the kind could render justice to Mâth's good qualities, among which the Mabinogi enables one to recognize a calm and complete freedom from the feelings of jealousy and revenge, and a supreme regard—lacking in Merlin and the Mac Óc—for justice and right, leading him to punish the wrong-doer and indemnify the injured with a certainty of power and purpose no one durst oppose.[1] For various reasons it is not pretended that Mâth could compare with the Zeus of the Odyssey at his best; but he may be distinctly pronounced the highest ideal, as regards the sense of justice and equity, that can be associated with the heathen element in Welsh literature.
Since Celts and Teutons have been repeatedly compared with one another in these lectures, the subject of druidism may be supposed to offer an inviting occasion to do so once more; but the result proves in some measure not so much a similarity as a contrast, and that a contrast which may be said to maintain itself to a certain extent to this very day. The Celts had their druids to attend to religious matters and even a good deal more, while the Teutons had no such a highly developed order of men. It is true the Teutons had their priests and even their priestesses; but religious functions were, it may be supposed, not so exclusively discharged by them as by the druids among their neighbours. The Teutonic chiefs and kings could on occasion act also as priests. Take, for example, the Norsemen as late as the time of King Hacon in the tenth century: they had priests to charge of the temples, but any family or individual
- ↑ Ib. passim, but see more especially pp. 65, 67; Guest, iij. 227, 230.
