many waters
in it, by Dea Abnoba.[134] While some goddesses are known only by being
associated with a god, e.g. Kosmerta with Mercury in Eastern Gaul,
others have remained separate, like Epona, perhaps a river-goddess
merged with an animal divinity, and known from inscriptions as a
horse-goddess.[135] But the most striking instance is found in the
grouped goddesses.

Of these the _Deoe Matres_, whose name has taken a Latin form and whose
cult extended to the Teutons, are mentioned in many inscriptions all
over the Celtic area, save in East and North-West Gaul.[136] In art they
are usually represented as three in number, holding fruit, flowers, a
cornucopia, or an infant. They were thus goddesses of fertility, and
probably derived from a cult of a great Mother-goddess, the Earth
personified. She may have survived as a goddess Berecynthia; worshipped
at Autun, where her image was borne through the fields to promote
fertility, or as the goddesses equated with Demeter and Kore, worshipped
by women on an island near Britain.[137] Such cults of a Mother-goddess
lie behind many religions, but gradually her place was taken by an
Earth-god, the Celtic Dispater or Dagda, whose consort the goddess
became. She may therefore be the goddess with the cornucopia on
monuments of the horned god, or Aeracura, consort of Dispater, or a
goddess on a monument at Epinal holding a basket of fruit and a
cornucopia, and accompanied by a ram's-headed serpent.[138] These
symbols show that this goddess was akin to the _Matres_. But she
sometimes preserved her individuality, as in the case of Berecynthia and
the _Matres_, though it is not quite clear why she should have been thus
triply multiplied. A similar phenomenon is found in the close connection
of Demeter and Persephone, while the Celts regarded three as a sacred
number. The primitive division of the year into three seasons--spring,
summer, and winter--may have had its effect in triplicating a goddess of
fertility with which the course of the seasons was connected.[139] In
other mythologies groups of three goddesses are found, the Hathors in
Egypt, the Moirai, Gorgons, and Graiae of Greece, the Roman Fates, and
the Norse Nornae, and it is noticeable that the _Matres_ were sometimes
equated with the Parcae and Fates.[140]

In the _Matres_, primarily goddesses of fertility and plenty, we have
one of the most popular and also primitive aspects of Celtic religion.
They originated in an age when