Dark Side of the Celts: Wicker Men and trophy heads

Summary

After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal
Episode: Dark Side of the Celts: Wicker Men and Trophy Heads
Date: March 23, 2026
Host: Anthony Delaney (standing in for Maddy Pelling)
Guest: Professor Ronald Hutton (University of Bristol, specialist in folklore and pre-Christian religion)

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Overview

This episode of After Dark delves into the shadowy and myth-laden world of the ancient Celts, exploring the origins, myths, stereotypes, and rituals often associated with Celtic societies. Anthony Delaney is joined by Professor Ronald Hutton to examine the real history behind infamous tales of violence, the “cult of the severed head,” the mysterious Druids, and the notorious “Wicker Man” sacrifice. The discussion works to untangle centuries of mythmaking, Eurocentric stereotyping, and academic debate, while also celebrating the enduring legacy and identity of Celtic cultures.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Who Were the Celts? - Definitions, Myths & Realities

• (04:43–10:19)
  Professor Hutton dispels the common notion of the Celts as a single unified ancient people, clarifying that:
  • “The term 'Celtic' was used by the mid-20th century for three different things which only overlapped. They weren’t the same and they came from different periods.” (04:46, Ronald Hutton)
  • Historically, the Greeks and Romans used “Celt” vaguely for people north of the Alps, yet generally excluded the British Isles.
  • The idea of a broad pan-European “Celtic” ethnicity—an ancient, united group—is a 20th-century academic construction, now largely debunked.
  • Today’s claimants of Celtic heritage (Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, Manx, Brittany) are best defined by shared language.

"The term 'Celtic' is appropriate for a group of languages ... then it can embody the tremendous cultural identity and gifts to the world of the Celtic speaking peoples since the early Middle Ages..." – Ronald Hutton (09:05)

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2. Violence and Stereotype – The “Unruly Celt”

• (10:19–14:29)
  • Anthony and Hutton dissect the common image of the wild, painted Celtic warrior, tracing its roots to hostile Roman and Victorian narratives.
  • Victorians like Matthew Arnold promoted the trope of the “moody, emotional, creative Celt,” which, while countering stereotypes of barbarity, cast Celts as incapable of self-governance.

"The stereotype of the Celt in modern times is not really linked to violence so much as unruliness... It’s an ethnic stereotype produced by hostile peoples. But it gets a new lease of life under the Victorians." – Ronald Hutton (11:13)

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3. The Cult of the Severed Head – Myth v. Archaeology

• (15:09–19:55)
  The idea of Celts as “head hunters” is nuanced:
  • Anne Ross’s influential 1960s work posited a pan-Celtic “cult of the head”—but much cited evidence, like carved stone heads, is now dated to the 16th/17th centuries or is otherwise ambiguous.
  • Archaeological deposits contain both skulls and other bones (e.g., thigh, arm), undermining the notion of a unique skull veneration.
  • Classical writers like Posidonius described head-collecting as trophies, suggesting a social or intimidation practice more than religious cult.

"There is absolutely no doubt that heads remain pretty common... And this could be because there was something sacred about them... Or it could simply be that some peoples in northwestern Europe collected them as trophies." – Ronald Hutton (18:29)

"When a hill fort at Breden Hill... had timber gates... carrying with them the severed heads who'd been stuck on the pointed tops..." – Ronald Hutton (19:35)

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4. Druids – Priests, Magicians, or Stereotype?

• (24:16–26:24)
  • "Druid" in Celtic languages refers broadly to religious/magical specialists.
  • Roman sources (Caesar) claim Gallic Druids were a powerful, organized priesthood, but these accounts are subject to skepticism due to questionable authorship.
  • In medieval Irish sources, “druid” can simply mean anyone practicing magic, and could pertain to poets, smiths, or even kings in the act.
  • There is little concrete evidence for specific Druidic rituals.

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5. The Wicker Man – History or Invention?

• (28:07–35:12)
  • The notorious image of human sacrifice via the "Wicker Man" comes from Caesar’s writings—but the relevant passage appears anomalous in style and may have been inserted posthumously by another author.
  • Later Greek writers (Diodorus Siculus, Strabo) reiterate these stories likely through Caesar’s account, raising questions of authenticity.
  • The enduring and chilling imagery, particularly from the 1670s illustrated history by Islet Sams, persists in popular culture.

"We can be pretty skeptical about the ancient descriptions of the Wicker Man. And we can also trace a complete and straightforward descent from Julius Caesar … so what looks like an eyewitness account of a culture may be nothing of the kind." – Ronald Hutton (29:40)

"Every time you see a picture of the Wicker man now on a tea towel... it's taken from this illustration to Islet Sam’s book..." – Ronald Hutton (31:50)

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6. Celtic Goddesses, Myth, and the Morrigan

• (36:19–41:44)
  • The Morrigan is the best-known Irish war goddess – complex, amorous, prophetic, and associated with both war and luck, unlike other war goddesses who chiefly inspire or celebrate slaughter.
  • Her attributes parallel other pan-European figures who blend war and sexuality (Freyja, Venus, Aphrodite, Inanna).
  • This complexity makes the Morrigan unique and speaks to the richness of Celtic myth.

"She is the very best known, especially at the present day, of the Irish war goddesses. But there are quite a number of them. The Morrigan has other dimensions that the other war goddesses lack... She is a prophetess of great things in general, including the good times, the bad times and the end of the world. She is amorous...but she also looks after people." – Ronald Hutton (36:24, 38:36)

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7. Influence of Romanization and the Survival of Celtic Culture

• (43:22–48:41)
  • The Roman conquest changed Britain over centuries: for 200 years, countryside life was unchanged, but gradually ‘Roman’ material culture permeated.
  • There is a duality in British identity—Romans as invaders v. Romans as civilizers, changing over the centuries.
  • Today, “Roman” influence is seen in urban architecture and structures throughout Europe, even in Ireland, but the core of Irish identity is still rooted in its distinct “Celticity.”
  • The revival of Celtic languages in Ireland and Scotland further strengthens modern identities.

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8. Magic, Witchcraft, and Cultural Difference

• (49:57–54:03)
  • Unlike other medieval European cultures, Irish and Welsh (and perhaps wider Celtic) medieval literature presents magic as a morally neutral, accessible force, used by deities and mortals alike.
  • Witch hunts were rare in most historically Celtic-speaking regions—in contrast to the more Romanized or Germanic/Scandinavian parts of Europe.

"There is a particular magic, and I’m choosing the word magic deliberately, about medieval Celtic literature. It goes to places and it does things which other medieval literatures don't... Magic was seen as a neutral force … in Ireland, it's not. It's used by good and bad guys. And really it's all morally equivalent." – Ronald Hutton (49:57)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the persistent myth of the violent Celt:

  "It's an ethnic stereotype produced by hostile peoples. But it gets a new lease of life under the Victorians..." – Ronald Hutton (11:13)

• On Druids:

  "Druid is simply the term used by people speaking Celtic languages for a specialist in religion and/or magic. But it's very broadly defined." – Ronald Hutton (24:47)

• On the mythic imagery of the Wicker Man:

  "Every time you see a picture of the Wicker man now on a tea towel... it's taken from this illustration to Islet Sam’s book." – Ronald Hutton (31:50)

• On Celtic magic:

  "Magic was seen as a neutral force ... in Ireland, it's not. It's used by good and bad guys. And really it's all morally equivalent." – Ronald Hutton (49:57)

• On current Celtic identity:

  "But Celticity is at the heart of Irishness and the more of it there is, the more attractive Irelands, Gaelic, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, Brittany become to everybody else..." – Ronald Hutton (47:55)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Who were the Celts? – (04:43–10:19)
• The “Unruly Celt” trope – (10:19–14:29)
• Cult of the Severed Head – (15:09–19:55)
• Druids and their role – (24:16–26:24)
• Wicker Man/Human Sacrifice – (28:07–35:12)
• Morrigan and Celtic Goddesses – (36:19–41:44)
• Romanization & Continuity – (43:22–48:41)
• Magic, Witchcraft & Cultural Attitude – (49:57–54:03)

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Tone & Closing Remarks

The conversation is lively, insightful, and occasionally witty — with Professor Hutton’s dry humor illuminating the pitfalls of projection and stereotype across centuries of mythmaking. Anthony brings warmth and curiosity, especially in exploring his own Irish heritage and the ways modern identity intersects with myth.

Closing quote:

“Well, I am off to reconnect with my Celtic magic roots for the afternoon... That’s been so interesting in terms of how we are framing national identities today, Ronald. And thank you for bringing some of those points to After Dark.” – Anthony Delaney (54:06)

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For Further Exploration:

• Episodes on the execution of Charles I and the origins of Halloween with Professor Hutton are recommended for listeners wanting more on British & Celtic traditions.
• Suggested resource: Pagan Celtic Britain by Anne Ross (for historical context, albeit now challenged in places).

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Contact & Feedback: Listeners are invited to suggest future episode topics at [e-mail].

Transcript

[Anthony]

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[Anthony]

The ancient Celts, a patchwork of tribes that spread across Europe, feared in battle, guided by Druids and bound together by ritual. Long before Rome pushed north, Celtic peoples ruled forests, hilltops, and river valleys. They built fortified settlements, forged weapons of iron, and lived in a world where warfare and worship were inseparable. To the Celts, power was not political, it was spiritual. Hello and welcome to After Dark. I'm Anthony and as you may have noticed, I am Maddie Less and have been for the last few episodes and will be for a short time to come yet because she is trekking in the Andes on discovery missions that will change the world. But until then, you have me and a plethora of incredible guests to navigate the historical terrain that we're about to discover today. And in this episode, we will be talking about the dark side of the Celts, the rituals, the violence and the dangers that these ancient societies. And who would we rather have to help us navigate that particular terrain than Professor Ronald Hutton, who is of course a returning guest and a fan favorite. And Professor Hutton is at the University of Bristol and specializes in early modern Britain, British folklore, pre Christian religion and modern paganism. Professor Hutton, welcome back to After Dark.

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

Thank you very much. I am a bit of plethora. It's delightful to be one.

[Anthony]

It is. This is a really interesting one for me. Right, because we're gonna be talking about the Celts and somebody had the nerve to say about middle aged Celts earlier and I don't know if I quite fit that category just yet, but we're not too far from it. Yeah, yeah, just about. But this is something culturally that we in Ireland grow up with. This idea of our Celtic, you know, DNA, our background, it is something that we carry with us. But actually I often wonder if we know what we're really carrying with us and actually how much Celt we are. So that's part of what we're going to get into today. But the first question I want to ask you is the most broad question so we can start from a very broad vantage point. And that is, who were the ancient Celts?

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

Anthony Mochri Be a Celt. I will. Be bold, be brave, be confident as a Celtic. The problem is that the term Celtic was used by the mid 20th century for three different things which only overlapped. They weren't the same and they came from different periods. There's an ethnic connotation in that the Greeks and Romans used the word Celts vaguely for people living north of the Alps, but they couldn't quite agree on who up there were Celts. The only thing they seem to have agreed upon is that anybody from what's now the British Isles were not Celts. There's also a term used for language groups, the Celtic languages, which was coined by Welshmen at the end of the 17th century. And finally it's used for a style of curvy, loopy art. Yes, tattoos. That's a 19th century coinage.

[Anthony]

So there's this, there's layers of what to be a Celt and what, what has Celtic links means. We, you spoke there about the kind of geographical elements, you talked about there being kind of a religious or, or a decorative element to it as well. All of these things but am I writing in saying that today where we find claims of Celtic ancestry is mainly in Ireland, obviously Wales, in Scotland, and then in the Cornish people and the Manx people as well, and then in Brittany. Right. Is that the main geographical location of where people are claiming Celtic descent today?

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

You've collected the lot of Celts in that. A collection of Celts, yes. Some people would admit the people of northwest Spain, the Galicians to the family, but they themselves are dubious about their identity in this regard. Archetypically, after about 30 years of recent argument between academics, we can reach something like a new consensus that the term Celtic can be applied resolutely to peoples who speak what we call the Celtic languages. And they are exactly the people who think of themselves and be thought of as Celts in the modern world. And they have a continuous identity as such. And history from the Middle Ages onwards, from the early Middle Ages. The big problem is that largely, I say largely, there are some holdouts against this, but they tend not to be in Britain or indeed even in Ireland. The holdouts are against the revision of a cultural package that got put together in the minds of academics in the early 20th century. It is not older than that. There'd still be people alive when the package was ditched, who were born when it was taking shape. And this is to see a unified ethnic group, The Celts, around 2,000, 3,000 years ago, stretching across Europe from Ireland, Turkey, and taking in the whole of what's now France and Southern Journey, Austria and other lands on the way, including northern Italy. And they were seen as having common languages, common art style, common culture. This has been abandoned. It really doesn't hang together. You can see, if you like a kind of rainbow, a spectrum of cultures stretching across that area before the Romans conquered most of it. But it's not a unified ethnic and linguistic group, or even a cultural group. So on the whole, we've tended to scrap the term Celts for that.

[Anthony]

Yeah.

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

And people still speak of Celtic art, but we now realize that a lot of other art at the time is displaying the same features.

[Anthony]

Right.

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

And therefore there is absolutely no doubt that the term Celtic is appropriate for a group of languages, simply because it's been used for so long and it's a precise definition, then it can embody the tremendous cultural identity and gifts to the world of the Celtic speaking peoples since the early Middle Ages, often under acute pressure from other peoples, Germanic or Romance speaking peoples, above all the British and the French, and their ability to preserve their identity as themselves through such a history. Which at very best is one of relentless cultural pressure and at the very worst is one of horrific persecution in places and times approaching genocide. So the Celts of the present day can wear their Celticity with pride, Celticity and have in a good one and a half millennia of continuous existence and identity behind them. The problem is only if you try and stretch across most of Europe over 2000 years ago.

[Anthony]

Now, you talked about this idea of persistence and the Celtic people overcoming, persisting, enduring, despite some of these incursions that have happened over, over different millennia. One of the things that I want to feed into here then is, is whether or not the, one of the ways in which this survival has endured is because of a stereotype that is linked to cultures of violence. When we hear about the Celts, I can conjure up an image in my head of somebody with wild hair, half painted blue, you know, almost naked, charging at a group of far more civilized invaders. How real is that when we talk about Celtic peoples, let's say in the Atlantic Archipelago or the former British Isles?

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

The stereotype of the Celt in modern times is not really linked to violence so much as unruliness. After all, the kind of violence disposed of by the Roman legion was sensational, acute, catastrophic. That they could slaughter people in huge numbers, but they marched in step, they were mechanically equipped, and so they look far more akin to modern industrial warfare than the primeval. So by contrast, we see the peoples whom the Romans and Greeks described as Celts, which is a kind of short term for anybody whom they haven't yet conquered, living north of the Alps is they are emotional, ungoverned, unruly, can't even comb their hair, paint themselves odd colors, run into battle naked. We can unpack all of those particular labels. It's an ethnic stereotype produced by hostile peoples. But it gets a new lease of life under the Victorians. And I'll especially finger Matthew Arnold here, who was so brilliant to getting everybody to believe it, that he was actually trying to get the Victorian English and Scots, Lowland Scots, to take the Celtic speaking peoples and their descendants seriously, not to disparage them by saying it's a partnership of peoples. And what the English and the Lowland Scots, the Germanic peoples, remember Lowland Scots, speak a Germanic language, Scots breed, Scots is they're good at maths, sciences, building, rationality, structured government, taxation, welfare. And what the Celts are, who are kind of unreasonable, undisciplined, unorganizable, is they're really, really good at art and literature. They live with their emotions, they live close to nature. They reconnect the urbanized, industrialized Germanic peoples with their natural roots and their imaginative life. Without them, the Germanic peoples would die imaginatively, creatively. So the moody, emotional, creative Celt is absolutely essential to civilization in the British family of peoples. But of course, it does mean they can't rule themselves.

[Anthony]

Funny that, isn't it? Yeah.

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

Yes. Yes. There has to be a payoff here for a Brit.

[Anthony]

Yeah. No, I'm suddenly feeling more moody, dramatic, artistic. Cels is suddenly feeling far more my lane of Celticism than potentially any kind of warrior Celticism.

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

I, by the way, I'm half Slav.

[Anthony]

Ah.

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

The Germanic peoples have actually parodied the Slavs and just, you know, emotional, undisciplined, can't rule themselves, that sort of thing.

[Anthony]

Oh, that's so interesting. Yeah. It's that they can't be trusted with their own. With the outcome of their own civilizations.

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

Yeah. But aren't they wonderful?

[Anthony]

But they're lovely. They're great for a poem. Tell me this, then. In this melee of different things coming together to form these peoples, depending on where we're encountering them, there is one thing that I have encountered again and again, which is I'm not sure how realistic this was across Celtic peoples or whether it was very specific to Wales. I think this idea of the cult of the severed head, or actually possibly more specifically the skull, is that really something that we see preserved archaeologically?

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

The question of the cult of the severed head in Iron Age Northwest Europe is a vexed one, because on the one hand, the idea of it comes very specifically from one rather wonderful person, somebody who was not actually an academic, but who was a foundationally great scholar, and that's Anne Ross, who wrote this breathtakingly good book, Pagan Celtic Britain. It was good for its time, which was the 60s, the late 60s. And it was she who had the idea that the Celts, which in her day were still believed to be a confederacy of peoples all related, stretching across Europe, had a cult of the head, severed or otherwise. And this is still possible because heads are important in Celtic art and you do find skulls preserved in various ritual structures from the Iron Age, but you also find long bones, thigh and arm bones, preserved in the same context. It isn't just skulls. And Anne was particularly keen on a particularly large collection of stoneheads, carved stone heads, which are found over England and in bits of Wales which were dated vaguely to the Iron Age at that time. Problem there is they are now, most of them conclusively dated to the 16th, 17th centuries, although they May have had a ritual function then, in being protective. On the other hand, they also had a humorous function. For example, quite a number of them have a hole drilled in the corner or the center of the mouth. And back in Anne's day, it was thought this was for libations of mead or beer, to feed the deity of whom this was an image. We're now pretty sure that these were receptacles for clay pipes.

[Anthony]

Perfect.

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

And people would then throw balls to try and knock the pipe out. So an awful edifice of belief bites the dust with the redating the remaining heads. Most of them are simply undated. They may be Iron Age, but they may not be. So we're left with the skulls and the bones. And because there are bones as well as skulls and a lot of Iron Age deposits, it's not a particular cult of the head. But also heads remain pretty common. And this could be because there was something sacred about them, the repository of wisdom, of life. Or it could be simply that some peoples in northwestern Europe collected them as trophies. And we do have a literary source. Posidonius, a Greek traveler who toured what's now France, was then Gaul, a few hundred years before the Christian common era. And he said that over the southern two thirds of what's now France, the tribes would collect the heads of their unsuccessful enemies and preserve them in vats of oil. And they'd bring them out at dinner parties to display to their guests. Like family china or games night. Yes, that's exactly right. But we don't know which is which. Whether there's any sacred significance or this is because of headhunting. There is a display, an intimidation factor here, as well as pride in family heirlooms of deceased enemies. When a hill fort at Breden Hill, which is the hill that sticks out of the area of the M5 between Tewkesbury and Worcester on the right hand side. There's a fort on there from the Iron Age and it had timber gates which crashed in flames about a hundred years before the Common era, carrying with them the severed heads who'd been stuck on the pointed tops of the gate timbers.

[Anthony]

Right.

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

Which is fairly clearly a kind of welcome to would be enemies showing what's going to happen to them.

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[Professor Ronald Hutton]

land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series, Chasing Shots Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by historyhit. There are new episodes every week.

[Anthony]

It's interesting, isn't it? Because as you're describing that, Ronald, it really strikes me, you know, the heads are being displayed as you're hinting there in the all throughout the early modern period in, in very similar ways in that kind of deterrent. Or this is an example of what might happen to you. And we never really say in that case, oh, they had the cult of the severed. But it's that idea that because we don't necessarily know or because there are some gaps to fill in that we've slightly mythologized some of that practice in terms of what they might have been doing. So I find that really interesting. But speaking of mythologies that are coming into these peoples and these cultures, Druids. How are Druids Celts? Is this a sect within Celticism? Is this a totally separate group of people? What is the intersection and what's the relationship between Celticism or the Celtic people and Druids?

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

The Druids are a point at which the ancient idea of Celts and the sustained and respectable idea of Celts as people speaking Celtic languages and having cultures that evolved since the Middle Ages, they come into one here because Druid is simply the term used by people speaking Celtic languages for a specialist in religion and or magic.

[Anthony]

I see.

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

But it's very broadly defined. So in the Roman descriptions of pre Roman Gaul, that's now France, which the Romans conquered, the Druids are a highly trained and organized supra tribal priesthood who take 20 years of education and have a common meeting altogether in the center of Gaul, irrespective of their tribes, and are regarded as very powerful and very wise. We don't know if any of this is true. It all comes from one commentator, Caesar, or possibly from some unknown person finishing Caesar's book after Caesar got knifed. Whereas in medieval Irish literature, Druid is simply a term for Anybody who's working magic. Now, there are full time magicians who are therefore full time druids, and they're very important. But anybody who works magic seems to become a druid at the time at which they're working magic. The rest of the time they're a blacksmith or a poet, a king or something else. So it's a lot more porous. And I think it's quite important not to impose Caesar's or pseudo Caesar's possibly bogus picture of an Iron Age Gallic Gaulish society upon Ireland, or vice versa. Not to mix the two together in one big melting pot and produce a composite picture of druids that may never have existed across. Across the whole Celtic world.

[Anthony]

And do we know what types of practice or what types of magic they're engaging in? Is this land based? Is this seasonal based? Is it something that they're trying to control the area around them? Is it healing? Is it all of the above? Are we left with any proof as to what they're doing there?

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

The record is disappointingly barren of actual records of Druid rituals or spells. In fact, the main one we have is from the destruction of Dardega's hostel, which is one of the most stunning Irish medieval stories. And it's a rite called the Tarvesh, the Bull Dream, which describes how they say, a man. But we take that as being a druid. Become the context when you want to get a vision, in this case to choose the next king you sacrifice or just kill a white bull, and then you get the man concerned to gorge upon a kind of Irish stew without the potatoes of the meat, and having bloated himself, then go to sleep on the hide of the bull, and he will then have a dream, and that dream will be prophetic to identify the new king. It all sounds very convincing. Being medieval Irish literature, we have no idea whether this is an authentic memory of a Druidic ritual, which it might well be, or whether it was just a bright idea on the part of the fillet, the olive, the bard who was composing that particular tale.

[Anthony]

It's tantalizing in a way, because I remember those stories growing up about the lying and the remnants of the bull, and they were definitely around just as kind of oral tradition, but we were definitely talking around those topics in school. Another thing that I recognize from the Druid practice is this idea of when I saw this, I went, that can't be right. But the idea of the Wicker man and what is potentially happening there, and it's this large well, supposedly this large wicker statue in which the Druids would sacrifice humans and animals for burning. Now this is coming from somebody you've already warned us about, Ronald, which is of course Julius Caesar or somebody adjacent to him. And in that it says there were figures of vast size, the limbs of which formed of Osiers, they fill with living men, which being set on fire, the men perish enveloped in the flames. And he frames the ritual as within broader sacrificial beliefs, saying Gauls think that unless the life of a man be offered for the life of a man, the mind of the immortal gods cannot be rendered propitious. So how skeptical should we be of this particular, this particular description that's left to us by Julius Caesar or Caesar adjacent?

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

We can be pretty skeptical about the ancient descriptions of the Wicker Man. And we can also trace a complete and straightforward descent from Julius Caesar or at least Caesar's book. And Christopher Lee in drag in the 1970s movie Caesar actually conquered Gaul, so he would have encountered its native peoples and their pre Roman condition and been pretty reliable. But the description of the Wicker man, as we call it in Caesar's description of Gaul is in a self contained section that doesn't sound like the style of the rest of the book. And actually what Caesar says in the rest of the book is sometimes contradicted by this passage and vice versa. So it looks like an insertion. And we know that Caesar never actually finished the book, the Gallic War. It was completed after his death by another writer who hadn't accompanied Caesar to Gaul. And so there's a possibility that the writer concerned decided to liven up Caesar's narrative by inserting this description of Gaul based upon less reliable sources. So what looks like an eyewitness account of a culture may be nothing of the kind. There are later references to human sacrifices conducted by Druids, one of which includes the Wicker man motif in writers a bit later, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, they're Greek writers who never went near Gaul. And indeed the description of the Wicker man may have been taken from Caesar or pseudo Caesar. So the evidence is distinctly suspect. But it not only was taken as gospel by everybody who was impressed by the Romans, which was practically everybody in Europe until the 20th century, or even the late 20th century, but also by Christians to whom the idea of pagan priests as being dyed to the elbows in human sacrifice was a traditional motif. And that's why the Wicker man became very popular, became very popular in particular because of one bestseller which was a history of Britain, produced by a lawyer called Eilet Sams, who's pretty well forgotten now in the 1670s. And the great thing about it was it was illustrated, really great pictures. And one of the pictures was of the Wicker Man. And every time you see a picture of the Wicker man now on a tea towel, I have one or reproduced in books. And as you see it in the film the Wicker man, it's taken from this illustration to Islet Sam's book. So, you know, a picture it says is worth a thousand words and certainly in impact, this particular picture proves that truth.

[Anthony]

Well, I have an image that was a perfect segue into this part for me, Ronald, because I've got a picture of an 18th century illustration from a tour in Wales written by Thomas Pennant. And without a doubt this is also influenced by your late 17th century image that you're talking about. And I'll just describe it here for listeners and we'll put this on the YouTube and on social media as. But we have a very giant figure with a very human face, actually very, very human face, probably what, five times the size of the other humans. Well, not others, because this isn't a human, but the humans depicted in this image. And it is gigantic. It is probably about four or five people. An arm is about four or five people wide and the body looks like a cage for all intents and purposes. Obviously we know it's made from wicker or we're being told in this image that it is and it is stuffed and that's the only word I can use, really stuffed, with people squirming, wriggling. There's arms and legs protruding from the cage that they're held in. Then down on the bottom, there is a man who looks like he is trying to run away as quickly as he possibly can because he is setting light to the right hand foot, which of course then will engulf the whole thing. And then looking on, we have the scantily clad women, we have religious figures, someone who looks quite Druidic actually. And it is a very arresting, very arresting image. But it's interesting how long and how deep these ideas go. But it also spreads speaks this idea that you talked about at the top, Ronald, about the brutality that con that, the brutality that other civilizations almost insisted that the Celts and the Druids had to have had and that, you know, we are more civilized than this, we would never do this. It's rather, it's pretty gruesome.

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

Does the illustration which you've just described have an One of the two feet, a trapdoor still open with somebody being stuffed in.

[Anthony]

Yes.

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

You're looking at. You're looking at Eyelet Sam's illustration.

[Anthony]

Right. This is where it's coming from. Yes. There's a little. A ladder up to the. Into a door that's still open where people have just gone in. Yeah, absolutely. They're being fed into it to meet their. Their. Their darkened doom. Let's talk a little bit about the Irish Celtic tradition, then, specifically, because I want to talk about the fact that this is somewhat different than the Celtic tradition in mainland Britain, because the Romans never invade Ireland. And it's. It's also then some of these traditions are encapsulated in the Tuathed Danan, which is written at approximately the 11th century, but has much, much older oral storytelling roots. I want to turn to Morrigan specifically, a potentially D figure. Can you explain to us who she is? For people who may not know?

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

I'll explain with delight who Morrigan is. We're friends.

[Anthony]

We are the same.

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

We have relationships, she and I. Yeah. She is the very best known, especially at the present day, of the Irish war goddesses. But there are quite a number of them. In fact, There are over 40 names in the tales, although we can relax a bit because only five of them are named regularly, and indeed only one more is named more than once. The others have names that are well known to experts in medieval Irish literature, where they appear as frequently as the Morrigan, but they tend to be forgotten now by the public because the Morrigan has other dimensions that the other war goddesses lack, because all the other war goddesses do is incite slaughter, prophecy slaughter, and enjoy slaughter. They start trouble as well as really enjoying it, whereas the Morrigan does more things than that. She is a prophetess of great things in general, including the good times, the bad times and the end of the world. She is amorous. She mates with the Doctor, the good God, and enjoys it so much they've already met. This is a date. She's ready for him when he turns up. And she enjoys it so much that, inspired by this, she then goes off and murders the king of an opposing army in order to give the people of the Dakhta, who are also her own people, but kind of more important, the Doctor, the ability to win a major battle. And also she propositions the Ulster hero par excellence, Cuchulainn. Cuchulainn being a brat, a moody late

[Anthony]

adolescent with a Hurley.

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

Yes. With a sideline in homicide. No, actually, a Central profession in homicide. Rudely rejects Cuchullain. Rudely rejects most propositions.

[Anthony]

Yes.

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

And she then attempts to get vengeance by killing him, and he beats her off. But she also looks after people. She helps a druid win his sweetheart in one minor story. In other stories, she actually gets married to the doctor. They settle down in the Brune Bogna and they have a family. It all sounds quite domestic. You have medieval place names like the Morrigan's half and the Morrigans cooking pot. You know the Morrigan at home.

[Anthony]

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. What is that? Yeah.

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

Yes. And she gives luck to people. She gives them victory.

[Anthony]

I think that's how I would know her. That's what her legacy is to me mostly, is a luck thing. Yeah.

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

Yes. So if you want to strip it down to its essentials, really, what most of the other war goddesses do, what all of the other war goddesses do, is mostly spread panic.

[Anthony]

Yes.

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

They make a hundred warriors die of fright by flying above their camp and screaming at night. They enjoy watching people suffer and die, whereas the Morrigan gives the opposite panic instead. Or maybe as well, which is the battle frenzy when warriors lose their fear completely and give themselves up to combat. Now, this is not unique. I think she's the extreme northwestern corner. Yeah, the. Not a northwestern corner. Of a complex of similar goddesses who are found across Europe. The Norse one is Freyja. The Roman one is Venus. The Greek one, not so much on the war side, but it's. There is Aphrodite, but spectacularly Inanna, alias Ishtar in the near east and probably Anat Astarte Ashtat in Syria. What they all do is rather counterintuitively to any modern hippie. They combine a sponsorship of war with a sponsorship of love and sex. And although nobody ever spells out why, everyone just knew, so nobody explained it. There is a similarity because both combat, which in those days is really single combat all over the battlefield, and lovemaking are a dramatic engagement of bodies which engage with vital fluids and in which people lose themselves. They lose reason, they lose control. And so they may come from the same source. The ecstasy of sex and of the passion of love.

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[Anthony]

This is one of the ways in which, you know, we, we still hear about the Morrigan, I suppose is because of the ways in which I'm talking about the. The Romans never conquered Ireland and so therefore certain things endure in different ways. But, but just to balance that out, Ronald, I wonder what the impact of Roman conquest is on the culture outside of Ireland. How immediate is that felt, that Roman presence felt?

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

The Roman presence takes time to seep into a culture, but the Romans have got a lot of that hundreds of years, and you can see it in the archeology and it still presents us with a moral problem in Britain at the present day. Because for the first 200 years of Roman Britain, once you get away from the towns and the forts into the countryside, which is where 98% of people live, it's an Iron Age culture. You don't have anything Roman about it at all. People are now being taxed in their produce and they're disarmed, but they're just doing what they've done for a thousand years. In the same way, when you come to the third or fourth centuries, particularly the fourth, it's changed. On the typical farmstead, you'll find Roman pottery, Roman utensils and Roman money. I mean, like small denomination copper coins, but they're all there. So even the rural Brits have got thoroughly Romanized. Yes, that of course, at the present day provides what would be a dilemma for novelists, playwrights, artists, if the two ever met from the different bits of Roman Britain. Because if you're looking at the first century, then the Romans are the villainous invaders. It's Caractarchus. Above all, it's Boudicca, the kind of British feminist who are the figures with whom we sympathize. And the Romans are jackbooting their way onto our shores and building horrible new towns with dead straight new roads between them. Any protester would recognize a target there and establishing a uniform tyranny. In the words of the Scotsman Kalgarchus, who may or may Not. And which may or may not have been invented by a Roman. The Romans created a desert and called it peace. But flip on 300 years or 400 years and it's Roman Britain, which is the civilized, Christian, safe, familiar area. It's the Anglo Saxons who are the verminous, hirsute heathen warriors coming over to rape and pillage and destroy and enslave. And it's characters like Arthur and Aurelius and Euther Pendragon who are the defenders of Britain, the sympathetic figures. Yes, it's a. It's a schizophrenia in our attitude to the Romans which reflects a reality of a non Romanized and a thoroughly Romanized Roman Britain.

[Anthony]

That's interesting. Do you think that legacy of a Romanized Britain then is more with us in everyday life today than potentially the. The Celtic Britain that we've been talking about? Or do you think we have a str mashup of the two things side by side here? Because sometimes I think it's way more blatant in Ireland and Scotland. And even when we're talking about language and that's going through such a huge revival in Ireland anyway. I can't speak to Scotland, but I think it might be the same. But the language is really making a comeback as we try to reestablish 100 plus years now after Ireland was no longer part of. Of the British Empire, that the language is now finding its feet again, as it did at the end of the 19th century. Is it the Roman ness that distinguishes Englishness from the current ideas of Englishness from those earlier Celtic iterations? Or is it just because history is difficult? Right. And it all melds together? But how present, I suppose, is what I'm asking, how present is the Roman influence even today?

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

History is difficult, but we shouldn't shirk its challenges. In one sense, Ireland is Romanized at the present day because if you walk through the streets of Dublin, you're looking at classical buildings in the Roman style, you're looking at columns on which national heroes stand, you're looking at sculptures of mythical beings or historic beings. Mother Liffey, Anna Liffey, and people who are commemorated. This is a Roman style. And indeed every time Ireland, or indeed anywhere in Europe goes urban, it Romanizes. So we're all Romans in that sense. But Celticity is at the heart of Irishness and the more of it there is, the more attractive Irelands, Gaelic, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, Brittany. Become to everybody else, you know, Goramala Mahagat. Yeah, you're doing a grand job.

[Anthony]

I can't take personal, I can't take Personal responsibility. I do love a rule, as it so happens, but this idea of, of the unruly Celt, there is something to be said for it, Right?

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

Yeah. A lot of the British and the Germanic peoples of Europe are Celts when they're on holiday.

[Anthony]

Yeah. Around a pool when they want to get the lounger closest to the pool. Yeah. Suddenly they embrace their Celtic past. It's an interesting one, Ronald. It's interesting how these things bleed through and how the mythology goes on to inform what is either factual or what we want to believe. I was reading somewhere. No, I was watching somewhere recently that there was this idea that Celtic Ireland was a utopia for women, for instance. And there was a great historian online going that really wasn't the case because they were trying to compare the idea of pre colonized Ireland being this liberal, incredible place. But the research she had done just didn't bear that out, that it actually was quite an oppressive place for women even then. And so I just wonder as a way to depart from this, to what extent, in terms of that unruliness that we're talking about, to what extent does dream making, and we spoke about this when we talked about prehistoric Britain as well. But does dream making fill in some of these gaps of Celticism? And actually, how appropriate is that in terms of what we do know about Celtic tradition,

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

there is a particular magic, and I'm choosing the word magic deliberately about medieval Celtic literature. It goes to places and it does things which other medieval literatures don't. Although there are overlaps, the French romances of the 12th century are full of glittering, glamorous, magical, human like, but non human beings called Faes, who correspond pretty well completely to Arthur de Denard in the Irish literature of the same age. But I'm taking a punt here because I don't think anybody has articulated this before, but I would go further than people have done hitherto to suggest that the Irish and Welsh, and therefore possibly the Celtic cultures, have a different attitude to magic, that if you look at the literatures, it's kind of a neutral force which deities use in Ireland and humans can use, and it's totally respectable for them to do it. And if they use it in a hostile way, then it's up to their opponents to deploy it against them. So you'll get your druids to curse each other if it's a political matter, otherwise in a private matter, you curse back. Whereas the other peoples of Europe, and it's pretty much a sellout, the Greeks, the Romans, the Germans, the Scandinavians, have an intense suspicion of magic as something furtive, antisocial, suspect, cheating. It's used by the bad guys in stories in Ireland. It's not. It's used by good and bad guys. And really it's all morally equivalent. It's just that it's used by villainous characters, it's used for bad purposes. And I think that is a genuine difference. And it's not just the Celtic speaking peoples as we define them now, it's the Egyptians. I don't think there's any connection between the two. But in Egypt, likewise, marriage magic was seen as a neutral force, heka, which kept the world going. And gods use it every day to be divine. It's how they operate the cosmos. But humans can learn it too. And if they're really, really good, they become gods.

[Anthony]

Wow.

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

And if you want to hex somebody, you just do it. And if you feel you're being hexed, you either hex back or you go to a professional in the temple to do the hexing for you. There's no such thing as witchcraft in ancient Egypt to find in the negative sense. And there's not much of it in the Celtic speaking peoples either. Which is why when the notorious witch hunts of the early modern period, 16th, 17th centuries come along, they're almost missing from all the Celtic speaking areas.

[Anthony]

Yeah. We don't have them in the same way in Ireland at all.

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

You have them in Ireland among Scottish and English settler communities.

[Anthony]

Yes.

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

And you have them in Wales in the more English influenced areas, but hardly what is in its five executions, not all of which may be carried out in the whole of early modern Wales. The Isle of Man is the same. They have one execution that horrifies them so much they never try it again. Which trials are pretty well missing from the vast area of Highlands and Western Isle Scotland. But in the Northern Isles, which are geographically about the same and very close to the Highlands, you have a Norse culture, Scandinavian settlement, and they're appallingly intense areas for witch hunting. Just like Norway, Denmark, Sweden.

[Anthony]

You're finding them there.

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

Yeah.

[Anthony]

Well, I am off to reconnect with my Celtic magic roots for the afternoon. Well, I'm not. I'm away to give a talk. Actually, it's far less glamorous than that. But either way, that's been so interesting in terms of how we are framing national identities today, Ronald. And thank you for bringing some of those points to After Dark. We have a few other episodes that you may remember that we had Ronald on. And that of course was histories from the early modern period when we're talking about the execution of Charles the First. We also spoke to Ronald about the origins of Halloween and the history that, as we can see, they're tying into some of the things we talked about today. So if you haven't listened to those episodes, do go back through the back catalogue, listen to them and learn about those different parts of history as well. Thank you, as ever, for joining us on YouTube or on the podcast. And you can get in touch with us, of course, as ever, on After Dark by sending an email to after darkistoryhit.com where you can of course suggest a topic for a future episode. So do send those in. We do look at them and we do start to try and work them into the program as we can. Thank you for listening and until next time, happy listening.

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