BOAR

The boar was a wild beast of the forest, like the stag, and both were treated as highly symbolic of the forces of wild nature. The boar hunt culminated in a pork banquet, and at this banquet the pecking order among the warriors would be established, usually accompanied by disputes and quarrels (see People: Food and Feasting). Sometimes pork joints were buried with warriors, presumably as a way of awarding the dead man his “champion’s joint of pork.” Pork was also a hospitality symbol.

Wild boar, and even nominally domesticated pigs, can be very destructive and unmanageable. In Irish folk-tales, pigs are strong and destructive, and they can lure men into the Underworld. Magic pigs are involved in ritual hunts where the point of the story is the invincibility of the pig.

The magical nature of the pig is also found in Welsh tradition; in the Tale of Cwlhwch and Olwen supernatural pigs are people transformed.

Certain Celtic divinities, often female, are responsible for beasts that are hunted in the forests. The Romans naturally identified these goddesses with their own huntress goddess, Diana. Arduinna is one of these Celtic goddesses. She frequents the woods of the Ardennes, riding on the back of a wild boar.

BOAT

A pre-Roman manifestation of a god. In the Bronze Age and early Iron Age, objects or attributes were often made to stand in for deities, rather like the double-ax standing in for the Minoan goddess of ancient Crete. In the very early days of Rome, the Rome of the Kings, Mars was represented by spears, and those spears were deemed to be capable of moving of their own accord in time of danger: they were Mars. The pre-Roman conquest world of the Celts was very like this, with few humanoid representations of deities.

Initially, there were few figurative representations of deities because the Druids did not want them to be seen unveiled. This changed through time, as the great sanctuaries were developed and large-scale public ceremonies were enacted in them. The gods were required to attend and take part; they therefore had to be visible. The massive posts that stood at the centers of the sanctuary enclosures were almost certainly conceived as “gods.” Julius Caesar describes simulacra, which implies something rather different from the classical statues of gods that he was used to seeing in Rome. Probably these posts were carved in a very stylized way, like Native American totem poles. Maximus of Tyre wrote, “The Celts devote a cult to Zeus, but the Celtic image of Zeus is a great oak.”

Through time, and with increasing exposure to Roman culture, these Celtic simulacra became more realistic. Most, though not all, of the more realistic figurative representations of the gods and goddesses belong to the Romano-Celtic period.

BRIGHID’S CROSS

An Irish pagan symbol that has become a Christian symbol by adoption. It is usually made from rushes and consists of a central woven square and four radial arms that are tied at the ends. It is a specific design of com dolly.

The design is probably related to the swastika, an ancient sun symbol, with its four arms pointing to the four points of the compass. The four arms also represent the elements: earth, air, fire, and water. Like so many other Celtic symbols, this one has a complex ancestry and expresses more than one idea. This symbolic compression is typical of the ancient Celtic mindset.

The crosses are associated with several traditions and rituals. At one time it was believed that a Brighid’s cross had the power to protect a house from fire and evil. It is still to be seen hanging in many Irish and Irish-American kitchens to ward off evil.

The cross is associated with Brighid of Kildare, who is one of the patron saints of Ireland. The crosses are traditionally made on February 1, which in the Irish calendar is St. Brighid’s feast day, a borrowing from the ancient past: this is the old pagan Celtic feast of Imbolg.

St. Brighid and her cross are linked together in a Christian folk-tale. A pagan chieftain in the neighborhood of Kildare lay dying and some Christians in his house sent for Brighid to talk to him about the Christian faith. When she got there, the man was delirious and conversion was impossible. She tried to comfort him and stooped down to pick up some rushes from the floor, weaving them into the form of a cross, fastening the points together. The man asked her what she was doing and she explained. He listened with growing interest. In the end he was baptized just as he died.

The cross is likely to be far older than this, though. “Saint” Brighid was one of the Tuatha de Dannan, the goddess Brighid.

The Christian Brighid’s cross is likely to be descended from a pagan cross. Its original meaning may even be preserved in modern superstitions about the cross protecting a house from fire. There is nothing in the Christian story about St. Brighid and burning houses, so this is likely to have been borrowed from some earlier, preChristian, belief.

BULL

The bull was in use as a symbol and decorative motif from the Bronze Age onward. This shows an enduring admiration for the bull’s characteristics: strength, virility, and ferocity.

The ox, from which the virility and ferocity have been removed, was a symbol of agriculture and prosperity. At Mont Bego in the south of France, a sacred mountain was decorated with rock carvings that feature the ox in plow-teams.

Bronze vessels made in the Bronze Age were often decorated with bull’s horns. Clay bull’s horns mounted on stands were made in Hungary in the seventh century BC. This veneration of the bull and its horns was shared by the Mediterranean cultures too; the bull was important in Minoan and Mycenaean cultures and it is possible that the bull cult was ultimately inherited from the Minoans.

It is difficult to be sure what the bull may have meant in the Celtic world, when many aspects were borrowed from still more ancient belief systems. It has to be remembered that in the Roman world the bull was an emblem of Jupiter, and in the earlier Mycenaean-Minoan world the bull was a transformation of Poseidon. So the Celts too may have seen the bull as a god, or at least as godlike.

A peculiarity of Iron Age bull’s horns is that they are shown with knobs on the end. It is not known why, though it could reflect some ritual or ceremonial situation in which it was deemed safer to have the dangerous points of the (real) bull’s horns covered.

The (pre-Roman) Gundestrup cauldron shows the bull several times, and it carries a large scene on the baseplate showing a bull sacrifice. Bull imagery can be seen in Gaul and Britain, but rarely in conjunction with any human or humanoid images. One significant exception was found at Rheims, where a bull is seen associated with Cernunnos and a stag—just as at Gundestrup.

Some elaborate ritual deposits have been found that show how important bulls and cattle in general were as religious symbols. At South Cadbury there is plenty of evidence of this in the Iron Age. On the approach to a shrine the remains of newborn calves were deposited. Cattle skulls were set upright in pits, and deliberately buried in that way. A full-grown cow was buried outside the door of a porched shrine. And this kind of ritual burial of cattle was going on at a great many places in Britain. In about AD 300 there was an underground shrine at Cambridge where more elaborate animal rituals went on; there were burials of a complete horse and a complete bull, as well as hunting dogs—and all carefiolly arranged.

The writings of classical commentators confirm the sacrificial nature of some of these events. Pliny describes white bulls being sacrificed in the mistletoe-cutting ceremony of the Druids.

Cattle were an important part of the warrior-hero culture; cattle-raids were a major focus. The Cattle Raid of Cooley is an Irish tale in which the supernatural plays a part. The climax of the tale is a conflict between two great supernatural bulls who had in earlier incarnations been divine swineherds; because of their previous existences, the two bulls had the power of human thought.

In Ireland, bulls were connected with the choosing of kings. There was a bull-feast at which a bull was killed and the meat was eaten by a man who then fell asleep. Four Druids chanted their incantations over him and the sleeper saw in a dream the person who was to become king. Possibly this is what lies behind the image on the base of the Gundestrup cauldron, where a large bull awaits sacrifice. Its horns have become detached, and may have been deliberately made so that they were detachable.