The Celts by Barry Cunliffe

Author:Barry Cunliffe
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780141937106
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2009-07-20T20:00:00+00:00

… at the close of the seventh year they went to Gwales in Penvro. And there they remained four score years, unconscious of having ever spent a time more joyous and mirthful. And they were not more weary than when first they came, neither did they, any of them, know the time they had been there. And it was not more irksome to them having the head with them than if Bendigeid Vran had been with them himself. And because of these fourscore years it was called the entertaining of the noble head.

It might be argued that a truly Celtic feeling for pre-Christian ritual imagery long survived the introduction of Christianity in Britain and Ireland. Stone heads form part of the decoration of a number of Irish Romanesque churches. Two examples may be cited; the west doorway at Killeshin in Co. Laios, which has a single head, and St Brendan’s Cathedral at Clonfert in Co. Galway, where the richly decorated west doorway incorporates more than twenty heads, including ten set in triangular niches, an arrangement not unlike that found in southern Gaul in pre-Roman times. Both these churches were built on the sites of early monasteries. In Britain one of the most remarkable suggestions of continuity is that provided by the medieval tricephalic carving in Llandaff Cathedral, South Wales.

As might be anticipated, there are fewer stone figures, as opposed to heads, in these islands. The most significant are those from Ireland, although there is still debate as to their precise age. There is an interesting group of presumably pre-Christian carvings on three of the islands in Lower Lough Erne in Co. Fermanagh. The back-to-back arrangement of the Janus-faced figure at Caldragh on Boa Island may be compared with that of the tall, austere stone figure from Holzgerlingen in Württemburg. The manner in which the right forearm extends across the body to grasp the left arm on each face of the latter is paralleled on a carving apparently found near Newry, Co. Down, and now in the Chapter House of the Anglican Cathedral at Armagh. The Newry figure is not janiform, neither does the style of carving closely resemble that of the Holzgerlingen figure, although both have horn-like protuberances, but it is not unreasonable to suggest that there was some connexion between the underlying motives responsible for these carvings in Ireland and Germany. There are other imperfectly understood, but presumably pre-Christian, stone figures in Ireland, including what has been interpreted as a relief of a horned god on a stone pillar at Tara. Among the carvings housed in Armagh Cathedral are some animal figures, which also may be pre-Christian. The unique, ithyphallic hill-figure at Cerne Abbas in Dorset is probably Celtic, but whether oflron Age or Romano-British date is uncertain. The fact that he wields a large club has frequently suggested an identification with Hercules. It seems more reasonable to regard this as a representation of a purely Celtic god, perhaps the Dagdá (cf. below, p. 170).

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