Identifier: mythslegendscelt00roll (find matches)
Title: Myths and legends ; the Celtic race
Year: 1910 (1910s)
Authors: Rolleston, T. W. (Thomas William), 1857-1920
Subjects: Celts Celts Celtic literature Legends, Celtic
Publisher: Boston : Nickerson
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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forbade the committal of their doctrines to writing ; an
extremely sagacious provision, for not only did they
thus surround their teaching with that atmosphere of
mystery which exercises so potent a spell over the
human mind, but they ensured that it could never be
effectively controverted.

Human Sacrifices in Gaul

In strange discord, however, with the lofty words of
Caesar stands the abominable practice of human sacrifice
whose prevalence he noted among the Celts. Prisoners
and criminals, or if these failed even innocent victims,
probably children, were encased, numbers at a time, in
huge frames of wickerwork, and there burned alive to
win the favour of the gods. The practice of human
sacrifice is, of course, not specially Druidic—it is found
in all parts both of the Old and of the New World at a
certain stage of culture, and was doubtless a survival
from the time of the Megalithic People. The fact that
it should have continued in Celtic lands after an other-

¹ Quoted by Bertrand, op. cit, p. 279.

84
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Human Sacrifices in Gaul 84

HUMAN SACRIFICES IN EGYPT
wise fairly high state of civilisation and religious culture
had been attained can be paralleled from Mexico and
Carthage, and in both cases is due, no doubt, to the
uncontrolled dominance of a priestly caste.

Human Sacrifices in Ireland

Bertrand endeavours to dissociate the Druids from
these practices, of which he says strangely there is " no
trace " in Ireland, although there, as elsewhere in
Celtica, Druidism was all-powerful. There is little
doubt, however, that in Ireland also human sacrifices
at one time prevailed. In a very ancient tract, the
" Dinnsenchus," preserved in the " Book of Leinster," it
is stated that on Moyslaught, " the Plain of Adoration,"
there stood a great gold idol, Crom Cruach (the Bloody
Crescent). To it the Gaels used to sacrifice children
when praying for fair weather and fertility—" it was
milk and corn they asked from it in exchange for their
children—how great was their horror and their
moaning !"¹

And in Egypt

In Egypt, where the national character was markedly

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