were there druid priests practising ritual human sacrifice – was there ever a Celtic Festival of the dead ?
…’The Celts’ have suffered hundreds of years of mystical idealisation with New Age words put in their mouths centuries after they fought and died. The ‘Celtic Twilight’ is an ethereal dreamworld based on a romantic longing for a lost paradise that never really existed. The true ‘Celtic culture’ was magnificent – battles were met with frenzy, feasting and drinking were legendary, visual art and craftsmanship was unsurpassed and the bards sung eulogies and told tales of love and strength and the world of magic. Equally their life was harsh and unforgiving. They kept slaves and ruthlessly slew their enemies, keeping their decapitated heads as trophies. They were quick to anger, quarrelsome and drank to excess. The Celtic tribes were indeed passionate about life and death but we trivialise their memory to turn them into a mere romantic ideal… …Samain was a celebration of the time that had been; you feasted on the best of the harvest and the fresh meat before it was salted for winter.
