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warrior cast into it will come out alive but bereft of the power of speech. Cauldrons, perhaps as the instrument in which food was cooked, had a special place in ancient Celtic society. The surviving cauldrons from the period vary in size and material, often being made from bronze, copper, or silver and always richly decorated. The most magnificent example is the Gundestrup Cauldron, dated to the first century b.c., and now in the National Museum, Copenhagen.
Caves play a prominent part in Celtic mythology as places of natural and religious significance. They provide entrances to the Otherworld, like the Cave of Cruachan. A cave on an island in Loch Derg is known as “St. Patrick’s Purgatory” and is regarded as the mouth of Hell. A medieval tale about the adventures of a knight named Eoghan in this cave was one of the most widely known “vision” tales prior to Dante. In Ireland, the storytellers had a group of tales classified as “Caves,” but sadly, hardly any of the tales that occur in this list have survived.
[W] The churlish steward to Arthur. In the later versions of the Arthurian tales, he becomes Sir Kay. He accompanies Culhwch on his quest for Olwen and later refused Peredur entrance to Arthur’s court, believing him to be a rustic.
An early Christian order meaning “servants of God” and sometimes known as the Culdees. Recorded as being founded by St. Mael Ruain of Tallaght (d. a.d. 792), they were a loose-knit order with no central authority. They appeared in Ireland and in Scotland, where the last known reference to them was in the fourteenth century. It is thought that it was these distinctly Celtic monks who were responsible for setting down the bulk of Irish myths in written form.
[W] Daughter of Cei.
The Celtic peoples were one of the great founding civilisations of Europe. They were the first European people north of the Alps to emerge into recorded history. The term is linguistic and not racial. In modern times the Celts are divided between the Goidelic (Q) Celts—the Irish, Manx, and Scots—and the Brythonic (P) Celts—the Welsh, Cornish, and Bretons. Gaulish, identified as a P Celtic language, died out around the fourth or fifth century a.d. Today only sixteen million people live in a Celtic country, and of
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