Note 245 — ARRIAN ON COURSING.

M. Le Verrier de la Conterie derives the fête of the French Chasseurs called La S. Hubert from this Celtic festival of Diana. As the latter supplanted with her images the unseen divinity of earlier adoration, she in her turn yielded the tutelage of the chase to St. Martin, St. Germain, and St. Hubert. Arrian wrote in the second century, and in the sixth we find Diana stillVénerie Normande. La S. Hubert. predominant:—“Le père Dom Martin nous assure que vers la fin du sixième siècle, les Gaulois célébroient les mystères de cette divinité avec des chants excessifs, et toutes les débauches que peuvent produire l’amour et le vin, sur une montagne des Ardennes qui est dans le Luxembourg, où ils avoient une idole de Diane fort grande et fort célèbre,” &c.

M. Fleuri (Hist. Ecclesiast. Tom. viii. l. xxxv. n. 22.) relates the destruction of Diana’s image, and the erection of the monastery and church of St. Martin on its site. But neither St. Martin, nor St. Germain, (“évêque d’Auxerre, et chasseur de grande réputation,”) were able to preserve their ascendancy against the superior claims of St. Hubert, (“évêque de Liège, plus fin et plus rusé dans l’art de la chasse,”) who subsequently received the first-fruits of the chase, ἀπαρχὰς τῶν ἁλισκομένων, and a tenth part of the game, as an annual consecration, ἐνιαύσια, from the posterity of the Celts.

The worship of Diana Venatrix extended from Celtica to the British Isles, which at an early period were peopled by a Celtic race, (see note 12. at the end of the present chapter). “Amongst other the goddes also,” saysHistorie of Scotland. Mainus. Holinshed, “whiche the Scottishmen had in most reverence, Diana was chiefe, whom they accompted as their peculiar patronesse, for that she was taken to be the goddesse of hunting, wherein consisted their chiefest exercise, pastime, and delite.” And at the same period, we find these Scoto-Celts in possession of greyhounds and hounds of chase of the highest repute, during the reign of Dorvadille.