[135] Lady Charlotte Guest, _The Mabinogion_ (Story of "Kilwch and Olwen" and note on "Gwyn the son of Nudd").
On their persisting belief in luck were based the religious ideas and practices of the ancient Britons. Their chief concern was to protect and prolong life in this world and in the next. When death came it was regarded as "a change". The individual was supposed either to fall asleep, or to be transported in the body to Paradise, or to assume a new form. In Scottish Gaelic one can still hear the phrase _chaochail e_ ("he changed") used to signify that "he died".[136] But after death charms were as necessary as during life. As in Aurignacian times, luck-charms in the form of necklaces, armlets, &c., were placed in the graves of the dead by those who used flint, or bronze, or iron to shape implements and weapons. The dead had to receive nourishment, and clay vessels are invariably found in ancient graves, some of which contain dusty deposits. The writer has seen at Fortrose a deposit in one of these grave urns, which a medical man identified as part of the skeleton of a bird.
[136] Also _shiubhail e_ which signifies "he went off" (as when walking).
Necklaces of shells, of wild animals' teeth, and ornaments of ivory found in Palæolithic graves or burial caves were connected with the belief that they contained the animating influence or "life substance" of the mother goddess. In later times the pearl found in the shell was regarded as being specially sacred.
Venus (Aphrodite) is, in one of her phases, the personification of a pearl, and is lifted from the sea seated on a shell. As a sky deity she was connected with the planet that bears her name[137] and also with the moon. The ancients connected the moon with the pearl. In some languages the moon is the "pearl of heaven". Dante, in his _Inferno_, refers to the moon as "the eternal pearl". One of the Gaelic names for a pearl is _neamhnuid_. The root is _nem_ of _neamh_, and _neamh_ is "heaven", so that the pearl is "a heavenly thing" in Gaelic, as in other ancient languages. It was associated not only with the sky goddess but with the sacred grove in which the goddess was worshipped. The Gaulish name _nemeton_, of which the root is likewise _nem_, means "shrine in a grove". In early Christian times in Ireland the name was applied as _nemed_ to a chapel, and in Scottish place-names[138] it survives in the form of _neimhidh_, "church-land", the Englished forms of which are _Navity_, near Cromarty, _Navaty_ in Fife, "Rosneath", formerly Rosneveth (the promontory of the _nemed_), "Dalnavie" (dale of the _nemed_), "Cnocnavie" (hillock of the _nemed_), Inchnavie (island of the _nemed_), &c. The Gauls had a _nemetomarus_ ("great shrine"), and when in Roman times a shrine was dedicated to Augustus it was called _Augustonemeton_. The root _nem_ is in the Latin word _nemus_ (a grove). It was apparently because the goddess of the grove was the goddess of the sky and of the pearl, and the goddess of battle as well as the goddess of love, that Julius Cæsar made a thanksgiving offering to Venus in her temple at Rome of a corslet of British pearls.