A Brief History of the Celts (17 page)

Such institutions had, however, been established by the Indo-Europeans of India. The
Charaka-Samhita
(
Annals of Charake
) tell us that Asoka (
c
. 273–232
BC
), the emperor of India, sickened by war and the struggle for power, turned to Buddhism and professional non-violence, establishing the first hospitals in India for the
ailing poor.

What is overlooked, in a European context, is that Irish sources refer to the establishment of the first hospital in Ireland by the semi-legendary queen Macha Mong Ruadh (d.
c
. 377
BC
). She is said to have established a hospital called Bróin Bherg (House of Sorrow) at Emain Macha, Navan in
Armagh. It is reported that this
hospital remained in use in Navan until its destruction in
AD
22. Legendary foundation or not, we do know that such hospitals were in existence by the time of the Christian
period in Ireland, some for sick people with general ailments, and others serving specialist needs, such as leper hospitals. The Brehon Laws indicate the existence of an advanced and sophisticated
medical system, for they ordered that hospitals be made available in all tribal areas. This implies a long tradition of medical practice. References by Pliny to the reputation of Gaulish physicians
such as Crinias and Charmis and the use of astrology as an aid to medical diagnosis – a system Charmis was especially known for – show how progressive the Celtic system was. Martial
refers to Alcon, a famous Roman surgeon who had studied at the Gaulish medical colleges. Gaulish Celtic physicians and orators certainly had an excellent reputation.

Joseph O’Longan (in an unpublished MS in the Royal Irish Academy) shows that the use of astrological observations as an aid in medical diagnosis and prognosis was universal among Irish
physicians. This was a standard practice throughout Europe in the medieval period. It is worthy of mention that one of the last books in Irish on astrological medical skills was written by a Jesuit
priest from Donegal, Father Maghnus Ó Domhnaill, in 1694. Father Ó Domhnaill had studied at the Irish College in Salamanca University, which disbanded its faculty of astrology in
1777, the last university to do so.

The Irish language contains the world’s largest collection of medical texts in any one language prior to 1800. There are translations of works credited to Hippocrates, Galen, Herophilus,
Rhazes, Avicenna, Seapion, Dioscorides and many other European medical scholars in addition to the native books of learning. The majority of surviving texts date from between the fourteenth and
sixteenth centuries, such as the books of the O’Hickeys (1352), O’Lees (1443), O’Shiels and the 1512 Book of Mac Anlega (Son of the Doctor). The
oldest
surviving medical textbook in Ireland dates from 1352, now in the Royal Irish Academy, but it is a copy of a far older book. Even older medical texts are kept in the British Museum and the
University Library, Cambridge. This wealth of ancient medical material has, to the shame of scholars, scarcely been examined.

Under the Brehon Laws the provision of sick maintenance, including the price of curative treatment, attendance allowance and nourishing food, was made available for everyone who needed it.
Expenses for the treatment of wounded people, those injured unlawfully, were paid out of the fines which the perpetrators of the deed had to pay. The
Law of Torts
says that ‘full
sick maintenance [must be paid] to a worker injured for the sake of unnecessary profit . . .’

The Brehon Laws make it clear that only qualified physicians could treat the sick and there were severe penalties if unqualified physicians were found practising. The qualified physicians were
responsible for the treatment of their patient and if, through negligence or ignorance, they caused a patient’s condition to worsen, they had to pay compensation. Each qualified physician
undertook by law to maintain four medical students and train them. Every so often the physician was allowed, under law, to take a sabbatical and devote himself to catching up on new knowledge and
techniques.

Each territory had to maintain a hospital. The law is exact on the conditions under which it was to be built and maintained. It should have four doors, be placed by a stream of running water,
and be maintained free of charge or taxation by the local assembly. The existence of such hospitals is attested by the names of towns or places such as An Spidéal (Spiddal, Spital etc.). The
local physician and his students were in charge. There was a full-time caretaker or hospital manager who was employed to keep away stray dogs, mentally sick people, who had their own institutions,
and anyone liable to cause the sick or injured distress.

The Irish laws relating to medicine and the fragmentary evidence from the Continent demonstrate that ancient Celtic society was concerned with protecting its sick and
ailing poor at a time when tending the ill was not a priority in neighbouring societies.

CELTIC COSMOLOGY

I
n speaking of the Druids, Julius Caesar remarked:

Pomponius Mela (
c
.
AD
43), author of the earliest surviving Latin work on geography, which offers explanations for the actions of the moon and the tides and the
midnight sun in the north, mentions that the Celts had a reputation for their ‘speculations from the stars’. He states:

And Hippolytus (
c
.
AD
170–
c
. 236), in
Philosophumena
, gives us one of the clearest statements by saying that the
Celts fore-told the future from the stars by ciphers and numbers after the manner of Pythagoreans.

From the very beginning of time the human species has been perceptive of natural phenomena. Early societies noticed that the sun and moon together affected the tides, and the sun regulated the
seasons, giving light and heat which fructified the harvest. They also noticed that the motions of the moon could in some cases affect men and women and their mental attitudes. From these initial
observations there developed a belief that the motions of what were then thought of as ‘stars’ influenced individuals and events on earth.

Astrology was initially an integral part of astronomy. Indeed, Aristotle used the word ‘astrology’ rather than ‘astronomy’ to describe the whole science. It was only as
late as the seventeenth century that astronomy and astrology really parted company with the dawning of the so-called ‘Age of Reason’.

Historians of astronomy and astrology generally argue that the science had its origins in ancient Babylonia and made its way from Babylonia into Europe via Greece. Yet in fact we find that
astrology did not have its ‘birth’ in any one place and that all societies, in whatever part of the world, evolved a system of cosmology, of looking at the heavens; they all developed a
theory of the phenomena and the laws which govern them and, on the basis of seasonal observations, learned to predict the future by the movements of the planets. The Celts were no exception to
other societies, but how did they view the heavens and relate to them?

That the Celts were highly competent in astronomy is proved by the fact that they originated their own calendrical system. The earliest surviving Celtic calendar is from Gaul and dated to the
first century
BC
. This is the Coligny Calendar, now in the Palais des Arts in Lyons. It is a lunar calendar on
engraved bronze plates and was
discovered in November 1897. The language on it is Gaulish Celtic. Seymour de Ricci’s analysis in the
Revue celtique
at the time of the discovery pointed out that the calendar
confirmed Pliny’s comment about the Celtic thirty-year calendrical cycle. Professor Heinrich Zimmer, a leading Celtic scholar as well as a Sanskrit expert, studied the calendar within months
of its discovery and was the first to point out in his
Altindisches Leben
that it had many parallels to Vedic calendrical computations. He specifically cited the
Taittirya
Samhita
.

There have been many studies of the calendar but in 1992 Dr Garrett Olmsted’s seminal work, published in Germany, substantiated the Celtic parallels to the Vedic system. Olmsted was both a
Celtic scholar and a qualified astronomer. While accepting that the surviving calendar was manufactured in the first century
BC
, Dr Olmsted went further and demonstrated by
astronomical calculus that the calendar must have originally been computed in 1100
BC
. In other words, we have a Celtic calendar that dates back three millennia, endorsing
the comments of the classical sources regarding the long tradition and sophistication of Celtic calendrical methodology.

Professor Eoin MacNeill, when he examined the calendar in 1924, posed the question: ‘Is it possible that the Coligny Calendar preserves the older Indo-European tradition of the
Celts?’ He felt the answer was in the affirmative. Every study of the calendar has inclined to support this.

Certainly far more work is due to be done in this field and comparisons with early Vedic records as well as records in Hittite need to be completed. The Hittite records, written in cuneiform on
clay tablets dating from around 1900–1400
BC
, are the earliest example of an Indo-European language being committed to a literature. The material is rich in
cosmological records. As a relative of Vedic Sanskrit and Celtic, its cosmological philosophies provide fascinating comparisons. It is suggested that these Hittite records were
merely translations of Babylonian texts. But if there are philosophic and linguistic parallels between these early Indo-European remains, then we might indeed be on the path to an
understanding of ancient Indo-European cosmology.

The Coligny Calendar is far more elaborate than the rudimentary Julian calendar and incorporates a highly sophisticated five-year synchronisation of lunation with the solar year. It is a
masterpiece of calendrical calculation. Against the months are subscribed either the letters MAT or ANM. One does not need to be an expert linguist to recognise these as the equivalent of
maith
(Irish) or
mad
(Welsh) meaning ‘good’, and of
an maith
(Irish) or
anfad
(Welsh) meaning ‘not good’.

The months are named in Gaulish Celtic with Giamon as the midwinter month and Samon as the midsummer month. Both names can be recognised in the surviving Celtic languages. What is significant
here is that the old Irish name for November was Gam. Today November has been erroneously renamed Samhain which was originally the name for the feast of the god Samhain on 31 October/1 November.
Samhain has nothing to do with the word
sam
meaning summer.

It is by misunderstanding and misuse that this name was extended to the whole month of November and thus confused people as to why a dark month should bear the element of the name of summer in
it. To get round this one observer has suggested that Samhain must mean ‘end of summer’. A good try. However, in thinking that Samon was the name for November another error was
perpetuated by unwary commentators on the Coligny Calendar when they placed Giamon (winter) as the May month. The May month was clearly called in old Ireland Cet-Samhin, the first of the summer
period. Cet-Gamred was November, the first of the winter months or black period, and it is still so called in Scottish Gaelic. So, in the Coligny Calendar, we have a black half of the year and a
light half of the year and in between the two halves is the
Gaulish Celtic word
atenvix
, which translates as ‘renewal’, as in the old Irish word
athnugud
.

There are sixty-two consecutive months in the calendar, divided into periods of twenty-nine or thirty nights each. In Celtic fashion, the calendar reckons periods by nights. Caesar observed:
‘They count periods of time not by the number of days but by the number of nights; and in reckoning birthdays and the new moon and the new year their unit of reckoning is the night followed
by the day.’ Pliny implies that it was by the moon that the Celts measured their months and years and also ‘ages’ or thirty-year periods. Presumably, the thirty years was regarded
as a generation.

Dillon and Chadwick comment:

The Vedas and Upanishads show that the Hindu year was indeed divided into two halves in a fashion analogous to the Celtic year. The Vedic references, such as the
Bhadaranyaka
, indicate that the Vedic calendar was lunar, with a variable 354/355 days, included intercalary months and followed a thirty-year cycle like the Celtic one. Plutarch mentions
a thirty-year festival among the Celts when Cronus (Saturn) entered the sign of Taurus.

It is clear that by the first century
AD
the majority of the Continental Celtic peoples had adopted the new forms of astronomy and astrology that were used in the
Graeco-Roman world. These had emerged from Babylonia into Greece and thence to Rome. The older methods used by the Celts, once
common to Indo-European society, were swept
away. Evidence for the pre-Graeco-Roman (Babylonian) concepts appears in fragmentary form in early Irish cosmological writings.