Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/104

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
88
I. THE GAULISH PANTHEON.

world, save when he shook himself and produced earthquakes. Such a piece of cosmogony would not be without a parallel elsewhere, and it calls to mind such a Gaulish proper name as Urogenonertus,[1] which may be interpreted to mean a man 'endowed with or possessed of the might of an Urogen, that is, of a descendant of Urus,' which possibly meant more than the mere beast described by Caesar as living in the great forests of Germany. Having due regard, however, to the god's connection or identity with the earth, that is to say with the solid ground, one should rather suppose the horns, with which the god was endowed, to be the mythical exponents of the hills and mountains which diversify the surface of the globe.

After this digression, let us return to the data provided us by French archæology: the monuments I have described associate with Cernunnos certain other and younger gods who cluster round him like children by the side of their father. Among others we have found Apollo and Mercury in his company, and there would be no difficulty in explaining this grouping. Thus the Gaulish Apollo was especially connected with, and worshipped near, the mineral springs of the country, those perennial sources of health which poured forth their invigorating volume from the deep realm of Cernunnos; and as to Mercury, who was, among other things, the genius of commerce and money-making, much of his stock in trade, so to say, belonged to the same chthonian deity as the owner and dispenser of the metallic wealth of the world. Another of the figures associated with Cernunnos is represented with a club, which, if meant

  1. Glück's Keltischen Namen, p. 97.