Sacred Groves of Siluria

Everybody it seems, loves a Druid. 

Since the 18th century Romantic revival, Druids - the priestly class in ancient Celtic culture - have become inextricably linked with the Neo-pagan movement and a kind of harking back to "the good old days" when we "got down" with nature and the cycle of the seasons. 

The French tip their berets to Druidry with the avuncular character of Getafix in the Asterix comic book series, while in Britain old bearded men in white robes (usually accompanied by much younger women) descend on Stonehenge to celebrate the Solstices and remove orange paint spattered all over the monument by Stop Oil protesters. 

In Welsh popular culture, where we still venerate that other ancient Celtic class - the Bardoi or Bards - we tend to view Druids a little satirically. In the classic cult book noir "Aberystwyth Mon Amour", Druids are characterised as "gangsters in mistletoe" driving round in Montegos with blacked-out 

windows and terrorising the local population. 

Roman Accounts. 

Roman authors wrote that Druids did not meet in stone temples or other constructions, but in sacred groves of trees, known as Nemeta. In his Pharsalia the Roman poet Lucan described such a grove near Massilia in rather lurid terms; 

"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"

These accounts are likely to have been embellished to justify Roman persecution of "Barbarians"; but the Druids were leaders of resistance to Roman rule. In Britannia, the centre of Druidic learning was said to be Mona, modern Anglesey, Wales. Roman attempts to attack Mona in 60AD were interrupted by the uprising of Boudicea, leader of the Iceni tribe. 

It's quite possible the Silures, further south, had their own sacred groves and indeed modern place name evidence in Silure territory hints at the original location of such places, and indeed at the nature of the deities worshipped by the Silures, a warlike tribe.  

Gwernyfed. 

Gwernyfed is a tiny little community that sits just south of the meandering river Wye, snaking it's way through the heart of mid-Wales. It takes it's name from Gwernyfed Park, a medieval deer park. The Gwernyfed estate is ancient, believed to have been gifted to Peter Gunter by Bernard de Neufmarche, one of the earliest of the Norman Marcher Lords. Intriguingly, there appears to have been a significant amount of Roman military activity in this area; a marching camp sits just outside the nearby village of Aberllynfi; later a permanent Roman fort was built nearby. 

But the other intriguing thing about the name Gwernyfed is that there's actually five of them; all of them situated in and around probable Silure tribal territory. It appears to include two place name elements - "Gwern" - "Alder" and "Nyfed" which is a modern Welsh rendering of ancient Brittonic "Nemet"; a sacred grove. Rendered in Common Brittonic the name reads "Vernemeton". 

Also notable is the strong occurrence of the name element "Llanwern/Llan y wern" - the Enclosure of the Alder Tree. Again, almost all of these place names occur either around Brecon or Gwent. 

Figure 1. Gwernyfed and Llanywern place names (all concentrated in SE Cymru)

As a place name element "Vernemeton" occurs elsewhere in Britain; at Willoughby-in-the-Wolds in Lincolnshire lies the ancient Roman station of Vernemeto. An ancient British site, it sits along the ancient routeway known as Watling Street; later adapted by the Romans, it was probably originally a major Iron Age trade route. Generally Vernemeton is translated as "The Grove of Spring" or "The Great Grove" but the "Gwern" element in modern Welsh suggests that the proper meaning is "Sacred Grove of the Alder Tree." And this is where it gets really interesting, as the Alder tree has strong mythic and folkloric associations with warfare. 

The Mythology of Alder. 

The Alder tree has a key place in Welsh and Irish myth. And it's strongest association is with warfare. 

In the Mabinogi of Branwen, Gwern, son of Bran is plunged by his jealous uncle Efnisien into the fire, provoking outright war between Wales and Ireland. In the poem the Battle of the Trees, the sorcerer Gwydion raises an army of trees, in the vanguard of which is the Alder tree. Curiously in the Irish tree alphabet, the "Ogham", Alder is named in exactly the same way as "Vanguard of Warriors". 

It is a tree pre-eminently associated with warfare. Cut an Alder tree and it's sap is blood red. 

But the Battle of the Trees also hints at a hidden calendrical role for the Alder tree. Alder is placed at the vanguard because it is the first of trees, associated with the Spring, and in fact proto-Celtic "Werna" is cognate to latin "Ver" "Spring" which would explain why some translators have trouble with the name "Vernemeton" and assume the first element is Latin, translating the name as "Sacred Grove of the Spring". 

But the Alder wasn't just a tree; it represented a God. Romano-British altar stones found in the north of England attest to the Celtic deity Vernostonus - the god of the Alder tree. This figure in turn is linked to the deity Cocidius - the "Red God", equated by the Romans with Mars, the God of warfare.  

The Romans further associated Cocidius with Silvanus, god of forests, groves and wild fields. 

Gods of Forest Warfare

The Romans equated Mars with many native divinities. However it seems from the record that the divinities in question represented different, specialised functions of Mars. At Caerwent, the remains of a statue with a pair of human and a pair of goose feet bear a dedication to the god Mars Lenus or Ocellus Vellaunus. It's believed that Brittonic Lenus in modern Welsh is "Llwyn" which means "Mars of the Grove". Caerwent sits just below the forest of Wentwood, which back in the Iron Age would have covered a vast area of modern Gwent. 

Perhaps it's no surprise that the Silures, a notoriously warlike tribe, venerated martial gods. However it seems they revered divinities that smiled upon a particular aspect of the martial tradition - forest warfare. These sacred sites tell us much about the nature of the landscape in which the Silures waged war upon the Roman invaders. While much of coastal and upland Wales in the Iron Age was probably not dissimilar to the modern Welsh countryside, the myriad smaller valleys of the interior were likely heavily forested, ideally suited to the "hit and run" guerilla tactics waged even up to Glyndwr's day.  

However, what these sacred spaces also hint at is social organisation, as in some cases they are closely located next to powerful hillforts that further demonstrate their significance to a powerful military elite.

 

           Figure 2.      Llanwern Church - note it's central location in relation to the surrounding hillforts

               Figure 3. Gwernyfed (Vernemeton) - note it's location behind Castell y Dinas hillfort. 

All of which begs the question really. If we have the sacred groves, and we have the military leaders...where were the Druids?