyage towards Canada of each adult emigrant.

The expropriations were particularly brutal in the Sutherland and in the islands of Uist. Carmichael, in a study written around 1928 and corroborated by other similar reports, also quotes the witness statement of Catherine MacPhee, of North Uist.

Many a thing have I seen in my own day and generation. Many a thing, O Mary Mother of the black sorrow! I have seen the townships swept, and the big holdings being made of them, the people being driven out of the countryside to the streets of Glasgow and to the wilds of Canada, such of them as did not die of hunger and plague and smallpox while going across the ocean. I have seen the women putting the children in the carts which were being sent from Benbecula and the Iochdar to Loch Boisdale, while their husbands lay bound in the pen and were weeping beside them, without power to give them a helping hand, though the women themselves were crying aloud and their little children wailing like to break their hearts. I have seen the big strong men, the champions of the countryside, the stalwarts of the world, being bound on Loch Boisdale Quay and cast into the ship as would be done to a batch of horses or cattle in the boat, the bailiffs and the groundofficers and the constables and the policemen gathered behind them in pursuit of them. The God of life and He only knows all the loathsome work of men on that day !

In 1851, following the (potato) famine the owners in the Highlands renewed their eagerness; public funds were made available for them by the Emigration Advance Act of that year…

The life was not necessarily better for the first generation of emigrants.

It was often said that the conditions which prevailed on board were worse than those prevailing on the boats of the slave traders. The slaves were goods and the slave traders had interest so that their goods reach port without being devalued. An emigrant from the Scottish Highlands, on the other hand, was as for him a customer who had already paid. And more a ship was salubrious and equipped well, more the transportation was expensive. If he died at sea, on the contrary that save money on the cost of the supplies, and the profit margin concerning it was therefore as much higher. Two ships which got underway from the West Highlands in 1801, for Nova Scotia, loaded with 700 emigrants, would have been authorized to transport only 489 “passengers” if they had been slaves from Gambia. On board one of them, three emigrants out of twenty died… In six years, from 1847 to 1853, at least 49 ships of emigrants lost themselves at sea. Malcolm MacLean , As an Fhearann: from the Land, Edinburgh, p. 13.

N.B. Of course, the fact of noticing that the conditions were sometimes worse on certain boats of Scottish emigrants than on certain slave ships , does not want to say that the slaves were generally treated better.

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If many landowners in the Highlands, of whom many were newcomers, acted with a revolting brutality; others did their better to save the local populations. Fraser of Lovat and MacKenzie for example, not only refused to clear, but gave shelter to the victims of neighboring expulsions. MacDonald, Robertson of Struan and Macleod of Macleod, were ruined by trying to come to help to the victims of this “modernization.”

The grounds which remained unenclosed were consolidated with former sheep farms to constitute great “hunting and fishing” estates ; the gentleman farmer version of the great white hunters could thus fight “at home” a fatal combat with the stag, salmon, grouse and the thrush-sized snipe.

They handed over to the snipe The land of happy folk,

They dealt without humanity With people who were kind.

Because they might not drown them They dispersed them overseas;

A thraldom worse than Babylon's Was the plight they were in....

What solace had the fathers Of the heroes who won fame?

Their houses, warm with kindliness, Were in ruins round their ears; Their sons were on the battlefield Saving a rueless land,

Their mothers' state was piteous With their houses burned like coal.

Thomson, D. An Introduction to Gaelic Poetry London , 1974.

These evictions ( Fuadaich nan Gàidheal, eviction of the Gael ) which continued in full 19th, completely turned into a desert the area in a century. The end of the 19th century saw the population of the Highlands to fall in a catastrophic way.

This still perceptible today impression of empty space (especially inside the North Highlands where you don’t meet a soul on kilometers); is still accentuated by the massive deforestation which the stock breeders and the ironmasters carried out. And yet, formerly, even if that does not seem easily imaginable today, forests of oaks and birches covered all these lands.

We can understand that the damage caused by the emigration could not be perceived from the start. Those who left were undoubtedly those without whom it was most easy to do. The accounts of these first adventurers, true or false, urged many others to follow them. Whole villages grouped to emigrate. Thus, when people left the native land , they did not feel to be exiled. The one who leaves accompanied by his carries with him all that makes his life sweet. He settles under sunnier skies , surrounded by his relationship and his friends. They carry with them their language, their beliefs, the country songs, the traditional rejoicings. They changed only the site of their roof and, of this change, they perceive the advantage well. Here is what the emigration is when those who go away together set themselves at the same place.

The clan chief should, however, have been concerned with finding some ways to stop this epidemic which was then propagated from valley to valley. He should have been concerned with knowing if all these people who quivered of impatience at the thought of embarking towards America and who were assembled to head for the open sea ; were urged by the hope of happiness or the will to withdraw themselves from too unhappy living conditions.

He should have understood that if these people enjoyed no longer living in this part of the sphere where birth had made them come into the world, he was partly responsible for that; and he could have cured their suffering or have calmed their resentment, since they had always behaved in loyal subjects.

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In the valleys of Scotland, it did not remain any more, in the middle of wild and nettles, only small heaps of stones instead of the “clachans” (regrouping of houses) and of the villages. What unhappiness!

Thank to our brother in spirit Alastair McIntosh for having reminded to us this emblematic and always topical in reality, tragedy (see the case of the Indians in Amazonia).

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APPENDIX No. 7.

THE BATTLE OF CULLODEN.

It is the last important confrontation on the [Great] British ground between two factions rather than between two nations: the Hanoverians comprised an important German contingent and some Scots of the Lowlands, whereas the Jacobites also comprised some Irish veterans, some Englishmen and several hundreds of French soldiers.

The battle of Culloden (April 16, 1746) marks the failure of the fourth of the Catholic royalist landings in Scotland, after those of 1692.1708, and 1715, and the end of the hopes of a restoration of the line of the Stuarts on the thrones of Scotland and England, with the escape of the prince Bonnie Charles reduced to beseech the assistance of the young Flora McDonald. It is accompanied by an intensification of the pressure against the traditional lifestyle of Highlanders (including clans, tartans and even bagpipes). This defeat involved a wild suppression which brought to Cumberland the nickname of “butcher.” He ordered his men to kill the casualties, the prisoners and even some spectators. The survivors were pursued. Thirty-two of them having taken refuge in a barn, he made set fire to it. The houses close to the battlefield were systematically burned , so that they are not used as refuges by the survivors. The repression lasted several months and one estimates at several tens of thousands the number of its victims. Another consequence, the distrust of London towards Scotland, which opens the door to the movement of the Highland Clearances: the Scottish chiefs of clans convert to the speculative farming and breeding like the sheep, and monopolize the moors in the Highlands, which brings to expel of them the little farmers of their own clans, of which many are urged to emigrate in the United States where they settle along the Appalachian Mountains.

If, on the Jacobite side, the losses came to more than 3,000 men, that is to say about half of the manpower, more than 1,000 Scottish fighters were sold as slaves to the American cotton growers, probably in Georgia, what will contribute to destabilizing the balances in this colony, where, starting from 1750, the abolitionists, still majority, are outnumbered by the supporters of slavery, who get the legalization of this practice.

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APPENDIX No. 8.

AND NOW THE MISFORTUNES OF IRELAND.

We recognize in the Englishman the practical sense of the life, a sociable character, tough, independent, without meanness nor obsequiousness, besides personal, aristocrat, not sympathizing with…. brutal Germans.

But, with regard to Ireland, the English showed a refined cruelty and hypocrisy. Since the establishment of the English domination, the history of Ireland mentions in each page some despoliations, confiscations of property in mass and by provinces, some thefts of property titles then allotted to foreigners, the systematic ruin of national industry burdened with taxes and obstacles in order to satisfy the jealousy of the English manufacturers. We find in this same history disorders stirred up by the police in order to provide excuses to repression, deportations, denunciations, treasons, hunting for the patriots tracked to the forests and deprived of all employment, the complicity of the judges in all the crimes, wrongfully shed blood, the massacre of the prisoners of war beforehand capped with a coated with pitch bonnet that people lit and that they tore off with the flesh still sticking to it (in 1798), the hatred was wreaked to the Gaelic manuscripts sought by a committee charged with their destruction, the extermination of a whole people wanted by his despoilers.

We still find there the violation of the treaty of Limerick and the artificial famine of 1847: the Irishmen starved , then, by hundreds of thousands, while the wheat gave a good harvest and that every day cattle were exported from Dublin to England in quantity sufficient for feeding four or five times the number of the famished ones. Because of the absenteeism of the owners all the cash had passed to England and the Irishmen had no money to buy meat, eggs, butter and the other products of their country. Today still it is at most if they can get, from day to day, a potato meal, and when this scanty mean is suddenly missing, it is, like in 1847, the famine followed by death for most of the population. However to cure the pauperism of a whole people despoiled from its rights, its goods, its employments and deprived of work and resources, the English government promulgated its famous Poor Law of which enacted that every robust beggar would be whipped the first time, and punished by death, the second time, as a traitor and an enemy of the public good. The appeal to charity became a crime in Christian country….

There will be an idea of the endemic misery in Ireland when it is known that after the census of 1841, 8,175,125 inhabitants have been counted, while there remained of them 5,764,543 in 1861, that is to say 2,400,000 people less for a ten-year period. In 1867, the population had dropped down to 5,557,000 inhabitants, in major part made disabled by the deprivations and the hunger. Populated in the same proportion that Belgium, Ireland would have 8,200,000 inhabitants.

The Irish native dies of hunger on an exceptionally rich land, whose vegetable layer is one meter and fifty deep. With his taste for agriculture the Irish farmer, using his arms to live, could joyfully bring up theirs if he was allowed to work. But the eight or ten Lords owners of Ireland have interest in the non-multiplication of the poor.

Assured with the superfluity the owners wait until the waste land covers with the simple grass bit necessary to the food of the herds: this land tenure, very little remunerative, was used only among the ancients or the savages. Does the farmer want to cultivate his farm usually rented on an annual basis ? At once his rent is increased so that it is still more advantageous for him to do nothing. In the same way for fishing: this natural resource of an island with full of fish coasts was made impossible by the withdrawal of the subsidies and by the hardness of the imposed conditions….

The English, besides lower than the Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Celts, in all the intellectual events , such as policy, letters, sciences, war, navy (they are admittedly excellent stablemen) the English, in favor of the at home, should understand that they are not on their premises in Ireland, in Scotland, nor in the United Kingdom [Henry Lizeray wants to say Wales perhaps as for his evocation of the Navy, it is incomprehensible ]; they should also remember that the barbaric application of the principle of the struggle for life always involves as consequence the retaliation punishment; they should never lose sight finally of the fact that their maritime power is most prone to sink, since to get this result at once a simple destroyer ship would be enough*.

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During a half-century, from 1691 to 1745, four hundred and fifty thousand Irish soldiers shed their blood and…

(The Book of Invasions or Leabar Gabala by Henry Lizeray and William O'Dwyer. Notices about Current Ireland).

In 1942 they will be the submarines.

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APPENDIX No. 9

PRETERNATURAL AND MANKIND.

“To you alone it is given the gods and celestial powers to know or not to know” (Lucan, Civil war, I, 450).

REALLY DRUIDIC FOCUS ON THE QUESTION THEREFORE.

From time immemorial man noticed strange events where certain people seemed to have information and powers that it would have been impossible for them to get according to usual means (the five senses for example), and which could even refer to the future. These phenomena rise a scientific problem. The notion of intervention of the psychism remains fundamental, whatever the approaches.

The French great celtologist Christian-J. Guyonvarc'h as for him proposes the following classification…

RITUAL AND MAGIC TECHNIQUES OF THE HIGH-KNOWERS.

Presage and divination.

II.Vegetable magic and magic medicine.

Lapse of memory potion.

Medicine and sleep. Music. 5.Fountain of Health.

III.The power of the high-knowers over the elements. 1.Power over water.

2.Lustration water. 3.Prophetic wave.

4.The high-knower master of fire. 5.Druidic wind.

6.Power on earth. 7.Druidic fog .

IV.The divinatory incantation. 1.Glamm dicinn.

2.Imbas forosnai and dichetal do chennaib. 3.Teinm laegda.

4.The feth fiada or “gift of invisibility.” 5.Ordeals.

6.The hedge of the high-knower. The devotio.

V.Prediction and satire. 1.Science and prediction. 2.Evocation and interpretation.

Main uses of the word of the high-knower in the ritual and magic techniques. CHAPTER FIFTH.

II.The immortality of the soul. Metempsychosis and metamorphosis. 1.Metempsychosis.

2.Metamorphosis.

III.The Other World and the Sidh. 1.The birds from the Sidh.

The divine music.

Time and eternity.

The space of the Sidh.

The perfection of the Sidh.

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The defixion or bewitchment.

“Magic” operation making it possible to harm at a distance, physically or psychologically.

As mentioned above, the rare studies about sorcery especially made some processes of mental suggestion evident.

In any event this practice of bewitchment (sorcery) by writing on a lead tablet, the high-knowers did not invent it. They only borrowed it.

“Defixio” is a Latin word designating originally the fact of knocking in a nail, then the magic operation through you thus torture a substitute (for example, a lead tablet) while hoping to cause the same nuisances with the enemy of whom you think. This magic procedure, such as we perceive it in Greece and in Rome, includes the writing down, on the tablet, of the name of the enemy concerned. The registered text can be developed besides with the invocation of supernatural powers, supposed to implement this evil charm, and various specifications relating to the grounds of the judgment or the various torments which will be used as punishment. It is a magic type of procedure which is recorded through all the Mediterranean basin, during Antiquity.

If in certain cases ( in Chamalieres for example), the high-knowers saw fit to use the Celtic language for this purpose, it is perhaps because they sent the magic message to Celtic supernatural entities, on Celtic sites. In Ireland, the high-knowers used an adaptation of the Latin alphabet, the ogham alphabet, to manage the same result.

The ogham script is an alphabetical script made up of twenty letters used in the British Isles. It would have been invented apparently around the 3rd century starting from the Latin alphabet. The sounds transcribed by the various letters show indeed that the ogham alphabet was copied from the Latin alphabet (particularly the use of the p letter proves it). The alphabet in question is composed of four groups of five strokes each one, on the left, on the right, transversely and in the middle of a vertical line. Later, people added there a fifth group of five diphthongs or additional letters to represent the foreign sounds. The majority of the texts transcribed in ogham alphabet are in old Irish; except some inscriptions supposed to be in Pictish language. We found, also, in the Annals of Inisfallen, an ogham inscription transcribing Latin.

We found traces of it engraved on vestiges out of wood even of bone, but it goes without saying they are the inscriptions on standing stone which have best traveled down the ages.

The use of this alphabet seems to be reserved to the former high-knowers of the Irish tradition. The ogham, however, could be decoded thanks to Latin transcriptions but also especially thanks to the bards, who had access to part of the first function, the priestly function. Cf. the Ogham tract or book and the Auraicept.

The oghams are used only for magic (effective curses as long as the written support remains) and for the divination (the oghams are engraved on various wooden rods and cast). With the progress of the Christianization, oghams in fact will be used only on graves, in order to mark for eternity the residence of the late one.

The characters of this ogham alphabet correspond symbolically to trees. It includes twenty different letters (feda), divided into four families (aicmí, plural of aicme). Each aicme in fact derives its name from its first letter: Aicme Beithe, Aicme Húatha, Aicme Muine, Aicme Ailme. Other letters were added in certain manuscripts, at a very late time, and are called forfeda.

If the case where the reality of the effectiveness of such a practice would be proven, it could be in this case a psychokinesis phenomenon.

On the other hand, what is certain, it is that, when a person believes oneself bewitched, he places oneself in a mental situation likely to put him in difficulty. In other words “There is no bewitchment, there are only bewitched ones.”

Psychokinesis or telekinesis (action over distance ).

These phenomena are thus named because their appearance can result in considering the assumption of an “influence of the mind on the matter” and because the person supposed to cause this influence uses neither his body, neither tools, nor mechanical device.

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We can distinguish…

The psychokinesis on the “inert” matter (metal bending, objects put in moving).

The psychokinesis on the “living” matter (bacteria, animal or vegetable cells, action of the “hypnotists” and healers).

The psychokinesis on the environment.

A)“Haunted Houses” (or “poltergeists”): places in which are noted unusual sound manifestations and displacements of objects incompatible with Newtonian physics.

It is not established that the place itself can produce phenomena of this type and that their appearance is correlated with the presence of a person in a situation of psychological disorder, the phenomenon ceasing with the latter.

B)Apparition, insofar as they are correlated with the presence of a particular individual.

The current trend is to compare the phenomena which follow with the previous ones. It is no longer a question of the intervention of spirits.

Out-of-body experiences or OBE.

We find traces of accounts which can be connected with OBE as of Antiquity.

Such a little common experience, when it is underlain by the belief in a survival of “something” after death, takes on, of course, a paramount importance for the one who feels it. It is this belief, fed with hope, which is, of course, at the origin of many myths.

To find a definition of the OBE which takes into account the whole of the components of this “phenomenon” without falling into the trap of the interpretation of this one is not easy.

Specialists frequently tend to compare OBE with another phenomenon: the NDE (Near Death Experience ). A certain number of people go even as far as mixing up the two.

However, several of their characteristics differ radically.

The OBE occurs during a period of relaxation and relieving (sleep, meditation…) whereas the NDE is often related to a serious traumatism (coma, loss of consciousness resulting from a shock, general anesthesia during surgery…) The imagery of the NDE is unusual (cave, light soft and dazzling at the same time, intense feeling of wellbeing…), that of the OBE more conventional (more or less faithful representation of an environment close to reality).

We can experiment a large number of OBE in a life, and there are even methods aiming at supporting the beginning of those. NDE, on the other hand, is very often an involuntary experiment , which almost systematically causes a noticeable change in the psychology of he or her who feels it.

Case for example of the various survivors from the Purgatory of St. Patrick in Ireland as the knight named Owen and even as Tnugdal/Tondale and so many others. Tondale, according to Marcus, the author of the account, was born in Cashel (county Tipperary), and his soul/mind left his body for the mysterious travel while he was in the home of a friend in the city of Cork. Marcus by no means claims to have kept vigil over the body during the absence of its soul/mind , but he assures to have been informed directly by Tnugdal/Tondale himself, about what this one had seen in the hereafter just after, i.e., when Tondale returned to consciousness, gave his fortune to the poor, made the sign of the cross and started to preach the word of God.

On the other hand, and it is there probably what explains the mix-up of the phenomena, a NDE is often preceded by an OBE. In the large majority of the cases, the subject who lives this experiment feels that he leaves his body then finds himself, for example, at the ceiling of the operating room, observing the doctors who are busying on this one.

Current assumptions and theories (let us forget those of the ancient high-knowers and let us give the floor to their distant heirs).

Several researchers in psychology specialized themselves in the study of dreams, the phenomena of sleep paralysis, and approached the notions of awareness, awakening, and so on. If they started from different postulates, their conclusions are more or less the same ones. An OBE occurs when the sensory perception of the subject proves inhibited. The brain not being informed about its environment

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through its five senses, it tends to recreate from memory a known model of representation: a body and a place.

This model made it possible to explain the majority of the feelings related to the OBE. It is known, for example, that the perception of the terrestrial attraction is one of the elements making it possible to be in space, particularly during the sleep. The loss of this information is the cause of the feelings of “flotation” and “out of body experiences,” typical of a beginning of OBE.

The oneiric theory (dreams of various types). Stephen LABERGE, a psychologist in charge of research at the University of Stanford, thinks that the OBE are probably only a particular type of lucid dream.

Hypnotic sleep: state of very great suggestibility, where various phenomena (auto/hetero scopy, clairvoyance hyperesthesias, anesthesias…) can occur

The neurophysiological theory.

Olaf Blanke and his collaborators of the department of neurology at the University Hospital of Geneva; showed in 2002, it is possible to produce an OBE by electric stimulation of the region called “angular gyrus,” straddling between the temporal lobe and the parietal lobe. The experiment related originally to epilepsy, and it is by chance that this link was highlighted. There is no doubt that this first step will make possible, if it is followed by more precise research, a better comprehension of the neurological mechanisms concerned.

Extrasensory perception.

The metapsychical theory (imagination plus extrasensory perception). According to this theory, an OBE is the simultaneity of two phenomena. The first, of hallucinatory type, is the reconstruction by the subconscious of an imaginary world close to the real world. The second would be the getting of “objective” data and parameters by… [here ends the page of these notes by the high-knower Jean Martin].

Theory of the physical astral world (a non-bodily double travels in the physical world).

Many are the upholders of the assumption according to which “the soul” (the definition of this word being variable from a theory to another) can temporarily leave the bodily seat of the awareness; and, therefore, to move according to the will of the one who lives an experiment of OBE. We can hear certain subjects having experimented this kind event to claim to move at the speed of the thought or to visit very distant places.

Telepathy…

This list is not exhaustive and we can notice that each historical-psycho-sociological context generates its own phenomena, whose common trait is a soul/matter relation, unusual.

CONCLUSION.

Here some reports to which the researchers are come.

The psi is a source of myths, and the parapsychologist must analyze these myths on the psychosociological level.

Every psi event is at least a significant coincidence, which results partly from an arbitrary construction in which it takes its sense.

The extrasensory perception is not based on a physical channel such as the electromagnetic waves, the ultrasonic, or others. Experiments with Faraday cages, or thousands of km away, had positive results: the psi is independent of distance and time.

The results vary from a subject to another and from a test to another, which involves a non- reproducibility of the experiments in a strict sense of the word. Moreover, the majority of these psi

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experiments highlight a decline effect: the successes are more important in the beginning than in the middle of the experiment, but sometimes also go back up around the end. We sometimes also get results appreciably lower than those which are envisaged by the simple probability theory (as if the subjects voluntarily “failed” the tests).

The poltergeist phenomena seem generally to be focused around a particular individual (often a young person suffering with psychological problems), of a place, or certain objects.

The phenomena of psychokinesis appear more easily within groups whose individuals are in a state of passive attention.

The determinism appears final and noncausal. The extent of the effects of the psychokinesis does not depend on the complexity of the experimental device, but seems guided by the only finality.

Specialists often highlighted an effect known as “sheep/goat”: the subjects (as well as the experimenters) favorable to psi, have quite higher results than the subjects who do not believe in psi.

In certain families, the psi phenomena are more frequent than in others, from where the assumption of a certain hereditary component.

The psi shows the influence of the intentionality of the psyche on the material world.

In short, the psi phenomena raise crucially fundamental philosophical problems: the free will, the link objectivity /subjectivity, the determinism and the causality, conscious/unconscious dynamism, chance, group dynamics and collective consciousness, epistemology, and so on.

A new scientific discipline, the study of the awareness, is therefore emerging. It appears very complex because the awareness is at the same time the subject and the object, but raises nevertheless high hopes. Very fast progress of the medical imaging in the neuroscience lets foresee many news discoveries in the near future, but especially the emergence of new questions.

The study of the modified (or altered) states of consciousness will, of course, also bring to metapsychics, multiple information which will enable it to go beyond its current epistemological blocking.

The quantum physics raise not easily comprehensible by our ordinary and “macroscopic” way of thinking, metaphysical problems. It should be admitted nevertheless that several concepts used in various interpretations of quantum mechanics, lend themselves particularly well to analogies with certain assumptions usually put forward in the field of metapsychics. For example, “the action or the influence of the awareness of the observer” in measures, the psychokinesis of the “reversal of the direction of time” – from past to future- for precognition, and the “transfer of information at a higher speed than that of light” for clairvoyance.

Scientists or not, many men let themselves become intoxicated by the unfathomable mystery of its depth, and think that the next discoveries in quantum mechanics will make it possible - or make already possible - to explain psi.

Three of its principles cause particularly the majority of the extrapolations in this field.

The fundamental indeterminism on the quantum level.

The awareness of the observer “influencing” the measure of a particle.

The nonlocality and the nonseparability.

The traditional design of the cause and effect link supposes the isolating of the factors that you make varying one by one. However the faculty that the egregores have to pass above an obstacle (by definition) does not make it possible to isolate the factors, and you cannot know therefore, for example, what is responsible for this effect. Example: a luminous random device moves beside animals in a cage. If the results show that the device approaches significantly the cage, which is responsible for this psychokinesis ? The animals, the experimenter, the staff of the laboratory, the person who financed the experiment? With the egregores, it is impossible to have a closed system,

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therefore a strict experimental framework. Experiments took place besides in order to highlight the influence of a collective and world consciousness on a generator of random events.

Random number generators provide a sequence of computer bits. The samples are provided by a quantum background noise, translated into a non-predictable sequence of ones and zeros.

Software, present on each computer, gathers the data, memorizes them locally, and sends them every five minutes, to the server of Princeton.

This process can be compared with the action of throwing 200 times a coin, the result presenting a majority of tail or head side.

Generally, the data fluctuate around the zero line until a deviation occurs. However specialists realized that the data stream from the sensors tended to move away from the expected values when an international public event generated a communion of thoughts or emotions. We do not know yet how to explain these subtle relations between important events for mankind and got data but they are undeniable. These results show obviously that the physical world and the world of the human soul/mind are dependent of a still unknown relation.

Apart from the charlatans does exist healers who really cure? Yes, but not every disease!

The action on the psychosomatic diseases comes under the psychology and not under the parapsychology.

The influence of the psyche was seriously underestimated by the medicine known as modern and many diseases have profiles which are different according to the patient. The nutritional factors, for example, are recognized more and more as having a determining role in certain diseases; the endorphins, secreted by the brain in case of pain, get a feeling of wellbeing… Moreover, many health problems originate in external factors (struggle for power, stress).

As for the rest, the succeeded experiments in laboratories are not enough so that we may regard an authentic healer as a universal therapist replacing the doctor.

Modern druidism deals no longer for ages with the medicine of bodies, but recalls that it supports, under conditions, the art and science to cure by taking into account as well the body as the mind set - of the patient.

This “medicine” must in no way disavow the progress of the modern medicine. The resort to the medicines known as “traditional” should not legitimate the exploitation of the credulity of others or the charlatanry. This is why the druidism warns its dagolitoi or believers against these practices. The druidism should not be a superstition or a swindle in addition as it is often the case in France for example, a subject we know particularly well.

The high-knowers of today can therefore only give to their dagolitoi or believers the following pieces of advice.

Every medication acting on the human body, has side effects, or then it has no effect at all. Beware therefore not to misuse it, also think of the alternative medicines, but with caution. It is necessary not to succumb to the idea that “alternative” medicines would have only advantages and no disadvantage. To eat or drink balanced, it is healthy and that protects from the cardiovascular diseases even from certain cancers.

Whatever the state of the science, to smoke, drink too much, and be sedentary, are risk factors.

The bodily activity (without making it a competition) is essential to many physiological processes. Ride a bike, or walk… but do something. Health also begins with hygiene…

Man is a thinking being. Stimulate your neurons by a mental activity, like the reading quite simply. And finally to live old, it is better not to be stressed.

The doctor high-knowers should not propose to the patients or to their entourage as salutary or without danger a remedy or an illusory and insufficiently tested process. The doctor high-knower is free of his advice, but the patient should not be misled, we therefore warn these high-knowers who want to do medicine against the imprudent use of dubious medications or abusive assertions. It is not acceptable

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that a doctor high-knower in his remarks deviates from a thorough exactitude when he proposes a treatment. All these breaches in professional ethics should be punished by the most severe of the disciplinary boards (bratuspantium).

Come up to this point of our brief report somewhat deontological and intended to fight against the pseudo-druidism, it will not be useless to murmur here a little reminder on what noibo Columcille; a distant (indirect) heir to the last genuine Irish high-knowers, said on this subject. May the honesty or the prudence of this admission inspire the charlatans who claim to be a druid.

“Our fortune does not depend on sneezing. Nor on a bird on the point of a twig,

Nor on the trunk of a crooked tree, Better is He on whom we depend, I reverence not the voices of birds,

Nor sneezing, nor any charm in the wide world, Nor a child of chance,

Jesus (Hesus?) the son of God is my only druid.”

(Extract from a private prayer by Columcille, of the lorica type, M'Oenuran dam isin sliab etc...)

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APPENDIX No. 10 CLAIRVOYANCE AND DESTINY.

The extrasensory perception can be lived in various ways: dream, mental representation of a scene, feelings of taste, odors, sound… imposing themselves abruptly to the awareness of the person who is the subject of it. Various empirical techniques seem to be able to cause it: “reading” of Lepontic runes, of arcana in the tarot, “reading” in the coffee grounds or a crystal ball… In fact, every procedure or every rite generating a particular state of consciousness, known as “modified or altered,” could start it. In Ireland, Finn, for example, was accustomed to biting his inch with his wisdom tooth, and an unexplainable fit of giggles invariably preceded the prophecies of Merlin.

“This is the reason I laughed, Rhydderch. You were by a single act both praiseworthy and blameworthy. When just now you removed the leaf that the queen had in her hair without knowing it, you acted more faithfully towards her than she did towards you when she went under the bush where her lover met her and lay with her.”

The wife of the king is the sister of Merlin and to respond this charge, she scoffs and imagines a trap which consists in presenting three times (but disguised then dressed up) the same child, while asking Merlin what will be his death. To what the latter answers successively, “Crashed at the foot of a high rock, drowned, then hanged.”

However Geoffrey of Monmouth specifies in his “life of Merlin”… “Thus he fell, and was drowned, and hung from a tree, and by his threefold death made the prophet a true one.”

Merlin also bursts out laughing while seeing a beggar and the customer of a shoemaker. Explanation of Merlin himself: The beggar was sitting outside the doors in very worn clothing and kept asking those who went by to give him something to buy clothes with, just as though he had been a pauper, and all the time he was secretly a rich man and had under him hidden piles of coins.

“That is what I laughed at; turn up the ground under him and you will find coins preserved there for a long time. From there they led me further towards the market place and I saw a man buying some shoes and also some patches so that after the shoes were worn out and had holes in them from use he might mend them and make them fit for service again. This too I laughed at since the poor man will not be able to use the shoes nor,” he added, “the patches, since he is already drowned in the waves and is floating towards the shore; go and you will see.” (Geoffrey of Monmouth, Vita Merlini).

N.B. The laughter of Merlin is obviously the sign of a state of consciousness deeply altered in him .

The astrological theory, itself, looks clear and well developed.

It comprises nevertheless big theoretical pitfalls sufficient to question it. And firstly the astrologers would have a hard job explaining precisely the mechanisms of the astral influences… fortunately they do not even try.

Then, in spite of its claims, astrology is not universal. There exist Chinese, Inca, Maya,… astrologies, which do not say all the same thing…

Thus let us specify that no one does not know exactly what true druidic astrology (see the calendar of Coligny) resembled and that what is prevailing currently under this word in spite of its undeniable poetic qualities (the trees).......has everything of the intellectual swindle.

The astrological theory that we currently know keeps the trace of the civilizations which produced it we have said. It is not made for everyone therefore (it depends on the hemisphere, and is not always practicable beyond the polar circle). The constellations, the planets, are projected on a celestial vault , a remain of the time when it was believed that the stars were fixed on spheres. Because of the phenomenon of the precession of the equinoxes, the constellations correspond no longer to the signs.

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The sign of the Gemini corresponds for example today to the constellation of the bull. Where is the symbolic connection in all that?

Moreover, a symbol refers only to appearances, and between appearances and reality, there is a whole world. The planet Venus, white and pure, represents for the astrologers love and life, whereas Mars the red one symbolizes war and death. Little matters to them that Venus is a hell with an unbreathable atmosphere and extreme temperatures, or that Mars is on the contrary supposed to have accommodated life. Moreover the vastness of the sky today is known; do we have to take into account the distance of the stars or not? As their luminosity?

Astrology is therefore based on less solid foundation than it would seem. But that has no importance! Theory does not matter, as long as the practical results are there, isn’t it…?

The followers of numerology, themselves, expand readily on the ancient origins of heir discipline, but many gray areas remain there too.

How significant numbers and indicators were chosen by the numerologists?

How was the significance attributed to them?

Over time, how the theories were adapted to the various languages, the various alphabets, the various numerical systems?

Numerology presents the vibration of the numbers as an immutable and universal force. However, to interpret a date, the numerologists generally use the Gregorian calendar and the base 10, but they are purely arbitrary cultural choices. With other frames of reference, other calendars, other bases, calculations would produce results different, and, therefore, other meanings. This underlines the deliberate vagueness kept going by the numerology, which wants to be at the same time an exact science and a social science, but which has nothing scientific.

Numerology brings very little of answers to these questions and provides no empirical justification. It is full nevertheless of variable postulates which make it possible to doubt its coherence. The symbolic system of the numbers is not uniform, particularly with regard to the figures higher than 4. It depends on the cultures, on the religions…

There also exist various tables of connection letter figures. Undoubtedly the most used is that which is deduced from the alphabetical order, but certain numerologists prefer to it the table inspired from the Hebraic gematria. Moreover, no numerologist can explain why the numerical value of the letters is defined by their positions in the alphabetical order (Hebrew or other). Lastly, the American School also takes systematically into account the initial of the second first name whereas the European School ignores it (apparently).

A little like in the case of a ship cleaving through the waves, the reading of an event being to occur is carried out by “guessing” the vibes that the waves of the Fate cause in front of it in the Bitus (the cosmos) progressively according to its moving (of its choices or the evolution of its will on this point the monolatrous people would say) as well as the orientation which they follow, and this before even this orientation of the Fate is expressed in facts, before even the facts occurred.

Whatever the means used (dreams or others…). But it should not be forgotten that this future is fluctuating, insofar as it depends on the human will to follow or not its destiny (it is besides because of that no divinatory science can be “exact.” The vibes should be felt, to understand or “say” the “future,” and to know up to what point a human being accepts or not its destiny).

The prediction should thus never be presented as inescapable, but as a proposal to accept only in the event of an “inner resonance.” And the clairvoyant is able sometimes thus, by touching unconscious depths, to solve a blocked psychological situation, to break the vicious circle of the repetitions of failures.

The way of carrying out these predictions or these revelations has also indeed its importance. For example “Be wary of the trains, I see an accident” is likely to distress the customer, to cause in him a phobia of the trains. And as the danger appears difficult to delimit, therefore to avoid, this prediction is useless. On the other hand, “Avoid taking the train next week” is a sentence which makes it possible to avoid an accident, while not terrorizing the customer. This, of course, in the case of an authentic precognition similar to those of the most disconcerting cases. That for example of Mr Gallet who, on

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June 27, 1894, could predict several hours in advance the election in the first round of the Head of State by the senators and deputies of the time (with 451 votes out of 845). A case reported in 1922 by Charles Richet president of the IMI.

The existence of the precognition does not imply that the future is predetermined, but that it is a future

let us say - probable, on which we can always act. Every present event being the consequence of a multitude of previous events.

In the everyday life, the personal and social activity of the individuals is so complex that we cannot normally forecast (except, to a certain extent, by the statistics) the behavior of each individual, or of a group of individuals, in the long run. To that are added events so out of each object (in the broad sense) that it is impossible to predict if the truck left the day before from Chicago loaded with bourbon bottles will reverse a person while arriving in New York today; or will crush an animal, or will hit a wall.

The druidic precognition can be designed therefore as a “super-intuition” which would be informed of all these elements, and would arrange them in a relevant way to forecast what will occur tomorrow - according to the elements of now - tomorrow when the truck arrives at New York.

That makes it possible for example to men like Merlin to announce the event of tomorrow (an accident) with more or fewer details. Uncertainty on the precognition being due to the new elements, appeared between yesterday and tomorrow, when the moment of truth will arrive.

That also provides, of course, the opportunity to avoid the accident of tomorrow if the truck driver is informed about the precognition. At the time of the scene seen by precognition, the truck-driver will recognize the moment, and will be able to say, “Look out, it is now! ”: what will enable him to slow down - or to stop - before even the accident risk, and thus to escape from it.

In this case, there was well “precognition,” however the object target of this precognition - the accident

did not occur.

As we already have had the opportunity to announce it in other respects, the druidic prediction was therefore always very flexible, because it takes into account only the main tendencies, and not, in an exhaustive way, all the details. It is therefore connected with a kind of instinctive or unconscious probability theory.

The druidic prediction does not lock up the individual in a relentless mechanic of which he would be the powerless victim; and leaves him, in the absence of a total freedom, which does not exist (who can claim be completely free ?), at least a large autonomy. Improvidence sometimes is a serious lack of responsibility, but the spirit of druidism is, however, to rely on the hands of the Fate (image) with regard to the future.

There exist today some high-knowers who claim to have gifts of clairvoyance and to be able to know information on their customers and on future events. Some of these professionals are paid very expensive… However to go and consult a clairvoyant is not a harmless act, even if the motivation is a simple curiosity. It should not be forgotten that the most effective mechanism of a consultation of clairvoyance remains still the suggestion, and that suggestibility plays a very important role in each one of us, much more than it is believed. By interpreting a lived experience, the clairvoyant gives a sense to the events of the patient and this one is in a state of submission which makes him more sensitive to suggestions.

The motivations of these “high-knowers,” themselves, can be very diverse according to the individuals…

To have a profitable job without any preliminary training.

To develop a certain power on his contemporaries, by frightening or impressing them, or by persuading them that they need them absolutely. Astrology, chiromancy, clairvoyance, and so on, can hide a frightening will for power over others. These practices are, of course, condemnable when they are accompanied by the intention to harm somebody.

The majority of the “swindle” based on a claimed clairvoyance gift are in fact extortions of money in exchange for little or much of magic even of sorcery (even if the words, of course, are never spoken).

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Sorcery or remote psychological influence on distant people has nothing to do with the high-level druidism. It is mainly based on beliefs or traditional practices largely influenced by the Middle East and the Judeo-Christianity. It never was scientifically studied besides (the rare studies on sorcery highlighted especially processes of mental suggestion). Such practices in the hands of an individual who is not a true anamocaros high-knower are therefore extremely destabilizing on the psychological level, and put the customer in a state of absolute vulnerability. It seems therefore advisable to carefully avoid every promise of “lost love spell,” “exorcism,” “spell releasing ” or other, from such individuals.

In practice, these clairvoyants alternate telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, tricks, and simple talks or listening. The techniques of these pseudo-high-knowers to simulate clairvoyance are indeed multiple: they can guess details thanks to verbal or non-verbal clues, for example, the style of clothing of a customer; they can worm out information from the customers and give again to them this information later, without the customers are aware that it is themselves who gave the information; they can get information about their customers in advance, thanks to the directories or other tricks; they can reformulate the speech of the customer but by saying to him exactly what he wants to hear; they can predict events having a very large probability of happening; they can influence by suggestion the patient to urge him to react in a direction which will carry out the prediction (self-fulfilling prophecy)… And of course, if some bits of pure clairvoyance come to form part of the whole, the effect produced will be all the more convincing.

If we refer to the only proven scientific result, namely that nobody can be certain in advance to carry out a true clairvoyance, one can therefore conclude from it that to make pay such consultations most often falls under the swindle. Particularly doubtful in this respect (and to consider with mistrust) are the advertisement for telephone clairvoyance 24 hours a day or worse, on-line: the majority of these consultations are made by people having no particular faculty.

Do people run a risk while consulting a professional clairvoyant?

The people who practice a profession allegedly based on the extrasensory perception describe very often their activities in terms incompatible with the scientific knowledge on the subject.

To consult a professional clairvoyant is consequently to run the risk to be psychologically disturbed therefore victim of a swindle.

In any case, for the case where this clairvoyant would be (by assumption) truly capable of intense extrasensory perception, then it could be only intermittently, and he cannot therefore honestly promise some result.

The subjects who have extremely developed gifts of clairvoyance are not, moreover, necessarily, stable people able to help their fellow being as a high-knower confidant of the anamocaros type.

On the contrary, very often they are disturbed personalities, destabilized by their aptitude to get sometimes dramatic events, and who can be in empathy with the others at a point such that they have difficulty to stabilize their own personality.

However the high-knower anamocaros should not project his own problems on the problems of the customer, and must know to resist the temptation, always big, to exert power over him.

A good high-knower confidant of the anamocaros type is therefore the one who knows how to create no psychological dependence with his customer, but to give him just the small boost necessary to his evolution, to then let him get on with one's life in an autonomous way.

To be a “good anamocaros” therefore is not self-evident, even if you are honest, that you don’t strive after exploiting credulity or human poverty, and that you often have true clairvoyance or intuitions.

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APPENDIX No. 11.

REMARK OF JOHN TOLAND IN CONNECTION WITH FORMER DRUIDISM.

Extracted from the Latin text of his Pantheisticon.

"Ours do not agree with all their words and deeds, for when they depart from truth, then we also depart from them, praising voluntarily what we approve of, and giving thanks to those, by whose labor we have in any shape benefitted ourselves.”

Therefore it goes without saying that what is previous constitutes a genuine, but former, druidism; and that the true current neo-druids, those who have some quality at least, preach in no case a return to the integrality of this druidism of the past. It is not a question of respecting the letter of this old druidism (what would be nonsense, the writing freezes a thought), but of following only the spirit of it, because only the spirit (of the laws for example) gives life. In short, it is not a question of practicing a former druidism, but a new druidism, taking over only the best from what the former one was.

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AFTERWORD IN THE WAY OF JOHN TOLAND.

Pseudo-druids with fabulous initiatory derivation (the famous and indescribable or hilarious perennial tradition) having multiplied since some time; it appeared us necessary to put at the disposal of each and everyone, these few notes, hastily written, one evening of November, in order to give our readers the desire to know more about true druidism.

This work claims to be honest but in no way neutral. It was given itself for an aim to defend or clear the cluto (fame) of this admirable ancient religion.

Nothing replaces personal meditation, including about obscure or incomprehensible lays strewing these books, and which have been inserted intentionally, in order to force you to reflect, to find your own way. These books are not dogmas to be followed blindly and literally. As you know, we must beware as it was the plague, of the letter. The letter kills, only spirit vivifies.

Nothing replaces either personal experience, and it’s by following the way that we find the way. Therefore rely only on your own strength in this Search for the Grail. What matters is the attitude to be adopted in life and not the details of the dogma. Druidism is less important than druidiaction (John-P. MARTIN).

These few leaves scribbled in a hurry are nevertheless in no way THE BOOKS TO READ ON THIS MATTER, they are only a faint gleam of them.

The only druidic library worthy of the name is not in fact composed of only 12 (or 27) books, but of several hundred books.

The few booklets forming this mini-library are not themselves an increase of knowledge on the subject, and are only some handbooks intended for the schoolchildren of druidism.

These simplified summaries intended for the elementary courses of druidism will be replaced by courses of a somewhat higher level, for those who really want to study it in a more relevant way.

This small library is consequently a first attempt to adapt (intended for young adults) the various reflections about the druidic knowledge and truth, to which the last results of the new secularism, positive and open-minded, worldwide, being established, have led.

Unlike Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, which swarm, concerning the higher Being, with childish anthropomorphism taken literally (fundamentalism known as integrism in the Catholic world); our druidism too, on the other hand, will use only very little of them, and will stick in this field, to the absolute minimum.

But in order to talk about God or the Devil we shall be quite also obliged to use a basic language, and therefore a more or less important amount of this anthropomorphism. Or then it would be necessary to completely give up discussing it.

This first shelf of our future library consecrated to the subject, aims to show precisely the harmonious authenticity of the neo-druidic will and knowledge. To show at which point its current major theses have deep roots because the reflection about Mythologies, it’s our Bible to us. The adaptations of this brief talk required by the differences of culture, age, spiritual maturity, social status, etc. will be to do with the concerned druids (veledae and others?)

Note, however. Important! What these few notes, hastily thrown on paper during a too short life, are not (higgledy-piggledy).

A divine revelation. A (still also divine) law. A (non-religious or secular) law. A (scientific) law. A dogma. An order.

What I search most to share is a state of mind, nothing more. As our old master had very well said one day : "OUR CIVILIZATION HAS NO CHOICE: IT WILL BE CELTISM OR IT WILL BE DEATH” (Peter

Lance).

What these few notes, hastily thrown on paper during a too short life, are.

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Some dream. An adventure. A journey. An escape. A revolt cry against the moral and physical ugliness of this society. An attempt to reach the universal by starting from the individual. A challenge. An obstacle fecund to overcome . An incentive to think. A guide for action. A map. A plan. A compass. A pole star or morning star up there in the mountain. A fire overnight in a glade?

What the man who had collected the core of this library, Peter DeLaCrau, is not.

A god.

A half god.

A quarter of God.

A saint.

A philosopher (recognized, official, and authorized or licensed, as those who talk a lot in television. Except, of course, by taking the word in its original meaning, which is that of amateur searching wisdom and knowledge.

What he is: a man, and nothing of what is human therefore is unknown to him. Peter DeLaCrau has no superhuman or exceptional power. Nothing of what he said wrote or did could have timeless value. At the best he hopes that his extreme clearness about our society and its dominant ideology (see its official philosophers, its journalists, its mass media and the politically correct of its right-thinking people, at least about what is considered to be the main thing); as well his non-conformism, and his outspokenness, combined with a solid contrariness (which also earned to him for that matter a lot of troubles or affronts); can be useful.

The present small library for beginners “contains the dose of humanity required by the current state of civilization” (Henry Lizeray). However it’s only a gathering of materials waiting for the ad hoc architect or mason.

A whole series of booklets increasing our knowledge of these basic elements will be published soon. This different presentation of the druidic knowledge will preserve nevertheless the unity as well as the harmony which can exist between these various statements of the same philosophical and well- considered paganism : spirituality worthy of our day, spirituality for our days.

Case of translations into foreign languages (Spanish, German, Italian, Polish, etc.)

The misspellings, the grammatical mistakes, the inadequacies of style, as well as in the writing of the proper nouns perhaps and, of course, the Gallicisms due to forty years of life in France, may be corrected. Any other improvement of the text may also be brought if necessary (by adding, deleting, or changing, details); Peter DeLaCrau having always regretted not being able to reach perfection in this field.

But on condition that neither alteration nor betrayal, in a way or another, is brought to the thought of the author of this reasoned compilation. Every illustration without a caption can be changed. New illustrations can be brought.

But illustrations having a caption must be only improved (by the substitution of a good photograph to a bad sketch, for example?)

It goes without saying that the coordinator of this rapid and summary reasoned compilation , Peter DeLaCrau, does not maintain to have invented (or discovered) himself, all what is previous; that he does not claim in any way that it is the result of his personal researches (on the ground or in libraries). What s previous is indeed essentially resulting from the excellent works or websites referenced in bibliography and whose direct consultation is strongly recommended.

We will never insist enough on our will not be the men of one book (the Book), but from at least twelve, like Ireland’s Fenians, for obvious reasons of open-mindedness, truth being our only religion.

Once again, let us repeat; the coordinator of the writing down of these few notes hastily thrown on paper, by no means claims to have spent his life in the dust of libraries; or in the field, in the mud of the rescue archaeology excavations; in order to unearth unpublished pieces of evidence about the past of Ireland (or of Wales or of East Indies or of China).

THEREFORE PETER DELACRAU DOES NOT WANT TO BE CONSIDERED, IN ANY WAY, AS THE AUTHOR OF THE FOREGOING TEXTS.

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HE TRIES BY NO MEANS TO ASCRIBE HIMSELF THE CREDIT OF THEM. He is only the editor or

the compiler of them. They are, for the most part, documents broadcast on the web, with a few exceptions.

ON THE OTHER HAND, HE DEMANDS ALL THEIR FAULTS AND ALL THEIR INSUFFICIENCIES.

Peter DeLaCrau claims only one thing, the mistakes, errors, or various imperfections, of this book. He alone is to be blamed in this case. But he trusts his contemporaries (human nature being what it is) for vigorously pointing out to him.

Note found by the heirs to Peter DeLaCrau and inserted by them into this place.

I immediately confess in order to make the work of my judges easier that men like me were Christian in Rome under Nero, pagan in Jerusalem, sorcerers in Salem, English heretics, Irish Catholics, and today racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, person, while waiting to be tomorrow kufar or again Christian the beastliest antichrist of all the apocalypses, etc. In short as you will have understood it, I am for nothingness death disease suffering ……

By respect for Mankind , in order to save time, and not to make it waste time, I will make easier the work of those who make absolutely a point of being on the right side of the fence while fighting (heroically of course) in order to save the world of my claws (my ideas or my inclinations, my tendencies).

To these courageous and implacable detractors, of whom the profundity of reflection worthy of that of a marquis of Vauvenargues equals only the extent of the general knowledge, worthy of Pico della Mirandola I say…

Now take a sheet of paper, a word processing if you prefer, put by order of importance 20 characteristics which seem to you most serious, most odious, most hateful, in the history of Mankind, since the prehistoric men and Nebuchadnezzar, according to you….AND CONSIDER THAT I AM THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE OF YOU BECAUSE I HAVE THEM ALL!

Scapegoats are always needed! A heretic in the Middle Ages, a witch in Salem in the 17th century, a racist in the 20th century, an alien lizard in the 21st century, I am the man you will like to hate in order to feel a better person (a smart and nice person).

I am, as you will and in the order of importance you want: an atheist, a satanist, a stupid person, with Down’s syndrome, brutish, homosexual, deviant, homophobic, communist, Nazi, sexist, a philatelist, a pathological liar, robber, smug, psychopath, a falsely modest monster of hubris, and what do I still know, it is up to you to see according to the current fashion.

Here, I cannot better do (in helping you to save the world).

[Unlike my despisers who are all good persons, the salt of the earth, i.e., young or modern and dynamic, courageous, positive, kind, intelligent, educated, or at least who know; showing much hindsight in their thoroughgoing meditation on the trends of History; and on the moral or ethical level: generous, altruistic, but poor of course (it is their only vice) because giving all to others; moreover deeply respectful of the will of God and of the Constitution …

As for me I am a stiff old reactionary, sheepish, disconnected from his time, paranoid, schizophrenic, incoherent, capricious, never satisfied, a villain, stupid, having never studied or at least being unaware of everything about the subject in question; accustomed to rash judgments based on prejudices without any reflection; selfish and wealthy; a fiend of the Devil, inherently Nazi-Bolshevist or Stalinist- Hitlerian. Hitlerian Trotskyist they said when I was young. In short a psychopathic murderer as soon as the breakfast… what enables me therefore to think what I want, my critics also besides, and to try to make everybody know it even no-one in particular].

Signed: the coordinator of the works, Peter DeLaCrau known as Hesunertus, a researcher in druidism. A man to whom nothing human was foreign. An unemployed worker, post office worker, divorcee, homeless person, vagrant, taxpayer, citizen, and a cuckolded elector... In short one of the 9 billion human beings having been in transit aboard this spaceship therefore. Born on planet Earth, January 13, 1952.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE BROAD OUTLINES.

As regards the bibliography of details see appendix of the last lesson because, as Henry Lizeray says it so well, traditions that must be interpreted. It is there the whole difference which exists between former druidism and neo-druidism.

Lebar Gabala or The Book of Invasions. Paris 1884 (William O'Dwyer)

Base of the druidic Church. The restored druidism. Henry Lizeray, Paris, 1885. National traditions rediscovered. Paris 1892.

Aesus or the secret doctrines of the druids. Paris 1902. Ogmius or Orpheus. Paris 1903.

CONTENTS.

Introduction Page 004

From animals to men Page 006 Druidic anthropology Page 008

The Celtic man Page 009

The Celtic woman Page 011 Ladies first Page 014

Reminder on ethology and rectu adgenias Page 017 First gathering of the great principles mistletoe Page 021

Individual opinion of the druid John Martin on the subject Page 024 Warning to the reader Page 028

General principles of Celtic ethology Page 030

Ancient Celtic ethology and animal life Page 032

Ancient Celtic ethology and human life Page 033

Ancient Celtic ethology and body Page 041

Ancient Celtic ethology and sexuality Page 048

Ancient Celtic ethology and family Page 049

Ancient Celtic ethology and property notions Page 054

Semantic reminders Page 058

Ancient Celtic ethology and social organization Page 059

Ancient Celtic ethology and political life Page 061

Ancient Celtic ethology and relations with foreigners Page 067

Ancient Celtic ethology and truth Page 070

Duties of the rich person Page 071

Ancient Celtic ethology and reputation Page 073

Miscellaneous Page 075

Conclusion Page 078

Aryan tripartition in Celtic country Page 079

The medieval Irish society Page 084

The place of the druids in the society Page 087

Love for the Beautiful speech (Fenius Farsaid). Page 088

Generalities about the Senchus Mor or Cain Patraic Page 090

The marriage Page 096

The former Celtic society (and the rest of the Senchus Mor) Page 101

The brehon Law continuation and end Page 115

The Celtic spirit: (sexual) freedom Page 136

Psychology and ethics of the sacred prostitution. Page 137

The adultery of Partolan’s wife Page 150

The Celtic spirit: the sense of sacrifice. Page 152

The sacrifice of objects or animals Page 153

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Psychology and ethics of the sacrifice Page 161

The X file of the human sacrifices among Celts. Page 169

Second collection of the mistletoe of principles Page 175

The chivalrous spirit Page 178

The historical Arthur Page 179

The quest for the Holy Grail Page 180

Jousts and tournaments Page 186

APPENDICES.

Appendix No. 1: for comparison the Bushido Page 190

Appendix No. 2: The Rajah Yoga Page 192

Appendix No. 3: The Judaism Page 193

Appendix No. 4: The prophecy of the Great Queen Page 194

Appendix No. 5: The dialog of the two sages Page 196

Appendix No. 6 :Possession and property within the Gaelic clans Page 200

Appendix No. 7: The battle of Culloden Page 207

Appendix No. 8:The misfortunes of Ireland Page 208

Appendix No. 9: Preternatural and mankind Page 210

Appendix No.10: Clairvoyance and destiny Page 217

Appendix No. 11:Remark of John Toland in connection with the former druidism Page 221

Afterword in the way of John Toland Page 222

Bibliography of the broad outlines Page 225

BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

1 Quotations from the ancient authors speaking about Celts or druids.

Various preliminary general information about Celts.

History of the pact with gods volume 1.

Druidism Bible: history of the pact with gods volume 2.

History of the peace with gods volume 3.

History of the peace with gods volume 4.

History of the peace with gods volume 5.

From Fenians to Culdees or “The Great Science which enlightens” volume 1.

Irish apocryphal texts.

10.

From Fenians to Culdees or “The Great Science which enlightens” volume 2.

11.

From Fenians to Culdees or “The Great Science which enlightens” volume 3.

12.

The hundred paths of paganism. Science and philosophy volume 1 (druidic mythology).

13.

The hundred paths of paganism. Science and philosophy volume 2 (druidic mythology).

14.

The hundred ways of paganism. Science and philosophy volume 3 (druidic mythology).

15.

The Greater Camminus: elements of druidic theology: volume 1.

16.

The Greater Camminus: elements of druidic theology: volume 2.

17.

The druidic pleroma: angels jinns or demons volume 1.

18.

The druidic pleroma angels jinns or demons volume 2

19.

Mystagogy or sacred theater of ancients Celts.

20.

Celtic poems.

21.

The genius of the Celtic paganism volume 1.

22.

The Roland’s complex .

23.

At the base of the lantern of the dead.

24.

The secrets of the old druid of the Menapian forest.

25.

The genius of Celtic paganism volume 2 (liberty reciprocity simplicity).

26.

Rhetoric : the treason of intellectuals.

27.

Small dictionary of druidic theology volume 1.

28.

From the ancient philosophers to the Irish druid.

227

29.

Judaism Christianity and Islam: first part.

30.

Judaism Christianity and Islam : second part volume 1.

31.

Judaism Christianity and Islam : second part volume 2.

32.

Judaism Christianity and Islam : second part volume 3.

33.

Third part volume 1: what is Islam? Short historical review of the set QUR.HAD.SIR. and SHAR.FIQ.MAD.

34.

Third part volume 2: What is Islam? First approaches to the set QUR.HAD.SIR. and SHAR.FIQ.MAD.

35.

Third part volume 3: What is Islam? The true 5 pillars of the set QUR.HAD.SIR. and SHAR.FIQ.MAD.

36.

Third part volume 4: What is Islam? Sounding the set QUR.HAD.SIR. and SHAR.FIQ.MAD.

37.

Couiro anmenion or small dictionary of druidic theology volume 2.

228

Peter DeLaCrau. Born on January 13rd, 1952, in St. Louis (Missouri) from a family of woodsmen or Canadian trappers who had left Prairie du Rocher (or Fort de Chartres in Illinois) in 1765. Peter DeLaCrau is thus born the same year as the Howard Hawks film entitled “the Big Sky”. Consequently father of French origin, mother of Irish origin: half Irish half French. Married to Mary-Helen ROBERTS on March 12th, 1988, in Paris-Aubervilliers (French department of Seine-Saint-Denis). Hence 3 children. John Wolf born May 11th, 1989. Alex born April 10th, 1990. Millicent born August 31st, 1993. Deceased on September 28th, 2012, in La Rochelle (France).

Peter DELACRAU is not a philosopher by profession, except taking this term in its original meaning of amateur searching wisdom and knowledge. And he is neither a god neither a demigod nor the messenger of any god or demigod (and of course not a messiah).

But he has become in a few years one of the most lucid and of the most critical observers of the French neo-druidic or neo-pagan world.

He was also some time assistant-treasurer of a rather traditionalist French druidic group of which he could get archives and texts or publications.

But his constant criticism both domestic and foreign French policy, and his political positions (on the end of his life he had become an admirer of Howard Zinn Paul Krugman Bernie Sanders and Michael Moore); had earned him moreover some vexations on behalf of the French authorities which did everything, including in his professional or private life, in the last years of his life, to silence him.

Peter DeLaCrau has apparently completely missed the return to the home country of his distant ancestors.

It is true unfortunately that France today is no longer the France of Louis XIV or of Lafayoutte or even of Napoleon (which has really been a great nation in those days).

Peter DeLaCrau having spent most of his life (the last one) in France, of which he became one of the best specialists,

even one of the rare thoroughgoing observers of the contemporary French society quite simply; his three children, John-Wolf, Alex and Millicent (of Cuers: French Riviera) pray his readers to excuse the countless misspellings or grammatical errors that pepper his writings. At the end of his life, Peter DeLaCrau mixed a little both languages (English but also French).

Those were therefore the notes found on the hard disk of the computer of our father, or in his papers. Our father has of course left us a considerable work, nobody will say otherwise, but some of the words frequently coming from his pen, now and then are not always very clear. After many consultations between us, at any rate, above what we have been able to understand of them.

Signed: the three children of Peter DeLaCrau: John-Wolf, Alex and Millicent. Of Cuers.