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 ”

“ The bards paused—the earth around Cormac was covered with white-robed Druids, prone before him. The blood mounted on the boy’s cheeks. Again they smote upon their golden harps.
“Welcome to Hibernia! Welcome—thrice welcome! Behold us at thy feet! We—the mouthpiece of thy country! We offer thee all—all that Fail hath to give! Her gold, her honey, her white-toothed daughters, her swift racers, her fair, spotted trout, her sloes, and apples and brown nuts—her blood for thy sword to drink. Take all, take all—only let us worship thee. For art not thou from Tuathal’s loins? Tuathal Teachmar? ”

“ 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? ”

“ One has a dim apprehension of a procession through the avenue of stone, of priests, perhaps fantastically dressed with skins and horns and horrible painted masks—not the robed and bearded dignitaries our artists represent the Druids to have been—of chiefs in skins adorned with necklaces of teeth and bearing spears and axes, their great heads of hair held up with pins of bone, of women in skins or flaxen robes, of a great peering crowd of shock-headed men and naked children. ”

“ 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. ”

“ White bulls are dragged to the tree, and their broad foreheads are bound to its stem, their loud bellowings mingling with the strain of the wild anthem which the worshippers raise. When the beasts have been slaughtered as sacrifices, the chief Druid, clad in his flowing white robes, his golden collar and bracelets, ascends the oak, treading on the backs and broad shoulders of blindfolded slaves. With a golden pruning-knife he severs the mistletoe, and beneath him attendant Druids receive it on a white linen cloth. ”

“ The Druids, like some other institutions of antiquity, by not perpetuating their doctrines, or their secrets, in this primeval state of theology and philosophy, by writing, have effectually concealed their own puerile simplicity. But the monuments of a people remain to perpetuate their character. We may judge of the genius or state of the Druidical arts and sciences by such objects. We are told that the Druids were so wholly devoted to nature, that they prohibited the use of any tool in the construction of their rude works; all are unhewn masses, or heaps of stones ”

“ 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. ”

“ But, when the people found that they were none the better for the blessings of the Druids, and none the worse for the curses of the Druids, but, that the sun shone and the rain fell without consulting the Druids at all, they just began to think that the Druids were mere men, and that it signified very little whether they cursed or blessed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The boldness of the imagination we cannot sufficiently admire. When this whole area, which is about four miles square, was entirely sacred ground, under the care and custody of the Druids, one of their great seminaries or academies, every where a fine turf, cover’d over with an infinite variety of barrows, it was a most agreeable scene, and merely a picture. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Much of the Druids’ lore is imposture, but they have wrested from Nature some of her secrets. They know the stars in their courses; they are skilled in the lore of plants and the healing properties of herbs and simples. ”

“ At the time of the Roman conquest, the Druids were thoroughly ensconced in Britain and Gaul. Their power over the people was unquestioned, and there were instances in which armies, about to attack each other, sheathed their swords when ordered to do so by the white-robed Druids. No undertaking of great importance was scatted without the assistance of these patriarchs, who stood as mediators between the gods and men. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ From the Knights of the Round Table she worked back to the days of Cæsar and all the hierarchy of druids, bards, and ovates defiled in tedious procession before me. After them we fell, as a matter of course, from dolmen to menhir and from galgal to cromlech.
While I wandered in Celtic forests with Mlle. Hélouin, who wanted only a little more flesh to make quite a respectable druidess, the widow of the stock-broker made the echoes resound with complaints as ceaseless and monotonous as those of a blind beggar: They had forgotten to give her a foot-warmer! They gave her cold soup! ”

“ Agnes Beacon, and in addition to this tale of giants there was the usual chatter about Druids and Druidic monuments in connection with Carn Brea. It is safest to leave the Druids alone—they are at a discount [Pg 257] now; the place is interesting enough without them, and the view from the summit is magnificent, reaching as it does from sea to sea. ”

“ The Druids, for so they call their wizards, esteem nothing more sacred than the mistletoe and the tree on which it grows, provided only that the tree is an oak. But apart from this they choose oak-woods for their sacred groves and perform no sacred rites without oak-leaves; so that the very name of Druids may be regarded as a Greek appellation derived from their worship of the oak. For they believe that whatever grows on these trees is sent from heaven, and is a sign that the tree has been chosen by the god himself. The mistletoe is very rarely to be met with ”

“ 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." ”

“ The Druids taught the people of Britain and Gaul concerning the immortality of the soul. They believed in transmigration and apparently in reincarnation. They borrowed in one life, promising to pay back in the next. They believed in a purgatorial type of hell where they would be purged of their sins, afterward passing on to the happiness of unity with the gods. The Druids taught that all men would be saved, but that some must return to earth many times to learn the lessons of human life and to overcome the inherent evil of their own natures. ”

“ IV. The last load of acorns, adorned with the faded branches of the noble oak, and crowned with the mistletoe, a plant which the Druids taught the ancient Britons to hold in superstitious reverence, was now borne into the city, preceded by a band of Druids in their long white robes, and a company of minstrels, singing songs, and dancing before the wain. The king and queen came forth to meet the procession, and, after addressing suitable speeches to the Druids and the people, re-entered the pavilion, where they sat down to regale themselves. ”

“ What interests one most is, the remarkable allusion contained in the term dé druidechta, 'of the god of druidism,' which doubtless meant the divinity with whom the druids as magicians had to do, and with whose aid they practised their magical arts. ”

“ All these Druids have one chief, who enjoys the highest authority amongst them. When he dies, he is succeeded by the member of the order who is most prominent amongst the others, if there be any such single individual; if, however, there are several men equally distinguished, the successor is elected by the Druids. Sometimes they even go to war about this supremacy.
“The Druids take no part in warfare; nor do they pay taxes like the rest of the people; they are exempt from military service, and from all public burdens. ”

“ Without the Druids they never sacrifice. It is said they have other modes of sacrificing their human victims; that they pierce some of them with arrows, and crucify others in their temples; and that they prepare a colossus of hay and wood, into which they put cattle, beasts of all kinds, and men, and then set fire to it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I have always thought that there was a more spiritual quality in the religion of the Druids than in that of most ancient heathen faiths, due probably to the fact that their rites and ceremonies were performed in the woods and forests, and that in their seeking after a Force beyond that which they saw, they received some measure of the revelation which comes to every one who loves the woods and fields. To us who have the light of other revelation, the contact with Nature brings a closer touch and keener sympathy with the great scheme of the Author of all creation. ”

“ From all the accounts transmitted to us by the ancient writers, it is pretty evident that the Druids were possessed of considerable knowledge for so barbarous an age, and that they made all possible use of this knowledge to perpetuate their authority and keep the rest of the people in ignorance of the true character of their religious mysteries. ”

“ But if any man had not cleared with the Druids for the last year’s dues, he was neither to have a spark of this holy fire from the carns, nor durst any of his neighbours let him take the benefit of theirs under pain of excommunication, which, as managed by the Druids, was worse than death. ”

“ The Druids were the priests or ministers of religion among the ancient Celtic nations in Gaul, Britain, and Germany. Our information respecting them is borrowed from notices in the Greek and Roman writers, compared with the remains of Welsh and Gaelic poetry still extant. ”

“ Like the Druids, on the 212other hand, they live in dark dwellings; often even breaking their glass-windows, where they find such, and stuffing them up with pieces of raiment, or other opaque substances, till the fit obscurity is restored. Again, like all followers of Nature-Worship, they are liable to outbreakings of an enthusiasm rising to ferocity; and burn men, if not in wicker idols, yet in sod cottages. ”