Irish Mythology and Ancient Gaul
Bran mac Febal and Diana Nemetona
12th century – present, Irish folklore ¦ 1st century BC – 4th century AD
Bran mac Febal became enraptured by beautiful music that came from a silver bough filled with white apple-blossom that had mysteriously appeared outside his fortress.
Diana Nemetona, or Diana of the Sacred Grove, holding an apple bough in Roman Gaul, conforms to an ancient pan-European connection between apples and immortality... muses Robert Graves in The White Goddess.
Diana of the Wood was a Roman deity, inhabiting a sacred wood on the mountain shore of Lake Nemi, near the Roman town of Aricia. The Romans liked to equate the gods they found in Gaul with their own equivalents. So given that Diana Nemetona in Gaul was probably a Romanised Celtic goddess, and regarding the image of this goddess holding an apple bough, an ancient Irish tale called the Voyage of Bran is particularly interesting:
Bran mac Febal becomes enraptured by beautiful music that seems to be coming from a silver bough filled with white apple-blossom that has mysteriously appeared outside his fortress. Bran takes this wonderful bough past his gatekeepers and into the hall. A little while later, a woman appears inside his fortress without any warning or announcement, as if by magic, and sings to him. It is, she says, a branch from a distant land, from an apple tree on a distant isle, an ancient tree that grows in a land without pain, without illness, without sadness, without disability.
Shortly afterwards, Bran sets sail with his companions and arrives at an Isle of Women. Spending only a year on this island, he insists at last upon returning and arrives back in Ireland to find that hundreds of years have passed since he set out.
