Just read your notes and weblog on Solva - fascinating, and another 'gottado'.

Was also interested in your comment that, "There is of course controversy about the fact that "head cults" really existed in Celtic times, the story is somewhat dismissed by later writers, but in the realms of folklore it can stay." A similar head cult tradition exists in Tibetan Buddhism where scull cups served as ritual vessels. Would need to check it out but suspect that, as with so much else in tantric Buddhism, the use of the scull cup probably stems from the indigenous Bon religion. Do you have any references for 'head cults' in Europe?

NB. Just checked the little Tibetan thanka painting that I have; both the main deity (Yamantaka) and his <i>sakti</i> each hold scull cups and there are two more floating on either side of them. Yamantaka is the terrible manifestation of Manjusri (personification of Transcendent Wisdom) and in this form defeats Yama (God of Death). Yama was once a devout Buddhist monk who meditated alone for fifty years in a remote cave. Shortly before the monk was about to gain enlightenment two robbers entered his cave with a stolen bull which they proceed to kill by cutting off its head. When they realized they were not alone the robbers decided to kill the monk in the same way. The monk was decapitated but, in a rage at being denied enlightenment, took up the head off the bull and placed it on his own shoulders. He then killed the two robbers and drank their blood from cups made from their own sculls before going on the rampage throughout the area as the God of Death.

Oops, sorry Jane, seem to have gone a bit off-topic there :-(