SMC606 The Odest Diety

The bear is no longer indigenous to the British Isles or to Ireland and it does not appear in old Celtic stories. But we begin with the bear, be-cause its veneration is so ancient that the Celts received It from their European Stone Age ancestors in the forms of the goddess Brigid, King Arthur, London's Artemis cult, and the site of Thomas the Rhymer's abduction. Stone figures of bears ft6m the pagan Celtic period were found in 1840 during the rebuilding of Ireland's Armagh Cathedral. There is a bear carved in the eighth century C.E. into a relief found at Meigle, in Perthshire and another fearsome bear on one of the slabs at St. Vigeans. The bear also appears in illuminated manuscripts prepared by Celtic monks.