Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 3 (Celtic and Slavic).djvu/32

12 midday, lest the god should appear—"the destruction that wasteth at noonday."14 In Galatia Artemis was thought to wander with demons in the forest at midday, tormenting to death those whom she met; while Diana in Autun was regarded as a midday demon who haunted cross-roads and forests. Whether these divinities represent a Celtic goddess is uncertain, and their fateful midday aspect may have been suggested by the "midday demon" of the Septuagint version of Psalm xc. 6. Both accounts occur in lives of saints.

Several references suggest that the gods punished the taking of things dedicated to themselves, and therefore tabu to men. Caesar says that this was a criminal action punished by torture and death,15 and Irish myth also discloses the disastrous results of breach of tabu. The awe of the priest of the grove is paralleled by incidents of Celtic history. After the battle of Allia in 390, where the Celts saw divine aid in the flight of the Romans and stood awestruck before it, they were afraid of the night.16 After the battle of Delphi (279 ) "madness from a god" fell on them at night, and they attacked each other, no longer recognizing each other's speech.17 Another fear based on a myth is referred to in Classical sources, that of the future cataclysm. The Celts did not dread earthquakes or high tides, which, indeed, they attacked with weapons; but they feared the fall of the sky and the day when fire and water must prevail. An Irish vow perhaps refers to this: something would be done if the sky with its showers of stars did not fall or the earth burst or the sea submerge the world. Any untoward event might be construed as the coming of this catastrophe or analogous to it. How, then, was the sky meanwhile supported.^ Perhaps on mountain-peaks like that near the source of the Rhone, which the native population called "the column of the sun," and which was so lofty that it hid the northern sun from the southern folk.18 Gaidoz says that "the belief that the earth rests on columns is the sole débris of ancient cosmogony of which we know in Irish legends, but we have only the reflexion