Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/157

Rh Druidism. But to make the local gods into orthodox Roman deities they had to baptize them with orthodox Roman names and endow them with familiar attributes. The confusion that has resulted may be exemplified by the dispute that has arisen among the most learned authorities on Gallic monuments regarding a little figure in bronze, of a bearded man holding a mallet in one hand and a bowl in the other, which M. D'Arbois, following an identification made by M. Barthélemy in Rev. Celt. i. p. i, considers to be a figure of Dis Pater, and to represent the god of Death, from whom Caesar avers that the Celts believed themselves to be descended. This identification fills so large a place in M. D'Arbois' argument about the Celtic Hades that we shall have to return to it again.

In Gaul all our information on the early conditions of belief have to be derived from the monuments. No written records have come down to us. The Druids, Caesar tells us, would not commit their knowledge to writing, partly because they considered it sacred, and partly because they wished to strengthen the memories of their students. Probably Caesar was right; there is certainly a tendency to mystery in their religion, shown in the earlier time in their avoidance of the human form in art and decoration, and their abstention from any attempt to make statues of their gods, and later, when, under foreign influences, Roman, Greek, Egyptian, and even Oriental, figures intended to represent the native deities were made, by their hesitation in inscribing on them their names—an unwillingness that has to this day involved the whole subject in obscurity. We have to remember that at the time of the conquest of Gaul by Caesar the native art was confined to decorative designs only; there was no attempt to represent the human figure in sculpture, or to represent any of the local gods. Though Caesar says that the Gauls possessed simulacre of Mercury,