Identifier: mythologyofallra03gray (find matches)
Title: The Mythology of all races ..
Year: 1918 (1910s)
Authors: Gray, Louis H. (Louis Herbert), 1875-1955 Moore, George Foot, 1851-1931 MacCulloch, J. A. (John Arnott), 1868-1950
Subjects: Mythology
Publisher: Boston, Marshall Jones Company
Contributing Library: Wellesley College Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Wellesley College Library

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priests and philosophers — formed itselfamong half-crazy enthusiasts and has been revived in our owntime by persons of a similar genius. Ireland and the West High-lands have always been remarkably free of this nonsense,though some Celts with a turn for agreeing with their interlocu-tor seem to have persuaded at least one mystic that he was onthe track of esoteric beliefs and ritual there.^° He did not knowhis Celt! The truth is that the mediaeval and later WelshDruidists were themselves in the mythopoeic stage — crudeBlakes or Swedenborgs — and invented stories of the creed ofthe old Druids which had no place in It and are lacking in anydocument of genuine antiquity, Welsh or Irish. This Is true PLATE IV God with the Wheel This deity, wiio carries S-symbols as well as thewheel, was probably a solar divinity (see p. 8; forthe wheel as a symbol cf. Plate II, i, 3, and for theS-symbol Plates II, 2, 4, 7-9, 11, III, 3, XIX, 2-5).The statue was found at Chatelet, Haute-Marne,France.
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INTRODUCTION 21 also of the modern mythological school. Not satisfied withthe beautiful or wild stories as they stand, they must mytholo-gize them still further. Hence they have invented a pretty butineffectual mythology of their own, which they foist upon ourCeltic forefathers, who would have been mightily surprised tohear of it. The Celts had clearly defined divinities of war, ofagriculture, of the chase, of poetry, of the other-world, and theytold romantic myths about them. But they did not make alltheir goddesses dawn-maidens, or transform every hero into asun-god, or his twelve battles into the months of the solar year.Nor is it likely that they had mystic theories of rebirth, if thatwas a wide-spread Celtic belief; and existing examples of italways concern gods and heroes, not mere mortals. They arestraightforward enough and show no esoteric mystic origin ortendency, any more than do similar myths among savages, nordo they set forth philosophic theories of retribution, such as w

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