The Encyclopedia of Celtic Mythology and Folklore, THE WORLD in PDF History and Culture
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the encyclopedia of
CELTIC MYTHOLOGY
AND FOLKLORE
Patricia Monaghan
The Encyclopedia of Celtic Mythology and Folklore
Copyright © 2004 by Patricia Monaghan
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Monaghan, Patricia.
The encyclopedia of Celtic mythology and folklore / Patricia Monaghan.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8160-4524-0 (alk. paper)
1. Mythology, Celtic—Encyclopedias. 2. Celts—Folklore—Encyclopedias.
3. Legends—Europe—Encyclopedias. I. Title.
BL900.M66 2003
299'.16—dc21 2003044944
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This book is printed on acid-free paper.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
iv
A TO Z ENTRIES
1
BIBLIOGRAPHY
479
INDEX
486
6
INTRODUCTION
6
Who Were the Celts?
The terms
Celt
and
Celtic
seem familiar today—
familiar enough that many people assume that
they are ethnic descriptions, words that define a
people related by blood and culture. Such peo-
ple are imagined as fair-skinned, possibly red-
haired, often freckled. More important, it is
presumed they share an inborn mystical inclina-
tion. They see in ways that others do not or can-
not. They acknowledge a world beyond the
world of the senses. Some even have the second
sight, the ability to see fairies and other spirits
dancing through the soft evening. For evening
always gathers around the Celts, a misty twilight
where things are never quite solid and defined.
The image is a charming one; it has drawn
many to the study of Celtic culture. But it is also
incorrect. The word
Celt
is not as exact as many
people presume. It does not define a race or a
tribe; the alleged Celtic mysticism is not an
invariably inherited trait. Nor does “Celtic”
describe a culture that was so centralized that all
Celts everywhere felt the same way toward
nature, worshiped the same gods, and per-
formed rituals in the same fashion.
No ancient people called themselves “the
Celts.” They called themselves Belgae, Cantii,
Icini, Brigantes, Voconces, Arverni, or by any
one of scores of other tribal names. Where con-
temporary imagination sees a single culture,
these ancient people themselves knew dozens of
linguistically related groups, each bearing a
name derived from an ancestor, a god or a god-
dess, a totem animal, a sacred location. The
word
Celt
may originally have been one of these
tribal names, used by other Europeans as a
generic term for the whole people.
If the name itself is not exact, neither is what
it names. There is no one agreed-upon definition
of what constituted Celtic society and the Celtic
worldview. Indeed, some claim that Celtic peo-
ples adapted themselves to and absorbed influ-
ences from pre-Celtic cultures wherever they
lived and that, therefore, the idea of a Celtic cul-
ture is itself hopelessly flawed. Narrowly, a Celt
can be defined as someone who spoke or speaks
a Celtic language. Beyond that, scholars and
other experts disagree as much as they agree.
The Celts in Classical Literature
Literacy is not a value shared by all cultures.
The Celts did not write down their myths and
histories, honoring instead the spoken word and
the human memory. As a result, we have no
written documents from early Celtic times,
when they were settling central Europe. Instead,
the earliest writings we have about the Celts are
in the languages of their enemies: the Greeks
and, later, the Romans.
The Celts were already a mature culture
when they began to appear in the writings of
their southern neighbors. Until then, they lived
too far away to be of interest, and besides, they
were no threat to the wealth and power of
Greece and Rome. In the last several centuries
before the common era, however, the Celts
began to seek new territories. Whether this was
because they were being pushed out of tradi-
tional homelands by other invaders, or because a
population explosion put pressure on resources,
iv
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