The badger is a robust creature the size of a small dog, with a distinctive black and white striped head and grey body. Equipped by nature for digging, badgers build extensive underground dwellings called setts, typically covering a thousand square feet [300 metres], with tunnels linking chambers that are lined with grass, moss and bracken. Some setts are hundreds of years old, and are passed on through the family, giving badgers the title 'the oldest landowners in Britain'.
Though badgers do not appear in many surviving Celtic tales, from the evidence we have they seem to have been very highly revered, with badger skins found buried in the graves of chieftains. The badger is still called brock in many parts of Britain; a nickname derived from its old Gaelic name of brocc [or broch in Welsh]. The seventh century Life of Columba refers to Pictish druids as Brokan or Broichan meaning 'badgers' . This is probably because the badger lives under the ground, or is associated with prehistoric mounds, the supposed dwelling placed of gods and ancestral spirits. If he lives with them, then he must be privy to their secrets, including the mysterious germination of life that takes place in the underworld. The badger is one of the sacred animals of the goddess Brigantia and a totem of the Imbolc festival [1 February], when Celtic women gathered together to celebrate the rebirth of the spring, symbolised by the badger emerging from beneath the earth, just as new growth emerges from the ground.
The Celtic shaman or Druid knew that the underworld was the source of wisdom. When the five sons of Conall dug into the fairy mound of Cnoc Greine, the goddess Grian turned them into badgers for their crime, perhaps because they sought the secrets they were not entitled to as men, but which were suitable for Brokan. Nevertheless, they were hunted, killed and eaten by Cormac Gaileng. In the Welsh tale of Pwyll's courting of Rhiannon, a badger is mentioned as a guide during dreaming- a suitable shamanic guide to the secrets of the Otherworld.
The badger is very strong and powerful, with a muscular wedge-shaped body and short strong legs with long claws. The cruel and illegal practice of badger baiting pitted the badger against several dogs which struggled to overcome the sturdy creature. From this, we get our phrase 'to badger' which means 'to tease or annoy by superior numbers'. There was an old game called 'badger in the bag' which involved a youth running the gauntlet between two lines of boys armed with sticks, originally a trial of courage and fortitude.
Because of the badger's innate power and courage, Celtic warriors thought that badger grease made the best cure for wounds, working by a kind of sympathetic magic. Similarly Scottish clansmen wore sporrans made from badger skins and the MacIvor Clan wore badger heads and skins to invoke the beast's strength in battle.
Badger is peaceful and home loving, continually improving and tidying his sett. As inheritors of ancient dwelling places, badgers are keepers of ancestral knowledge. Badger knows the secrets of plants and roots.
Text © Anna Franklin, extract from The Celtic Animal Oracle, Vega, 2003
Illustration © Paul Mason
