Nemeton

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In Celtic culture, a nemeton was a sacred grove used on occasion for performing ritual animal sacrifices, and other such rituals. The grove itself might be personified as Nemetona, attested in votive and founding inscriptions. The word may be traced in the Irish Nemed husband of Macha and in naomh ("holy").

Pliny and Lucan wrote that druids did not meet in stone temples or other constructions, but in sacred groves of trees. In his Pharsalia Lucan described such a grove near Massilia in dramatic terms more designed to evoke a shiver of delicious horror among his Roman hearers than meant as proper natural history: no bird nested in the nemeton, nor did any animal lurk nearby; the leaves constantly shivered though no breeze stirred. Altars stood in its midst, and the images of the gods. Every tree was stained with sacrificial blood. the very earth groaned, dead yews revived; unconsumed trees were surrounded with flame, and huge serpents twined round the oaks. The people feared to approach the grove, and even the priest would not walk there at midday or midnight lest he should then meet its divine guardian. Testimony of such groves has been found in Germany, Switzerland, Czech Republic and Hungary in Central Europe, in many sites of ancient Gaul in Britannia and Ireland. Sacred groves may have been widespread until the Romans attacked and conquered Gaul in increments.

"Shining Mars" (Mars Lucetius) as Rigonemeti ("King of the sacred grove") and Nemetona are attested in Roman inscriptions in Nettleham, near Lincoln, and at Bath, where a native of Treves erected an altar to Mars Loucetius and Nemetona, in fulfillment of a vow. A nemeton is in the Roman placename Vernemeton (now Willoughby-on-the-Wolds, Nottinghamshire) and in the 1194 reference to Nametwihc, "Sanctuary-Town," (Nantwich, Cheshire).^[1] In Scotland, nemeton place-names are quite frequent.^[2]

A well known nemeton site is in the Nevet forest near Locronan in Brittany. Gournay-sur-Aronde, in the Oise department of France, also houses the remains of a nemeton. Echoes of nemeton survive in many French place-names^[3] In Paris, a case has been made for "Namet" in a line of doggerel of about 1270, as the ancient name for the Quartier du Temple on the Right Bank.^[4]

In Ireland, there was a chapel Nemed at Armagh and another on SliabnFhuait.^[5]

Such nemetons also existed as far east as the Gaulish region of Galatia in Anatolia, where Strabo records the name of the meeting-place of the council of the Galatians as Drunemeton.^[6]

[edit] Notes

^ E.Ekwall, Concise Oxford Dictionary of Place-Names (Oxford) 1936:320 col. a.
^ W.G. Watson, History of the Celtic Place-Names of Scotland (Edinburgh) 1920.
^ Some are listed at Roman Britain.
^ Louis H. Gray, "`Et Toz les Bons Sains de Namet'" Speculum 28.2 (April 1953), pp. 376-377
^ E. Hogan, Onomasticon Goidelicum (Dublin) 1910, noted by Gray 1953.
^ Compare drys, "oak".