Previous Part: Druid Celtic Festivals
Human time and mythical time were very different from one another, and the druids, of course, did not accept to know and learn how to manage human time according to its strict laws, that is, using the calendar. The Celtic holidays establish an excellent division of the religious and liturgical year, taking into account the equinoxes, and we have no reason not to trust Caesar when he narrates that: “In addition, they tell their young disciples a lot about the luminaries and their movements, land, about nature and about the power and authority of the immortal gods. " [443 - Caes. BG, IV, 14. - Per. MM Pokrovsky.]
Pomponius Mela points out: "The Druids declare that they know the size and shape of the earth and the world, the movement of the heavens and stars, and what the gods want." [444 - Pomp. Mela, III, 3.]
There are also more precise indications, according to Caesar: “The Gauls calculate and determine the time not by day, but by night: the day of birth, the beginning of the month and the year, they calculate so that first comes the night, and then the day.” [445 - Caes … BG, XI, 18, 2. - Per. MM Pokrovsky.]
And according to Pliny: "They define their months and years by the moon, just like their ages, spanning thirty years." [446 - Plin. Nat. Hist, XVI, 249.]
Ireland also kept a countdown at night: "aidche Samria", "the night of Samhain," - so sometimes it is indicated in the texts; "Wythnos" - "eight nights", "pym-thegnos" - "fifteen nights" - Welsh is spoken to indicate a week or two, while in Breton "the next day" - "antronoz" - "on the other side of the night ". In addition, the Gauls called themselves the sons of the dark god Dispater: “The Gauls all consider themselves the descendants of [father] Dita (Dis Pater) and say that this is the teaching of the Druids.” [447 - Caes. BG, XI, 18. - Per. MM Pokrovsky.]
It has been established that the Gaulish calendar, discovered in fragments at Coligny (En) at the end of the last century, presents numerous structural and lexical matches with the data obtained in Ireland, which only reinforces the impression of the unity of the teachings. In particular, in the Gaulish calendar, reconstructed with great difficulty, one very short phrase attracts attention: “trinoux (tion) Samon (i) sindiu (os)”, which we have already proposed to translate as “three nights of Samonios (Samhain) [begin] today.”[448 - Ogam, IX, 337-342, pi. 1.] Moreover, in this lunisolar calendar, the unit of time is always night, and the arrangement of months and years in it fits perfectly with the Druidic centuries of thirty years, which Pliny mentions.
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However, it would be appropriate to recall the division into light days and dark days, which, judging by the meaning, makes the druid Katbad when he tells his students what the “sign of the day” is; [449 - See now. ed. p. 94.] or when he asks Nes, who is ready to give birth to the future King Conchobar, to do, if she is able, so that the birth occurs at a certain moment. [450 - See present. ed. p. 177.] All the methods of divination, especially the one that consisted in "throwing the tree", helped to distinguish between happy and unhappy days; and the calendar from Coligny, in addition to the two expressions "prinni lag" and "prinni loud", [451 - See present. ed. pp. 149-170.] contains two words: "mat" and "anmat". The root "mat" is found in both Breton "mat" and Irish "maith", which means "good" (light).and the prefix "an-" - has been preserved as a prefix with the meaning of negation in modern Celtic languages.
Celtic Druids. Book by Françoise Leroux
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