SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

l'20 Saga-Book of the Viking Society
occasions compelled to break the most holy vows in order
to safeguard the existence of the world. We are entitled
to conclude that just like Tyr the Celtic Nuadu was a
god of high importance, exercising high authority among
the gods and having the function of royal power. The
loss of the hand, however, disqualifies him from exerting
the rights of sovereignty.
I have given you some instances of Celtic gods who
fully agree with deities of the pantheon of another Indo­
European people. We may be quite reassured about
the reliability of Caesar's essay on the Gaulish religion.
He speaks of real gods like Jove or Mars and he was
entitled to do so, because such gods were adored by the
Gauls. When we compare the indeed very scarce documents
on the Celtic religion with the so much more
abundant ones about the Germanic gods, we shall be
able to discern even more of the basic beliefs of the Celts.
It is only in this way that we can reconstruct their
original religious system, inherited from the remote
ancestors of Indo-European times. It has been overgrown
in the course of many centuries by the weeds of
allogeneous creeds and superstitions. These give, to be
sure, significant information about the faith of the
miserrima plebs, but they are of little use for the understanding
of the religion of the upper classes. As for
Ireland, I must remind you that the traditions, which are
of prime interest for the investigation of the Celtic beliefs
in this island, have been distorted during a very long
period of Christian civilization. The gods lost their
status of sanctity and venerableness; if they were not
degraded into demons, they were at least euhemerized
into half-historical kings of the past. But even here a
judicious investigation of the meagre documents may
show the main features of the original religious system.
Nat long ago I insisted that the Germanic and Celtic
peoples, when they came into contact with each other
in the so-called La Tene period, did not differ very much