had entered into the inner tissue of the agricultural mind, so as to be
linked to its keenest emotions. Here the rites of religion, whether
persuasive as in prayer, or compulsory as in sympathetic magic, whether
associated with communal or propitiatory sacrifice, whether directed to
the earth or to the heaven, all had an intensely practical and terribly
real character, due to man's constant preoccupation with the growth and
storage of food for man and beast. In the hunting, the pastoral, and
above all in the agricultural life, religion was not a matter merely of
imagination or sentiment, but one most intimately associated with the
daily practice of life, and this practical interest included in its
purview rivers, springs, forests, mountains, and all the setting of man's
existence. And what is true of agriculture is true also, in a greater or
less degree, of the life of the Celtic metal-worker or the Celtic sailor.
Even in late Welsh legend Amaethon (old Celtic _Ambactonos_), the patron
god of farming (Welsh _Amaeth_), and Gofannon, the patron god of the
metal-worker (Welsh _gof_, Irish _gobha_), were not quite forgotten, and
the prominence of the worship of the counterparts of Mercury and Minerva
in Gaul in historic times was due to the sense of respect and gratitude,
which each trade and each locality felt for the deity who had rid the
land of monsters, and who had brought man into the comparative calm of
civilised life.




CHAPTER V--THE HUMANISED GODS OF CELTIC RELIGION


One of the most striking facts connected with the Celtic religion is the
large number of names of deities which it includes. These names are