Celtic religion in pre-Christian times / by Edward Anwyl.

  • Edward Anwyl
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Celtic religion in pre-Christian times / by Edward Anwyl. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    MAN AND HIS PROBLEMS by the momentum given by the traditions of millennia, and the survival in history of the men who carefully regarded them. The apparently unreasoned prohibitions often known as ‘ taboos/ many of which still persist even in modern civil¬ ised life, have their roots in ideas and experiences which no speculation of ours can now completely fathom, however much we may guess at their origin. Many of these ancient prohibitions have vanished under new conditions, others have often survived from a real or supposed harmony with new experiences, that have arisen in the course of man’s history. After passing through a stage when he was too preoccupied with his material cares and wants to consider whether he was haunted or not, early man in the Celtic world as elsewhere, after long epochs of vague unrest, came to realise that he was somehow haunted in the daytime as well as at night, and it was this sense of being haunted that impelled his intellect and his imagination to seek some explanation of his feelings. Primitive man came to seek a solution not of the Universe as a whole (for of this he had no conception), but of the local Universe, in which he played a part. In dealing with Celtic folk-lore, it is very remarkable how it mirrors the charac¬ teristic local colouring and scenery of the districts