A friend of mine is bending my ear, insisting there is a celtic ritual, historical or, ah, propaganda-historical, or possibly even wiccan-historical, which involved sacrificing a firstborn daughter to a goddess. He needs this… well, basically, source for running a D&D game, but he needs it pretty quick. Anyone got anything?
The information about human sacrifice and the Celts is, well, contested. I have read an awful lot of historical texts as well as literature and myths and haven’t found anything that you’ve described.
Scholars tend to fall into one of the following groups:
**The Celts used human sacrifice extensively (tends to occur in older scholars, particularly Roman-focused scholars **. Human sacrifice was rampant, organized, and the druid priesthood is often seen and savage and oppressive.
The Celts did have human sacrifice at some point, but how much is debatable due to cultural differences between Celtic groups and the thousand plus years of ancient Celtic culture.
The Celts never practiced human sacrifice (often associated with neo-paganism). There is no definite proof.
I fall into the second category. It seems fairly plain to me that some existed (see The Life and Death of a Druid Prince for one probable individual dropped in a bog), but its role is uncertain, as the druids played a role that included both the legal and the religious (so is it capital punishment or human sacrifice? Can it be both?). The consent of individuals in sacrifice would have been possible, as well.
Keep in mind that the Celts have been somewhat misinterpreted by modern people – the likelihood that human sacrifice went to a goddess rather than a god strikes me as somewhat unlikely, at least when you’re talking about the usual suspects for human sacrifice (the Gauls and the ancient Celts in Denmark) as there is no artwork that even suggests human sacrifice or death including anything female. The Gundestrup Cauldron is probably the best example of some religious symbols from the period when human sacrifice was likely, and the gods are all male.
Your friend is between a rock and a hard place – look to scholars, and the goddess part is problematic; look to Wiccans, and the sacrifice part is problematic.
Some suggested alternates:
The Wicker Man: historically unlikely, but colorful and not without some evidence behind it. Basically, take one gigantic hollow wicker statue. Fill with weeping victims. Add fire.
The Bog Sacrifice: (see above) Most likely a willing candidate, but there’s always poetic license. Add some sort of drug, take away clothes, go to edge of bog, throttle to death.
The Bloody Altar: The Victorian notion of druids, cutting the throats of victims or stabbing them in the back and watching their death throes. Again, not historically likely, but neat D&D fodder.
My theory is that human sacrifice played a role of getting rid of those that you didn’t particularly want around - criminals, prisoners that couldn’t be ransomed, etc. Keep in mind, they didn’t have prisons. Adding the sacrificial quality gave it a mysterious religious element to give the whole thing purpose and meaning to the citizens, as well as an air of authority. Killing people in the name of a god has never really fallen out of style.
Why doesn’t he just make something suitable up, call it “Celtic”, and be done with it? Generations of historians and DMs have done it.
Because, basically, the players know enough to call shennanigans.
I’m simplifying and obfuscating slightly, okay? It’s for something like D&D. And I agree that it sounds victorian, but I can’t find any record of it, either. I just need a cite so I can trace it.
do they actually say the word “shenanigans”? 
Depending on the player’s attachment to South Park, yes.
Well, I just tried to read the Golden Bough again… I didn’t find anything even close.
You read 12 or 13 volumes in one day? The qualities of SDMB members never cease to amaze me. 
Ok, wandering in to make sarky comments doesn’t help you, 
but it helps to let me get e-mail notification and therefore follow thiso thread, as it promises to be nteresting.
I have read a fair bit on the Celts, although I think nowhere near as much as fluiddruid, but I can mention that while I think there was human sacrifice, this particular business of sacrificing a first-born daughter to a goddess is not something I have ever heard of.
Ooh, come to think of it, I am a first born daughter. Eeek)
The individual in question was Lindow Man. However, the issue of his significance was reopened by Ronald Hutton in the TLS (a pdf) earlier this year, with a subsequent response from J.D. Hill (another pdf). There was also a reply to Hill from Hutton, but that doesn’t appear to be free on-line.
More generally, Hutton’s argument over the years has been that we know virtually nothing about Celtic rituals, at least in the British Isles.
I certainly can’t read it that fast. (I can come close) But I can try to ‘grep’ it. That is, scan it for appropriate headings and chapters and check to see if anything rings a bell.
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=3623
The copy I have is only 2 meg or so.
So, if it’s not Fraizer, maybe it’s a movie? Anyone? Anything?
Is this a regular human sacrifice or a one-off? If it is a one-off then he should just somewhat wing it. If it is a regular thing then dunno (although if you parallel the king for a year tradition somehow maybe you can pull it off)
AFAIK the ancient Greeks weren’t huge on sacrifice neither (though infanticide was okay). But a decent chunk of Iliad deals with having to pacify a particular goddess in a particular way. Don’t know if Agamemnon and co. knew a particular ritual for the sacrifice of his daughter but it turns out that what the gods want the gods get. Too bad for Iphigenia (or so it would seem. . . ).
Not Celtic, but that far back possibly not quite as divergent.
That’s a good point, and there’s the related Andromeda sacrifice as well. But he insists it’s celtic.
I was totally unaware Celts had been living in Denmark
Same thing : I didn’t know they were Celts.