Lecture II.
THE ZEUS OF THE INSULAR CELTS.
PART I.
In the foregoing lecture I tried to reconstruct, mainly out of the ruins of the Gaulish pantheon, the fallen edifice of Celtic paganism; and in so doing, I endeavoured to confine myself as much as I conveniently could to what may be called the theology of the early Celts; but it is impossible to do justice to our subject without pursuing it, as I now briefly propose to do, into its later stages, represented by such myths as the Celtic nations of modern times happen to retain embedded in their literature or woven into their folk-lore. I make, however, no attempt to draw any line of demarcation between theology and mythology; for who is there to tell me where precisely theology and religion end, and where myth and fiction begin? Professor Max Müller, when speaking of the storm-gods of the Hindus, uses the words, " 'They can pound us, we cannot pound them;' this feeling, too, contained a germ of religious thought."[1] His later utterances[2] on this point are still more explicit, as when he says that 'the living germ of all religion' is to
- ↑ Hibbert Lectures, i. 211.
- ↑ Biographical Essays, pp. 162-3, &c.
