The Ancient Irish Goddess of War — The Conjure Compass Institute

One Missing LetterA Gallo-Roman votive from Haute-Savoie1

What was found

1The discovery of a Gallo-Roman inscription, figured in the Revue Savoisienne of 15th November, 1867, and republished by M. Adolphe Pictet in the Revue Archéologique for July, 1868, forms the subject of one of those essays from the pen of the veteran philologist […]¹

[ ]ATHVBODVAE AVG
SERVILIA TERENTIA
V S L MTo —athubodua Augusta · Servilia Terentia · paid her vow, willingly and deservedly

2The inscription, the initial letter of which has been destroyed by an injury to the stone […] if he is right in his suggestion (which is very probably) that the letter destroyed was a c, and that ATHUBODVÆ should be read CATHUBODVÆ, the title is not inappropriate; and in the CATHUBODVÆ of the inscription we may recognise the badb-catha of Irish mythology.²

The etymology

3The first member of the name (cathu, = Irish cath, «pugna») presents but little difficulty […] but the second member, bodua, although entering largely into the composition of names amongst all the nations of Celtic origin from the Danube to the islands of Aran, is confessedly capable of explanation only through the medium of the Irish.³

4[…] bodb or badb (pron. bov or bav), originally signifying rage, fury, or violence and ultimately implying a witch, fairy, or goddess, represented by the bird known as the scare-crow, scald-crow, or Royston-crow, not the raven as M. Pictet seems to think.⁴

Why Hennessy is writing at all

5M. Pictet proceeds to illustrate the character of the Badb […] by the help of a few brief and scarcely intelligible references from the printed books, the only materials accessible to him, but finds himself unable to complete his task, "for want of sufficient details," as he observes more than once.⁵

6The printed references […] are no doubt few, but the ancient tracts, romances, and battle pieces preserved in our Irish MSS. teem with details respecting this Badb-catha and her so-called sisters.⁶

1Pictet, and the shape of the exchange

Adolphe Pictet was a Swiss philologist of real standing — the man who coined paléontologie linguistique, the practice of reconstructing prehistoric culture from comparative vocabulary. His essay was titled Sur une Déesse Gauloise de la Guerre.Context

The structure of the paper is worth naming at the outset: a Continental philologist reaches the limit of the printed sources, says so honestly, and an Irish scholar with manuscript access answers him. This is a collaboration in the form of a correction.Observation

2The conjectured C

Everything hangs here. The stone reads clearly from the second letter; the first is gone. Pictet proposes C, producing Cathubodua, which maps onto Irish badb catha, "battle-crow." Hennessy accepts it as "very probably" right — and builds his title on it.Partly

The restoration is plausible and it is not proven. Later epigraphers have kept the doubt alive, and some have preferred to leave the name as attested rather than emend it into the shape the comparison requires. A conjecture that produces the desired parallel deserves more scepticism, not less.Method

If the letter is not a C, what remains? The Irish material stands untouched — but the Gaulish goddess of the title, and the continental antiquity she supplies, go with it.Open Question

3"Only through the medium of the Irish"

An admission doing quiet work. The element bodua is widespread in Celtic personal names across Europe, but nothing on the Continent explains what it meant. The meaning is supplied entirely by Irish, roughly a millennium later, and then read back onto the Gaulish material.Method

Is that legitimate reconstruction, or is Ireland being used to furnish a content the Continental evidence never had?Open Question

4Crow, not raven — and he is right

The correction of Pictet is Hennessy's own, and it holds. The bird is the hooded or scald-crow, Irish feannóg, English "Royston crow" after the Hertfordshire town — a grey-and-black carrion crow, now classified separately from the all-black carrion crow.Holds

He defends the distinction properly later in the paper: in the Irish material the scald-crow is an agent of what is decreed, while the raven is merely a bird of prey following an army. The two are not interchangeable, and treating them as such flattens the mythology.Holds

5"For want of sufficient details"

Pictet's honesty is the hinge of the whole paper. He says plainly that the printed corpus will not carry the argument, and that admission is the invitation Hennessy accepts.Observation

6What Hennessy actually contributes

This is the durable achievement, and it is why the paper is still cited a century and a half later. He goes to the manuscripts — Book of Leinster, Lebor na hUidre, the Yellow Book of Lecan, the Books of Fermoy and Lismore, Trinity College H.2.17, H.3.18, H.4.22 — and assembles, for the first time, the scattered Badb material into one place, with the Irish printed alongside his translations.Holds

Translations have been superseded; the gathering has not. Anyone working on the Morrígan still passes through this paper.Observation

◇ Who dedicated the stone

What the inscription saysServilia Terentia paid a vow — votum solvit libens merito, the standard Roman formula for a promise discharged. A private woman, fulfilling a private obligation, in the Roman manner. What it does not sayNothing about war, battle, crows, prophecy or death. The martial character of the deity comes entirely from the conjectured cathu- and from the Irish parallels — not from the stone.

One woman's discharged vow has been carrying the weight of a Gaulish war-goddess cult for a hundred and fifty years. How much can a single votive inscription be asked to prove?

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