Free The White Goddess by Robert Graves Page B

and a tributary, is the more likely site; and is proved by the débris removed from the ditch about it to have been in continuous use from the early Bronze Age to Roman times. All the available evidence points to Stonehenge as Beli’s seat, not Bran’s; it is laid out as a sun-temple in cultured Apollonian style which contrasts strangely with the archaic roughness of Avebury.
    Geoffrey records that Bran and Beli (who, he says, gave his name to Billingsgate) were later reconciled, and together fought battles on the Continent. It is possible that troops from Britain served in the successful expedition of Gauls against Rome in 390 BC . The Gaulish leader was Brennus – Celtic kings habitually took the name of their tribal gods – and Geoffrey’s confused account of subsequent Continental wars undertaken by Bran and Belin evidently refers to the Gaulish invasion of Thrace and Greece in 279 BC when Delphi was plundered, the chief commander of the Gauls being another Brennus. At any rate, the alder remained a sacred tree in Britain for long after this Câd Goddeu ;a King of Kent as late as the fifth century AD was named Gwerngen, ‘son of the Alder’. The answer to one of the riddles in the ‘Taliesin’ poem-medley called Angar Cyvyndawd (‘Hostile Confederacy’), “Why is the alder of purplish colour?’, is doubtless: ‘Because Bran wore royal purple.’
    The ultimate origin of the god Beli is uncertain, but if we identify the British Belin or Beli with Belus the father of Danäus (as Nennius does), then we can further identify him with Bel, the Babylonian Earth-god, one of a male trinity, who succeeded to the titles of a far more ancient Mesopotamian deity, the mother of Danaë as opposed to the father of Danäus. This was Belili, the Sumerian White Goddess, Ishtar’s predecessor, who was a goddess of trees as well as a Moon-goddess, Love-goddess and Underworld-goddess. She was sister and lover to Du’uzu, or Tammuz, the Corn-god and Pomegranate-god. From her name derives the familiar Biblical expression ‘Sons of Belial’ – the Jews having characteristically altered the non-Semitic name Belili into the Semitic Beliy ya’al (‘from which one comes not up again’, i.e. the Underworld) – meaning ‘Sons of Destruction’. The Slavonic word beli meaning ‘white’ and the Latin bellus meaning ‘beautiful’ are also ultimately connected with her name. Originally every tree was hers, and the Goidelic bile ,‘sacred tree’, the mediaeval Latin bil la and billus , ‘branch, trunk of tree’, and the English billet are all recollections of her name. Above all, she was a Willow-goddess and goddess of wells and springs.
    The willow was of great importance in the worship of Jehovah at Jerusalem, and the Great Day of the Feast of Tabernacles, a fire and water ceremony, was called the Day of Willows. Though alder and willow are not differentiated in Hebrew – they are of the same family – Tanaitictradition, dating from before the destruction of the Temple, prescribed that the red-twigged willow with lanceolate leaves, i.e. the purple osier, should be the sort used in the thyrsus of palm, quince and willow carried during the Feast; if none were obtainable, then the round-leaved willow, i.e. the sallow or ‘palm’, might be used, but the variety with toothed leaves, i.e. the alder, was forbidden – presumably because it was used in idolatrous rites in honour of Astarte and her son the Fire-god. Although the use of the thyrsus was obligatory, the Israelites having taken it over with the Canaanites’ Tabernacle ceremonies and incorporated it in the Mosaic Law, the willow (or osier) was mistrusted by the more intelligent Jews in later days. According to one Hagadah ,the willow in the thyrsus symbolized the ‘inferior and ignorant of Israel who have neither righteousness nor knowledge, as the willow has neither taste nor smell’: in fact, even the indifferent would be provided for by Jehovah. By his triumphant