1. Meaning of Name: There is no scholarly consensus. Green translates her name as “Great Provider”, as does Mackillop. Olmsted, on the other hand, translates her name as “The Highly Foresighted”. Michael Enright translates it as “Great Prophetess”. 1
2. Other Names and Epithets: Olmsted gives us Atesmertis, Cantismerta, Braciaca, Nemetona, and Riga as by-names for Rosmertâ. 2 A British scholar named Stephen Yeates presents evidence supporting an identification of her with the “Mater Dobunnorum”, the tribal Goddess of the Dobunni people. 3
3. Interpretatio Romana: Fortuna. Note that she is paired with Mercury/Lugus in a Gaulish divine couple. 4
4. Irish Equivalent: Medb and other Irish Sovereignty Goddesses. 5
5. Indo-European Equivalent: None known.
6. Realm: Ueronadâ/Upper World Goddess
7. Iconography: Green sees her iconography in terms of a wooden, iron-bound bucket with ladle, torches, patera, and cornucopia. 6 Enright sees it slightly differently, emphasizing the wine bucket, cornucopia, and weaver’s beam. 7
8. Significance: According to Enright, Rosmertâ denotes “fertility, fate, or both”. He connects her with the Matres, and sees her as a Goddess of fate, and prophecy. Through her patronage of a seeress termed a welitâ, who was used by ambitious Continental Celtic and Germanic rulers to give legitimacy to their rule, she is connected with sovereignty and with warband culture. In this role, Rosmertâ was seen as a Queen. She was associated with a complex of related ideas, encompassing women, liquor, feasting, sovereignty, sexuality, and weaving. 8 Through her role as a mead-Goddess, Noémi Beck sees her as spiritual initiator. Krista Ovist, in her dissertation, sees her a little differently. 9 She states that Rosmertâ’s “name and plastic representations suggest the accumulation, transformation, and re-circulation of related manifestations of value”. She sees her as Goddess of sovereignty as well as terrestrial plenty, which she associates with the sack or bag, found in her cult as well that of the Gaulish Mercury. 10
- Green, Dictionary, p. 180; Olmstead, Gods of the Celts and Indo-Europeans, p. 406-408; Micheal Enright, Lady with a Mead Cup: Ritual Propehcy and Lordship in the European Warband from LaTene to the Viking Age, pp. 241-242 ↩
- Olmsted, Gods of the Celts and Indo-Europeans, pp. 406-409 ↩
- Stephen J. Yeates, The Tribe of Witches: the Religion of the Dobunni and Hwicce, pp. 137-146 ↩
- Enright, p. 242 ↩
- Enright, p. 273-275 ↩
- Green, Dictionary, p. 180 ↩
- Enright, pp. 241-242 ↩
- Enright, pp. 240-241, 247-249, 209-214, 255-256, 265-269 ↩
- Noémi Beck, Goddesses in Celtic Religion: Cult and Mythology: A comparative study of Ancient Ireland, Britain, and Gaul, http://theses.univ-lyon2.fr/documents/lyon2/2009/beck_n#p=0&a=title ↩
- Krita Ovist, The Integration of Mercury and Lugus: Myth and History in Late Iron-Age and Early Roman Gaul, pp. 587-609 ↩