DRUIDISM
Although Irish literature is full of allusions to the druids it is
extremely difficult to know with any exactness what they were. They
are mentioned from the earliest times. The pre-Milesian races, the
Nemedians and Fomorians, had their druids, who worked mutual spells
against each other. The Tuatha De Danann had innumerable druids amongst
them, who used magic. The invading Milesians had three druids with
them in their ships, Amergin the poet and two others. In fact, druids
are mentioned in connection with all early Irish fiction and history,
from the first colonising of Ireland down to the time of the saints.
It seems very doubtful, however, whether there existed in Ireland as
definitely established an order of druids as in Britain and on the
Continent.[1] They are frequently mentioned in Irish literature as
ambassadors, spokesmen, teachers, and tutors. Kings were sometimes
druids, so were poets. It is a word which seems to me to have been,
perhaps from the first, used with great laxity and great latitude. The
druids, so far as we can ascertain, do not seem to be connected with
any positive rites or worship; still less do they appear to have been
a regular priesthood, and there is not a shadow of evidence to connect
them with any special worship as that of the sun or of fire. In the
oldest saga-cycle the druid appears as a man of the highest rank and
related to kings. King Conor's father was according to some--probably
the oldest--accounts a druid; so was Finn mac Cool's grandfather.
Before the coming of St. Patrick there certainly existed images, or,
as they are called by the ancient authorities, "idols" in Ireland,
at which or to which sacrifice used to be offered, probably with a
view to propitiating the earth-gods, possibly the Tuatha De Danann,
and securing good harvests and abundant kine. From sacrificial rites
spring, almost of necessity, a sacrificial caste, and this caste--the
druids--had arrived at a high state of organisation in Gaul and Britain
when observed by Cæsar, and did not hesitate to sacrifice whole
hecatombs of human beings. "They think," said Cæsar, "that unless a
man's life is rendered up for a man's life, the will of the immortal
God cannot be satisfied, and they have sacrifices of this kind as a
national institution."
There appears nothing, however, that I am aware of, to connect the
druids in Ireland with human sacrifice, although such sacrifice appears
to have been offered. The druids, however, appear to have had private
idols of their own. We find a very minute account in the tenth-century
glossary of King Cormac as to how a poet performed incantations with
his idols. The word "poet" is here apparently equivalent to druid, as
the word "druid" like the Latin _vates_ is frequently a synonym for
"poet." Here is how the glossary explains the incantation called _Imbas
Forosnai_:--
"This," says the ancient lexicographer, "describes to the poet
whatsoever thing he wishes to discover,[2] and this is the manner
in which it is performed. The poet chews a bit of the raw red flesh
of a pig, a dog, or a cat, and then retires with it to his own bed
behind the door,[3] where he pronounces an oration over it and offers
it to his _idol gods_. He then _invokes the idols_, and if he has
not received the illumination before the next day, he pronounces
incantations upon his two palms and takes his idol gods unto him
[into his bed] in order that he may not be interrupted in his sleep.
He then places his two hands upon his two cheeks and falls asleep.
He is then watched so that he be not stirred nor interrupted by any
one until everything that he seeks be revealed to him at the end of
a _nomad_,[4] or two or three, or as long as he continues at his
offering, and hence it is that this ceremony is called Imbas, that
is, the two hands upon him crosswise, that is, a hand over and a hand
hither upon his cheeks. And St. Patrick prohibited this ceremony,
because it is a species of Teinm Laeghdha,[5] that is, he declared
that any one who performed it should have no place in heaven or on
earth."
These were apparently the private images of the druid himself which are
spoken of, but there certainly existed public idols in pagan Ireland
before the evangelisation of the island. St. Patrick himself, in his
"Confession," asserts that before his coming the Irish worshipped
idols--_idola et immunda_--and we have preserved to us more than
one account of the great gold-covered image which was set up in Moy
Slaught[6] [_i.e._, the Plain of Adoration], believed to be in the
present county of Cavan. It stood there surrounded by twelve lesser
idols ornamented with brass, and may possibly have been regarded as a
sun-god ruling over the twelve seasons. It was called the Crom Cruach
or Cenn Cruach,[7] and certain Irish tribes considered it their special
tutelary deity. The Dinnseanchas, or explanation of the name of Moy
Slaught, calls it "the King Idol of Erin," "and around him were twelve
idols made of stones, but he was of gold. Until Patrick's advent he was
the god of every folk that colonised Ireland. To him they used to offer
the firstlings of every issue and the chief scions of every clan;" and
the ancient poem in the Book of Leinster declares that it was "a high
idol with many fights, which was named the Cromm Cruaich."[8]
The poem tells us that "the brave Gaels used to worship it, and would
never ask from it satisfaction as to their portion of the hard world
without paying it tribute."
"He was their God,[9]
The withered Cromm with many mists,
The people whom he shook over every harbour,
The everlasting kingdom they shall not have.
To him without glory
Would they kill their piteous wailing offspring,
With much wailing and peril
To pour their blood around Cromm Cruaich.
Milk and corn
They would ask from him speedily
In return for one-third of their healthy issue,
Great was the horror and scare of him.
To him
Noble Gaels would prostrate themselves,
From the worship of him, with many manslaughters
The Plain is called Moy Sleacht.
* * * * *
In their ranks (stood)
Four times three stone idols
To bitterly beguile the hosts,
The figure of Cromm was made of gold.
Since the rule
Of Heremon,[10] the noble man of grace,
There was worshipping of stones
Until the coming of good Patrick of Macha [Ardmagh]."
There is not the slightest reason to distrust this evidence as far as
the existence of Crom Cruach goes.
"This particular tradition," says Mr. Nutt, "like the majority of
those contained in it [the Dinnseanchas] must be of pre-Christian
origin. It would have been quite impossible for a Christian monk
to have invented such a story, and we may accept it as a perfectly
genuine bit of information respecting the ritual side of insular
Celtic religion."[11]
St. Patrick overthrew this idol, according both to the poem in the Book
of Leinster and the early lives of the saint. The life says that when
St. Patrick cursed Crom the ground opened and swallowed up the twelve
lesser idols as far as their heads, which, as Rhys acutely observes,
shows that when the early Irish lives of the saint were written the
pagan sanctuary had so fallen into decay, that only the heads of the
lesser idols remained above ground, while he thinks that it was at this
time from its bent attitude and decayed appearance the idol was called
Crom, "the Stooper."[12] There is, however, no apparent or recorded
connection between this idol and the druids, nor do the druids appear
to have fulfilled the functions of a public priesthood in Ireland, and
the Introduction to the Seanchas Mór, or ancient Book of the Brehon
Laws, distinctly says that, "until Patrick came only three classes of
persons were permitted to speak in public in Erin, a chronicler to
relate events and to tell stories, a poet to eulogise and to satirise,
and a Brehon to pass sentence from precedents and commentaries," thus
noticeably omitting all mention of the druids as a public body.
The idol Crom with his twelve subordinates may very well have
represented the sun, upon whom both season and crops and consequently
the life both of man and beast depend. The gods to whom the early Irish
seem to have sacrificed, were no doubt, as I think Mr. Nutt has shown,
agricultural powers, the lords of life and growth, and with these the
sun, who is at the root of all growth, was intimately connected, "the
object of that worship was to promote increase, the theory of worship
was--life for life."[13] That the Irish swore by the sun and the moon
and the elements is certain; the oath is quoted in many places,[14]
and St. Patrick appears to allude to sun-worship in that passage of his
"Confession," where he says, "that sun which we see rising daily at His
bidding for our sake, it will never reign, and its splendour will not
last for ever, but those who adore it will perish miserably for all
eternity:" this is also borne out by the passage in Cormac's Glossary
of the images the pagans used to adore, "as, for instance, the form or
figure of the sun on the altar."[15]
Another phase of the druidic character seems to have been that he was
looked upon as an intermediary between man and the invisible powers.
In the story which tells us how Midir the De Danann, carries off the
king's wife, we are informed that the druid's counsel is sought as to
how to recover her, which he at last is enabled to do "through his keys
of science and Ogam," after a year's searching.
The druids are represented as carrying wands of yew, but there is
nothing in Irish literature, so far as I am aware of, about their
connection with the oak, from the Greek for which, _δρῦς_,[16] they
are popularly supposed to derive their name. They used to be consulted
as soothsayers upon the probable success of expeditions, as by Cormac
mac Art, when he was thinking about extorting a double tribute from
Munster,[17] and by Dáthi, the last pagan king of Ireland, when
setting out upon his expedition abroad; they took auguries by birds,
they could cause magic showers and fires, they observed stars and
clouds, they told lucky days,[18] they had ordeals of their own,[19]
but, above all, they appear to have been tutors or teachers.
Another druidic practice which is mentioned in Cormac's Glossary is
more fully treated of by Keating, in his account of the great pagan
convention at Uisneach, a hill in Meath, "where the men of Ireland were
wont to exchange their goods and their wares and other jewels." This
convention was held in the month of May,
"And at it they were wont to make a sacrifice to the arch-god, whom
they adored, whose name was Bél. It was likewise their usage to light
two fires to Bél in every district in Ireland at this season, and
to drive a pair of each herd of cattle that the district contained
between these two fires, as a preservative, to guard them against all
the diseases of that year. It is from that fire thus made that the day
on which the noble feast of the apostles Peter and James is held has
been called Bealtaine [in Scotch Beltane], _i.e._, Bél's fire."
Cormac, however, says nothing about a god named Bél--who, indeed, is
only once mentioned elsewhere, so far as I know[20]--but explains the
name as if it were Bil-tene, "goodly fire," from the fires which the
druids made on that day through which to drive the cattle.[21]
Post-Christian accounts of the druids as a whole, and or individual
druids differ widely. The notes on St. Patrick, in the Book of Armagh,
present them in the worst possible light as wicked wizards and augurs
and people of incantations,[22] and the Latin lives of the Saints
nearly always call them "magi." Yet they are admitted to have been able
to prophecy. King Laoghaire's [Leary's] druids prophesied to him three
years before the arrival of Patrick that "adze-heads would come over a
furious sea,"
"Their mantles hole-headed,
Their staves crook-headed,
Their tables in the east of their houses."[23]
In the lives of the early saints we find some of them on fair terms
with the druids. Columcille's first teacher was a druid, whom his
mother consulted about him. It is true that in the Lismore text he is
called not a druid but a _fáidh, i.e., vates_ or prophet, but this only
confirms the close connection between druid, prophet, and teacher, for
his proceedings are distinctly druidical, the account runs: "Now when
the time for reading came to him the cleric went to a certain prophet
who abode in the land to ask him when the boy ought to begin. When the
prophet had scanned the sky, he said 'Write an alphabet for him now.'
The alphabet was written on a cake, and Columcille consumed the cake
in this wise, half to the east of a water, and half to the west of
a water. Said the prophet through grace of prophecy, 'So shall this
child's territory be, half to the east of the sea, and half to the
west of the sea.'"[24] Columcille himself is said to have composed a
poem beginning, "My Druid is the son of God." Another druid prophesies
of St. Brigit before she was born,[25] and other instances connecting
the early saints with druids are to be found in their lives, which at
least show that there existed a sufficient number of persons in early
Christian Ireland who did not consider the druids wholly bad, but
believed that they could prophecy, at least in the interests of the
saints.
From what we have said, it is evident that there were always druids in
Ireland, and that they were personages of great importance. But it is
not clear that they were an organised body like the druids of Gaul,[26]
or like the Bardic body in later times in Ireland, nor is it clear what
their exact functions were, but they seem to have been teachers above
everything else. It is clear, too, that the ancient Irish--at least in
some cases--possessed and worshipped images. That they sacrificed to
them, and even offered up human beings, is by no means so certain, the
evidence for this resting upon the single passage in the Dinnseanchas,
and the poem (in a modern style of metre) in the Book of Leinster,
which we have just given, and which though it is evidence for the
existence of the idol Crom Cruach, known to us already from other
sources, may possibly have had the trait of human sacrifice added as a
heightening touch by a Christian chronicler familiar with the accounts
of Moloch and Ashtarôth. The complete silence which, outside of these
passages,[27] exists in all Irish literature as to a proceeding so
terrifying to the popular imagination, seems to me a proof that if
human sacrifice was ever resorted to at all, it had fallen into
abeyance before the landing of the Christian missionaries.
[1] Cæsar's words are worth repeating. He says that there were two
sorts of men in Gaul both numerous and honoured--the knights and the
Druids, "equites et druides," because the people counted for nothing
and took the initiative in nothing. As for the Druids, he says: "Rebus
divinis intersunt, sacrificia publica et privata procurant, religiones
interpretantur ... nam fere de omnibus controversiis publicis
privatisque constituunt, et si quod est admissum facinus, si cœdes
facta, si de hereditate, de finibus controversia est iidem decernunt
præmia, pœnasque constituunt." All this seems very like the duties
of the Irish Druids, but not what follows: "si qui, aut privatus aut
populus eorum decreto non stetit, sacrificiis interdicunt. Hæc pœna
apud eos est gravissima." Nor do the Irish appear to have had the
over-Druid whom Cæsar talks of. (_See_ "De Bello Gallico," book vi.
chaps. 13, 14).
[2] "Cach raet bid maith lasin filid agus bud adla(i)c dó do
fhaillsiugad."
[3] Thus O'Curry ("Miscellany of the Celtic Society," vol. ii. p. 208);
but Stokes translates, "he puts it then on the flagstone behind the
door." See the original in Cormac's Glossary under "Himbas." I have not
O'Donovan's translation by me.
[4] O'Curry translates this by "day." It is at present curiously used,
I suppose by a kind of confusion with the English "moment," in the
sense of a minute or other short measure of time. At least I have often
heard it so used.
[5] Another species of incantation mentioned in the glossary.
[6] In Irish Magh Sleacht.
[7] In O'Donovan's fragmentary manuscript catalogue of the Irish MSS.,
in Trinity College, Dublin, he writes _apropos_ of the life of St.
Maedhog or Mogue, contained in H. 2, 6: "I searched the two Brefneys
for the situation of Moy Sleacht on which stood the chief pagan Irish
idol Crom Cruach, but have failed, being misled by Lanigan, who had
been misled by Seward, who had been blinded by the impostor Beauford,
who placed this plain in the county of Leitrim. It can, however, be
proved from this life of St. Mogue that Magh Sleacht was that level
part of the Barony of Tullaghan (in the county of Cavan) in which
the island of Inis Breaghwee (now Mogue's Island), the church of
Templeport, and the little village of Ballymagauran are situated." I
have been told that O'Donovan afterwards found reason to doubt the
correctness of this identification.
[8] M. de Jubainville connects the name with _cru_ (Latin, _cruor_),
"blood," translating Cenn Cruach by _tête sanglante_ and Crom Cruach by
_Courbe sanglante_, or _Croissant ensanglanté_; but Rhys connects it
with Cruach, "a reek" or "mound," as in Croagh-Patrick, St. Patrick's
Reek. Cenn Cruach is evidently the same name as the Roman station
Penno-Crucium, in the present county of Stafford, the Irish "c" being
as usual the equivalent of the British "p." This would make it appear
that Cromm was no local idol. Rhys thinks it got its name Crom Cruach,
"the stooped one of the mound," from its bent attitude in the days of
its decadence.
[9] Observe the exquisite and complicated metre of this in the
original, a proof, I think, that the lines are not very ancient. It
has been edited from the Book of Leinster, Book of Ballymote, Book
of Lecan, and Rennes MS., at vol. i. p. 301 of Mr. Nutt's "Voyage of
Bran," by Dr. Kuno Meyer--
"Ba hé a _nDia_
In Cromm Crín co n-immud _cia_
In lucht ro Craith ós each _Cúan_
In flaithius _Búan_ nochos _Bia._"
[10] _I.e._, Eremon or Erimon, Son of Milesius, see above, p. 59.
[11] The details of this idol, and, above all, the connection in which
it stands to the mythic culture-king Tighearnmas, could not, as Mr.
Nutt well remarks, have been invented by a Christian monk; but nothing
is more likely, it appears to me, than that such a one, familiar with
the idol rites of Judæa from the Old Testament, may have added the
embellishing trait of the sacrifice of "the firstlings of every issue."
[12] Sir Samuel Ferguson's admirable poem upon the death of Cormac
refers to the _priests_ of the idol, but there is no recorded evidence
of any such priesthood--
"Crom Cruach and his sub-gods twelve,
Saith Cormac, are but carven treene.
The axe that made them haft or helve,
Had worthier of your worship been.
But he who made the tree to grow,
And hid in earth the iron stone,
And made the man with mind to know
The axe's use is God alone.
Anon _to priests of Crom were brought--_
_Where girded in their service dread_,
_They ministered_ in red Moy Slaught--
Word of the words King Cormac said.
They loosed their curse against the king,
They cursed him in his flesh and bones,
And daily in their mystic ring
They turned the maledictive stones."
D'Arcy McGee also refers to Crom Cruach in terms almost equally poetic,
but equally unauthorised:--
"Their ocean-god was Manannán Mac Lir,
Whose angry lips
In their white foam full often would inter
Whole fleets of ships.
Crom _was their day-god and their thunderer_,
Made morning and eclipse;
Bride was their queen of song, and unto her
They prayed with fire-touched lips!"
[13] Nutt's "Voyage of Bran," vol. ii. p. 250.
[14] The elements are recorded as having slain King Laoghaire because
he broke the oath he had made by them. In the Lament for Patrick
Sarsfield as late as the seventeenth century, the unknown poet cries:
"Go mbeannaigh' an ghealach gheal's an ghrian duit,
O thug tu an lá as láimh Righ 'Liam leat."
_I.e._, May the white Moon and the Sun bless you, since thou hast taken
the Day out of the hand of King William.
And a little later we find the harper Carolan swearing "by the light of
the sun."
"Molann gach aon an té bhíos cráibhtheach cóir,
Agus molann gach aon an té bhíos páirteach leó,
_Dar solas na gréine_ sé mo rádh go deó
Go molfad gan spéis gan bhréig an t-áth mar geóbhad."
[15] See above, ch. V, note 18.
[16] The genitive of _drai_, the modern _draoi_ (_dhree_) is _druad_,
from whence no doubt the Latin _druidis_. It was Pliny who first
derived the name from _δρῦς_. The word with a somewhat altered meaning
was in use till recently. The wise men from the East are called druids
(_draoithe_) in O'Donnell's translation of the New Testament. The
modern word for enchantment (_draoidheacht_) is literally "druidism,"
but an enchanter is usually _draoidheadóir_, a derivation from _draoi_.
[17] See above, ch. III, note 14.
[18] Cathbad, Conor mac Nessa's Druid, foretold that any one who took
arms--the Irish equivalent for knighthood--upon a certain day, would
become famous for ever, but would enjoy only a brief life. It was
Cuchulain who assumed arms upon that day.
[19] O'Curry quotes a druidic ordeal from the MS. marked H. 3. 17 in
Trinity College, Dublin. A woman to clear her character has to rub her
tongue to a red-hot adze of bronze, which had been heated in a fire of
blackthorn or rowan-tree.
[20] "Revue Celt.," vol. ii. p. 443. Is Bel to be equated with what
Rhys calls in one place "the chthonian divinity Beli the Great," of
the Britons, and in another "Beli the Great, the god of death and
darkness"? (_See_ "Hibbert Lectures," pp. 168 and 274.)
[21] The Christian priests, apparently unable to abolish these cattle
ceremonies, took the harm out of them by transferring them to St.
John's Eve, the 24th of June, where they are still observed in most
districts of Ireland, and large fires built with bones in them, and
occasionally cattle are driven through them or people leap over
them. The cattle were probably driven through the fire as a kind of
substitute for their sacrifice, and the bones burnt in the fire are
probably a substitute for the bones of the cattle that should have been
offered up. Hence the fires are called "teine cnámh" (bone-fire) in
Irish, and bōne-fire (not bŏnfire) in English.
[22] St. Patrick is there stated to have found around the king "scivos
et magos et auruspices, incantatores et omnis malæ artis inventores."
[23] This means tonsured men, with cowls, with pastoral staves, with
altars in the east end of the churches. The ancient Irish rann is very
curious:---
"Ticcat Tailcinn
Tar muir meirceann,
A mbruit toillceann.
A crainn croimceann.
A miasa n-airrter tige
Friscerat uile amen."
[24] _I.e._, one half in Ireland, the other in Scotland, alluding to
his work at Iona and among the Picts.
[25] Stokes, "Lives of the Saints, from the Book of Lismore," p. 183.
[26] Who were, according to Ammianus Marcellinus, quoting the Greek
historian, Timagenes, "sodaliciis adstricti consortiis."
[27] There is one other instance of human sacrifice mentioned in the
Book of Ballymote, but this is recorded in connection with funeral
games, and appears to have been an isolated piece of barbarity
performed "that it might be a reproach to the Momonians for ever, and
that it might be a trophy over them." Fiachra, a brother of Niall of
the Nine Hostages, in the fourth century, carried off fifty hostages
from Munster, and dying of his wounds, the hostages were buried alive
with him, round his grave: "ro hadnaicead na geill tucadh a neass
ocus siad beo im fheart Fiachra comba hail for Mumain do gres, ocus
comba comrama forra." For another allusion to "human sacrifice" see
O'Curry's "Manners and Customs," vol. i. p. dcxli and cccxxxiii. The
"Dinnseanchas," quoted from above, is a topographical work explaining
the origin of Irish place-names, and attributed to Amergin mac
Amhalgaidh, poet to King Diarmuid mac Cearbaill, who lived in the sixth
century. "There seems no reason," says Dr. Atkinson, in his preface
to the facsimile Book of Leinster, "for disputing his claims to be
regarded as the original compiler of a work of a similar character--the
original nucleus is not now determinable." The oldest copy is the
Book of Leinster and treats of nearly two hundred places and contains
eighty-eight poems. The copy in the Book of Ballymote contains one
hundred and thirty-nine, and that in the Book of Lecan even more. The
total number of all the poems contained in the different copies is
close on one hundred and seventy. The copy in the Bodleian Library
was published by Whitley Stokes in "Folk-lore," December, 1892, and
that in the Advocates Library, in Edinburgh, in "Folk-lore," December,
1893. The prose tales, from a copy at Rennes, he published in the
"Revue Celtique," vols. xv. and xvi. An edition of the oldest copy in
the Book of Leinster is still a desideratum. The whole work is full of
interesting pagan allusions, but the different copies, in the case of
many names, vary greatly and even contradict each other.