This site was set up primarily to celebrate and promote Cornish folklore. It is not a Cornish history site; nor is it a site that promotes Cornish culture such as festivals, the Cornish language, ancient customs etc. There are plenty of other websites that promote such things in more depth and with greater knowledge and authority. However, folklore weaves its way in and out of these other subject areas and cannot be completely divorced from them. To understand the story of how The Hurlers - a series of stone circles on Bodmin Moor - came to be, you need to know what Cornish Hurling is. And to understand some Cornish folktales, you would need to know something of the faiths and beliefs of the ancient Cornish people.

The Celtic Religion

It is difficult to precisely define what the Celtic religion was (or is - some people still follow the old Celtic ways) as it varied from place to place. In fact, it was not so much a religion as a way of living. One thing that remains fairly constant, however, is the existence of a 'priest' class among the Celtic peoples. Members of this class are known by the generic name of Druid, a word believed to derive from the Celtic word for an oak tree (doire in Irish Gaelic), the root of which also meant 'wisdom'.

However, true faith was not limited to the Druids; it was common to everyone. The Druids learned the ancient knowledge and practices that the common people hadn't time to learn and so could be seen more as advisers or counsellors than priests in the sense that we know them today.

From what little we know, it appears that Druidry was deeply traditional, and concerned with conserving repositories of culture and lore. Druidic lore consisted of a large number of verses learned by heart, and we are told that sometimes twenty years were required to complete the course of study. Sadly, as the Celtic peoples relied upon oral tradition and did not develop a proper written language, not one pure verse has survived. All we have are some later translations that were suitably amended by the Christian Church.

The Druids' influence was as much social as religious. Not only did they take the part that modern priests would, they were often philosophers, scientists, teachers, judges and counsellors. The Druids linked the Celtic peoples with their numerous gods, the lunar calendar and the sacred natural order. Much traditional rural Christian religious practice has absorbed the old Celtic ways which survive in practices like Halloween observances, corn dollies and other harvest rituals, the myths of Puck, Woodwoses,The Green Man, and 'lucky' and 'unlucky' plants and animals.

The Lunar Calendar

The Celtic calendar was and remains a way to reconcile lunar and solar years, for purposes of ritual.

The calendar registers a cycle of lunar months, each divided in halves. The celtic calendar of the Gauls usually had 12 months in the year. The months alternated between 29 days and 30 days for a total of 354 days in the year. The difference between a solar year and a lunar year was solved by putting in a 13th month every two and a half years.

The year was divided in two and these two divisions were divided in two again. The first part of the year started on November 1st at Samhain (or Samaine), and was celebrated by the first of four important annual feasts. It marked the beginning of the dark half of the year. It is now associated with 'All Souls' Day' (All Hallows' Day), which today is mostly celebrated the night before, on Halloween (All Hallows' Eve). The Celts reckoned a daily unit as running from sunset to sunset, so that the night before was counted with the date of the following day. Longer periods were reckoned in nights, as in the surviving term 'fortnight' (fourteenth night).

Midway through the first half of the year came Imbolc, which was celebrated on February 1st. It was associated with the goddess Brigid, a Mother-goddess and protector of women in childbirth.

The second part of the year started at Beltane on May 1st. This marked the beginning of the light half of the year. Beltane (also spelled Beltine, Beltain, Beal-tine, Beltan, Bel-tien, and Beltein) means "bright fire" and, in the past, fires were lit by Druids in honour of Bel or Belinus. Later it came to be associated with May Day (Calan Mai) and is still celebrated all over the UK. Leftovers from the old religions can still be seen in such practices as Maypoles (although this is the subject of some dispute) and Morris Dancing. In Cornwall, the Padstow Obby Oss is held on May 1st and the Helston Furry Dance on Flora Day (May 8th).

The final feast day came with Lughnasadh (also known as Lammas), 'the feast of the god Lugh' (or Lug), which was celebrated on August 1st in connection, it would appear, with the onset of harvest.

Celtic Gods

The Celts, it should be said, were never one nation. The term 'Celtic' is used to describe a way of living rather than a race. It is therefore important to keep in mind that each tribe along the vast Celtic area of influence had its own deities. Of the 300+ known deities, few were commonly honoured with festivals or ritual.

Celtic mythology can be divided into three main subgroups of related beliefs:

The Dagda was the supreme god of the Celtic pantheon. This word means the Good God, not good in a moral sense, but good at everything, or all-powerful. The Dagda is a father-figure, a protector of the tribe and the basic Celtic god of whom other male Celtic deities were variants. Celtic gods were largely unspecialised entities, and perhaps we should see them as a clan rather than as a formal pantheon.

The Dagda's consort had many names. The most common of these was The Morrigan (Queen of demons - sometimes spelled Morrigna), but she was also known as Nemain (Panic) and Badb Catha (Raven of Battle). She was said to change into a crow or raven and gloat over the blood on the battlefield. Pronounced as More-ree-an.

Belenus (or Belinus) was a more regional deity, who was worshipped mostly in Northern Italy and the Gaulish Mediterranean coast. He was primarily a god of agriculture. The festival of Beltane was associated with him.

Lug, also known as Lugh, is always described as having the appearance of a young man. His weapons were the throwing-spear and sling. The festival called the Lughnasa or Lughnasadh was held in his honour.

The Celts also worshipped a number of deities of which we know little more than their names. Among these are the goddess Brigit (or Brigid), the Dagda's daughter; nature goddesses like Tailtiu and Macha; and Epona, the horse goddess. Male gods included Cu Roi and Goibniu, the immortal brewer of beer.

Cernunnos (the Horned One) is evidently one of the most ancient gods but we know little about him. It is probably he who appears on the famous embossed silver bowl found in Gundestrup, Denmark which dates from the 1st or 2nd century BC.

The early Celts did not build temples in which to worship their deities, but held certain groves (nemeton) of trees to be sacred and worthy to be places of worship. Some trees were considered sacred themselves. Only in the period of Roman influence did the Celts start to build temples, a custom which they would later pass on to the Germanic tribes that displaced them.

Roman writers insisted that the Celts practiced human sacrifice on a fairly large scale. However, there are only very few recorded archaeological discoveries which substantiate the sacrificial process and most contemporary historians tend to regard human sacrifice as an extremely rare occurrence within Celtic cultures.

There was also a warrior cult that centred on the severed heads of their enemies. The Celts provided their dead with weapons and other accoutrements, which indicates that they believed in an afterlife. Before burial, they also severed the dead person's head and shattered the skull to prevent the ghost from wandering.

Bards

The Bards were those who sang the songs recalling the tribal warriors' deeds of bravery. As stated earlier, the Celtic culture had no written history; it was a spoken history. Before discarding the notion as indicative of an easily-forgetful history, keep in mind that, historically, cultures that rely on spoken history tend to be better at spoken records than written cultures. The bards were particularly good at this, it is assumed, because it is easier to remember exact words when put to song. The Bards were the preservers of the spoken history and they are commemorated in the rank of 'Bard' that is given to members of modern Druidic orders who have mastered the ancient languages of the Celts.

Modern Day Druidry and Bardism

In the 18th century, England and Wales experienced a Druid revival, inspired by people like John Aubrey, John Toland, William Stukely and William Blake. Aubrey was the first modern writer to connect Stonehenge and other megalithic monuments with Druidry, a misconception that shaped ideas of Druidry during much of the 19th century. Modern Druidic groups have their roots in this revival, and some claim that Aubrey was an archdruid in possession of an uninterrupted tradition of Druidic knowledge. Toland was fascinated by Aubrey's Stonehenge theories, and wrote his own book, without crediting Aubrey. He has also been claimed as an Archdruid. The Ancient Druid Order claim that Toland held a gathering of Druids from all over Britain and Ireland in a London tavern, the Appletree, in 1717. The Ancient Order of Druids itself was founded in 1781, led by Henry Hurle and apparently incorporating Masonic ideas.

A central figure of the Druidic revival is Edward Williams, better known as Iolo Morganwg. His writings, published posthumously as The Iolo Manuscripts (1848), and Barddas (1862), remain influential in the contemporary Druidic movements. Williams claimed to have collected ancient knowledge in a "Gorsedd of Bards of the Isles of Britain" he had organized, but in the 1970s, draft manuscripts of the texts were discovered among Williams' papers, exposing the texts as his own compositions.

Cornish Bards in Truro

Modern Druidry is a continuation of this revival and has two strands, the cultural and the religious. Cultural Druids hold a competition of poetry, literature and music known as the Eisteddfod amongst the Celtic peoples (Welsh, Irish, Cornish, Breton, etc). Modern religious Druidry is a form of Neopaganism built largely around writings produced in the 18th century and later, plus the relatively sparse Roman and early medieval sources.

Many notable Britons have been initiated into Druidic orders, including Winston Churchill. Churchill's case illustrates the difficulty of distinguishing between the two strands, because historians are not even certain which order he joined, let alone for what purpose he joined.

A Cornish Gorseth exists and celebrates the Cornish language and culture through events like the annual Welsh Eisteddfod, St Pirans Day (March 5th), the Penzance Golowan Festival, and various world-wide Bardic gatherings.

St Piran's Day parade to Perranzabuloe

Paganism

A quick note about Paganism. This refers to a variety of non-Christian/Jewish/ Islamic religions that are usually polytheistic (have more than one God) and are often nature-based. Among Pagan religions are such things as Wicca, Santeria, Asatru and Shamanism. Many people do not necessarily identify with a specific religion, and just use the broad term 'Pagan' to define their spiritual path. Pagan religions are distinct and separate from each other, and it should not be assumed that they are just different names for the same faith.