Druid

“ In the eyes of the barbarian Britons, alike ignorant, credulous, and superstitious, the place would appear to be the very sanctuary of Omnipotence, and the Druid ministers themselves an impersonation of their gods. Wind and cloud, storm and tempest, wrought powerfully in the abstruse mysteries and terrific incantations constituting the Druidical worship; and the mind was prostrated, with terrific awe, at the shrine where natural sublimity combined with human cunning to thrill its scarcely awakened faculties. ”

“ We sigh, thinking of the vanished glory, but look with hope for the fulfilment of the prophecy which the seer of another line left on record, that once more the Druid fires should blaze on these mountains. As the purple amplitude of night enfold them, already the dark mounds seem to throw up their sheeny illuminations; great shadowy forms, the shepherds of our race, to throng and gather; the many-coloured winds to roll their aerial tides hither and thither. ”

“ Gone are the Druids, but their name still survives in the mountains and valleys of Wales, where the ancient Britons found their refuge in a later age. Our modern Druids love letters and music, and the other beautiful arts which touch and kindle souls. Theirs it is to encourage men and women to build the lofty rhyme, to weave the golden strands of melody, and to limn the loveliness of earth and sea and sky. Thus transformed, the Druid is a prophet of sweetness and light, not an enslaver of souls.
THE COMING OF CÆSAR.
“The foremost man of all the world.” ”

“ The block idol of the poor Laplander has its sacred limit within which the devotee only ventures on bended knees and with face to the earth; the oak-crowned Druid taught the mysteries of his stern religion in temples of unhewn stones, open to the sun, in rude but gigantic structures, which in their form symbolized the God of his adoration; conquerors humbled themselves as they approached the precincts which the voice of the Pythoness had consecrated; no worshipper trod the avenues guarded by the silent, emblematic Sphynx, except with awe and reverence ”

“ In the same sense a Druid is described as "full of his God." From the mystic Father descends the Ray, the Child of Light. It is born in man as mind, not reasoning: earthly not sensual, but as the heaven-aspiring, thinking mind. ”

“ He went and spent that night with the old druid. He rose in the morning and washed his face, and prayed to God to put him in luck again until evening. He gave a good heap of the gold to the old druid. The old druid gave him a card and a bridle, and told him that any beast he would rub the card to, if his skin was full of disease, would be cured. ”

“ The Druids exercised the functions of magistrates, priests, teachers, and physicians. As judges, their authority was unlimited; [Pg 263] they desired the people to believe that not only had they the power of imposing punishment in this world, but that they might sentence offenders to torment in the world beyond the grave.
The Arch-Druid wore a gold chain round his neck, from which was suspended a gold plate, having engraved thereon, "The gods require sacrifice," and on the front of the Druid's cap was a golden representation of the sun, and a silver representation of a half moon. ”

“ The Druids were known by name, but scarcely more than by name, to the Greeks, who derived the appellation erroneously from drus, an oak, under the supposition that the Druids preferred to perform their religious rites under the shadows of oaken groves. The Greeks also [Pg 58] called the Druids Saronides, from two Celtic words sar and dhuine, signifying "excellent or superior men." The Celtic meaning of the word "Druid" is to enclose within a circle, and a Druid meant a prophet, a divine, a bard, a magician; one who was admitted to the mysteries of the inner circle. ”

“ On this view Pliny was substantially right (Nat. Hist. xvi. 249) in connecting Druid with the Greek drus, “oak,” though the name was not derived from the Greek. However, this derivation of Druid has been doubted or rejected by some scholars. See H. D’Arbois de Jubainville, Cours de la littérature celtique, i. (Paris, 1883) , pp. 117 sqq.; O. Schrader, Reallexikon der indogermanischen Altertumskunde, pp. 638 sq.
1191. See above, p. 242.
1192. The Gael’s “faith in druidism was never suddenly undermined ”

“ In the first place:
"'How is your druid?'
"I replied that the said druid was hers much more than mine, and that she ought to remember that Climante, in Astrée, was only a false druid, as deep in love as every other lover in that beautiful story.
"'Nay, nay,' she replied, 'you are deceiving me; if your Climante were as much in love with me as you represent him, he would have come with you to-day, whereas two whole weeks have passed since we saw him. Will you tell me that he starts when he hears my name, as in Astrée, and that he utters sighs which seem to rend his stomach in twain? ”

“ DRUID SACRIFICES.
going out behind the bush to sacrifice some one who disagreed with them on some religious point or other.
The Druids largely lived in the woods in summer and in debt during the winter. They worshipped almost everything that had been left out overnight, and their motto was, "Never do anything unless you feel like it very much indeed." ”

“ Then separately, each of the Druids came forward with some offering which he placed before me, afterwards returning to his place in the circle, so that presently there grew upon the grass in front of me a great mound of vegetables, fruit, flowers, haunches of venison, fowls, hares, rabbits, and young lambs. At length, every Druid having made his offering, their chief handed round the tin of snuff from which each old fellow took a large pinch, and then, linking hands, they danced wildly round me. ”

“ In process of time, however, the gods of the Gaulish Druids penetrated into the sacred mythology of the British and furnished personifications for the different attributes of the dracontic god Hu. This deity was called “The Dragon Ruler of the World” and his car was drawn by serpents. His priests in accommodation with the general custom of the Ophite god, were called after him “Adders.” [18]
In a poem of Taliessin, translated by Davies, in his Appendix, No. 6, is the following enumeration of a Druid’s titles:—
“I am a Druid; I am an architect; I am a prophet; I am a serpent” (Gnadr) . ”

“ The Druid took up his abode in the territory of Hy Conail, that is in the County Louth, and there the young Mochta was brought up in the Druid’s house as a member of his family. One day an Angel brought waxen tablets to the boy, from which he learned his letters, and then commanded him to go to Rome to study Sacred Scripture. The boy obeyed, and went his way to Peter’s City, where he made so much progress in learning and holiness that he was consecrated a bishop by the Pope, and many disciples placed themselves under his guidance. ”

“ These Druids have left their traces in some parts of England and France in rows of huge stones set upright; and wherever an immense stone was found lying on two others, in the shape of a table, there had been a Druid altar, where the priest offered sacrifices, often of human beings. So horrible may be a so-called religion that men themselves devise, and that has not come from the true God. ”

“ The Druids and the poets told us, many and many a time, of a new Druid Patrick; and most among them were fierce against him, while a few thought his doctrine merely the doctrine of the gods set out in new symbols, and were for giving him welcome ”

“ For to read of the priests connected with the holy forest of Romove in ancient Prussia unavoidably leads one to this comparison, and reminds one in a striking manner of what is told us in the classics about the druids of Gaul, and in a later literature about those of Ireland. Seeing the importance of sacred trees in the ancient cult of the chief god of the Aryans of Europe, and the preference evinced for the oak as the tree fittest to be his emblem or even the residence of his divinity, I am inclined to regard the old etymology of the word druid as being, roughly speaking, the comet one. ”

“ The excommunicated wretch is an outlaw, beyond the pale of civil rights. Over the Druids is one great Druid, at whose death the place is filled by election among all the Druids, unless there be one so conspicuously first that no ceremony of election is needed. Their most sacred spot for worship is among the Carnutes, in the middle of the country. Their discipline and mysteries came to them from Britain, and when any very knotty point arises they go to Britain to make inquiry. The Druids don't fight, and pay no taxes. The ambition to be a Druid is very great ”

“ The Druids, therefore, who resided in the neighbourhood, made a pilgrimage to one of their largest temples, situated among the mountains, in the midst of a vast forest. The Arch-Druid, having gathered the mistletoe, just as the rising sun licked the dew from its berries, and performed a number of other rites, to obtain answer from the Great Spirit, informed them that Heaven would not be appeased unless a young virgin was immolated as a sacrifice for the sins of the inhabitants. ”

“ From various sources of information we know that the Druids had recourse to sortilege by fire. It was customary for a nobleman to take the entrails of a sacrificed animal in his hands, to walk barefooted three times through the embers of an expiring fire, and then carry them to a Druid performing at the altar. If the nobleman escaped unhurt, it was reckoned a good omen, but if injured, it was deemed unlucky to the country and himself. ”

“ Your Ancestors derived their origin from Abraham, Heber, Shem and Noah, who were Druids: as the Druid Temples (which are the Patriarchal Pillars & Oak Groves) over the whole Earth witness to this day.
You have a tradition, that Man anciently containd in his mighty limbs all things in Heaven & Earth: this you recieved from the Druids. ”

“ Deep in their forest shades they offer their mysterious sacrifices; sometimes human beings, imprisoned in huge wicker-work images, are burnt to death to appease the angry gods. The Druids claim to hold sway even over the spirits of the departed, and the Briton trembles as he hears the voices of tormented souls wailing in the night wind. Every shadow is a terror; every flying cloud is an omen of good or ill; every spring, river, and fountain has its guardian deity. Fire is the element which the Druids hold in the highest reverence ”

“ By some, Druid has been derived from a Greek word drus, signifying oak; and by others from an old British word dree, which has the same meaning. It has also been supposed to come from a Saxon word dryth, which means magician; and, according to others from a Celtic word druis, a doctor or learned man. There is a curious circumstance which seems to corroborate its derivation from oak,—namely, that in every country where the worship of the sun has prevailed, the oak has been venerated. ”

“ Then there was brought to see him a wise druid, who was skilled in all maladies of the mind and body, and after he had talked with the youth he said to his mother, "Thy son is dying of the burden of a secret which he may not reveal to any man, but until he reveals it he will have no ease. ”

“ And thus spoke the Druidess:—
“Men of Britain’s Holy Isle, Spiritless and idle still Rest ye here, and all the while Forest demons work their will? Barren lie your hungry fields, Yielding nought for human food, While your spirit tamely yields To the Tyrant of the Wood. Hear the Future! To the gods While libations Druids pour, Britain’s Oak to ruin nods, Rotten to the very core! Craven spirits fear and hide From the devastating foe. Can the gods be satisfied With a race of cowards? No! What the mighty gods inspire Bertha to her race imparts. ”

“ Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days!
Come near me, while I sing the ancient ways:
Cuchulain battling with the bitter tide;
The Druid, grey, wood-nurtured, quiet-eyed,
Who cast round Fergus dreams, and ruin untold; ”

“ The Druids were believed to have the power to render a person insane by flinging a magic wisp of straw in his face, and they were able to raise clouds of mist, or to bring down showers of fire and blood. ”

“ Ay, it was Baal, the Druids worshipped—at the temple of the sun in the Slieve Bloom [Pg 83] mountains—at the place of sacred fire near Tara—everywhere, Baal. And in their worship the very depths of iniquity were reached; bloodshed and license went hand in hand.
He writhed anew at the thought of his shares in the festival. He could not rid himself of the memory of those twisting serpent dances, leading to scenes of bloodshed, excess, and fire. ”

“ Is not man, of all created beings, the most noble and the most perfect? Perhaps they were inclined to carry the argument still farther, and to reason that among all men the most worthy to be chosen and the most likely to be acceptable to God, were the Druids themselves? ”

“ Did not the druids leave the people for over ten centuries steeped in crassest ignorance, governing them with the instruments of barbarism—superstition and terror? Did not those days of oppression and debasement last until the glorious and prosperous epoch when, merged in the body of the nation as citizens, fathers and soldiers, our druids took part in the common life of the people, in the joys of the family, and in the national wars against the foreigner? ”

“ Druidism was, in fact, the only power which could move the whole Celtic race, and could knit together the Celts of the Thames and those of the Garonne and Rhone, when they met at the great yearly convocation at Chartres, then the "Metropolis of the Earth." Human sacrifice was one of the most cruel and revolting features of the Druidical religion. ”