I. Talamonodêwoi: This term is again my own coinage, from “talamon”, meaning “ground, earth, soil”, and “dêwos”, meaning “deity, spirit”. The Talamonodêwoi, then, are the “Earth Deities”, another word for the Land Spirits. There are few actual examples attested, though there must have been more. A couple examples we do have are listed below:

A. Dusioi: Destructive forest spirits rather similar to the Greco-Roman satyrs, the Dusioi caused damage to orchards and crops, and came to sleeping women at night, having sex with them in the manner of an incubus.

B. Morâs: Female nightmare spirits. All we have is the name, reconstructed by linguists. There may or may not be some similarity to Greco-Roman ideas of lamiae, or the Germanic Nightmare.

C. Bâdities: Here we have an example of why to be cautious of out of date sources. In several old sources, notably Stokes’ Urkeltischer Sprachschatz, this is listed as a word for “nymph”. More recent and better scholarship has disproved this, however. Delmarre lists it as the word for “water-lily”.



II. Anderoi: A term meaning “Those Below”, this is an attested term for the spirits of the Underworld. Exactly who they are is unclear. From the Chamaliers Inscription, we know that their magic was well known in some way. That they included the spirits of some of the dead is likely. My own experience with them suggests they are unpleasant, including a variety of other “faerie” like spirits, of mischievous or malevolent nature, dwelling in the Underworld. In modern Celtic folklore, the line between the spirits of the dead and the mound-dwelling “faeries” was often very blurred to say the least.