hey were apparently more or less well-known local
gods.[115]

The insular Celts believed that some of their gods lived on or in hills.
We do not know whether such a belief was entertained by the Gauls,
though some of their deities were worshipped on hills, like the Puy de
Dome. There is also evidence of mountain worship among them. One
inscription runs, "To the Mountains"; a god of the Pennine Alps,
Poeninus, was equated with Juppiter; and the god of the Vosges mountains
was called Vosegus, perhaps still surviving in the giant supposed to
haunt them.[116]

Certain grouped gods, _Dii Casses_, were worshipped by Celts on the
right bank of the Rhine, but nothing is known regarding their functions,
unless they were road gods. The name means "beautiful" or "pleasant,"
and _Cassi_ appears in personal and tribal names, and also in
_Cassiterides_, an early name of Britain, perhaps signifying that the
new lands were "more beautiful" than those the Celts had left. When tin
was discovered in Britain, the Mediterranean traders called it [Greek:
chassiteros], after the name of the place where it was found, as
_cupreus_, "copper," was so called from Cyprus.[117]

Many local tutelar divinities were also worshipped. When a new
settlement was founded, it was placed under the protection of a tribal
god, or the name of some divinised river on whose banks the village was
placed, passed to the village itself, and the divinity became its
protector. Thus Dea Bibracte, Nemausus, and Vasio were tutelar
divinities of Bibracte, Nimes, and Vaison. Other places were called
after Belenos, or a group of divinities, usually the _Matres_ with a
local epithet, watched over a certain district.[118] The founding of a
town was celebrated in an annual festival, with sacrifices and libations
to the protecting deity, a practice combated by S. Eloi in the eighth
century. But the custom of associating a divinity with a town or region
was a great help to patriotism. Those who fought for their homes felt
that they were fighting for their gods, who also fought on their side.
Several inscriptions, "To the genius of the place," occur in Britain,
and there are a few traces of tutelar gods in Irish texts, but generally
local saints had taken their place.

The Celtic cult of goddesses took two forms, that of individual and that
of grouped goddesses, the latter much more numerous than the grouped
gods. Individual goddesses were worshipped as consorts of gods, or as