Hitherto we have but glanced at the dwelling-places of our ancestors,
chiefly from existing evidences. Of the general condition of the people
before the Roman Conquest, we find this picturesque account in
Lappenberg's able work on the Anglo-Saxon Kings. The earliest
inhabitants of Britain, as far as we know, were probably of that great
family, the main branches of which, distinguished by the designation of
Celts, spread themselves so widely over middle and western Europe. They
crossed over from the neighbouring country of Gaul. At a later period,
the Belgæ, actuated by martial restlessness or the love of plunder,
assailed the southern and western coasts of the island, and settled
there, driving the Celts into the inland country. Lappenberg's life-like
picture of the condition of these people is as follows:--
"In the southern parts of England, which had become more civilized
through commerce, the cultivation of grain, to which the mildness of the
climate was favourable, had been greatly improved by the art of marling.
The daily consumption was taken from the unthrashed corn, preserved in
caves, which they prepared for food, but did not bake as bread.
Horticulture was not in use among them, nor the art of making cheese;
yet the great number of buildings, of people, and of cattle, appeared
striking to the Romans. Copper and bits of iron, according to weight,
served as money. Their custom of painting themselves with blue and
green, for the purpose of terrifying their enemies, as well as that of
tattooing, was retained till a later period by the Picts of the North.
At certain sacrifices, even the women, painted in a similar manner,
resembling Ethiopians, went about without clothing. Long locks and
mustachios were general. Like the Gauls, they decorated the middle
finger with a ring. Their round simple huts of reeds or wood resembled
those of that people; and the Gaulish chequered coloured mantles are
still in common use in the Scottish Highlands. Their clothing, more
especially that of the Belgic tribes of the south, enveloped the whole
body; a girdle encircled the waist, and chains of metal hung about the
breast. The hilts of their huge pointless swords were adorned with the
teeth of marine animals; their shields were small. The custom of
fighting in chariots, on the axles of which scythes were fastened, and
in the management of which they showed great skill, was peculiar to this
and some other of the Celtic nations, in a generally level country, and
where the horses were not sufficiently powerful to be used for cavalry.
The charioteer was the superior person; the servant bore the weapons.
They began their attacks with taunting songs and deafening howls. Their
fortresses or towns consisted in the natural defence of impenetrable
forests. In the interior of the country were found only the more rugged
characteristics of a people engaged in the rearing of cattle; which,
together with the chase, supplied skins for clothing, and milk and flesh
for food. The northern part of the country seems in great measure to
have been abandoned to the shaft and javelin of the roving hunter, as
skilful as he was bold. Simplicity, integrity, temperance, with a
proneness to dissension, are mentioned as the leading characteristics of
the nation. The reputation of bravery was more especially ascribed to
the Norman races."
The only persons in Britain who possessed any knowledge before the Roman
invasion, and even for some considerable time after it, were the Druids:
the real extent of their attainments is, however, doubtful and
superficial, from the fact that, though they were acquainted with
the Greek letters, they taught almost entirely by memory, and
committed little or nothing to writing. A summary of what is known
concerning Druidical knowledge is contained in the following
particulars:--Concerning the universe, they believed that it should
never be entirely destroyed or annihilated, though it was expected to
suffer a succession of violent changes and revolutions, by the
predominating powers of fire and water. They professed to have great
knowledge of the movements of the heavens and stars; indeed, their
religion required some attention to astronomy, since they paid
considerable regard to the changes of the moon. Their time was computed
by nights, according to very ancient practice, by moons or months; and
by years, when the planet had gone the revolutions of the seasons. That
at least they knew the reversion of the seasons, as adapted to
agricultural purposes, is evident from the fact, that Cæsar landed in
Britain on the 26th day of August, when he states that the harvest was
all completed, excepting one field, which was more backward than the
rest of the country.
The sacred animal of the Druids' religion was the milk-white bull; the
sacred bird, the wren; the sacred tree, the oak; the sacred plant, the
mistletoe; the sacred herbs, the trefoil and the vervain; the sacred
form, that of three divine letters or rays, in the shape of a cross,
symbolizing the triple aspect of God. The sacred herbs and plant, with
another plant, hyssop, the emblem of fortitude in adversity, were
gathered on the sixth day of the moon. The great festivals of Druidism
were three: the solstitial festivals of the rise and fall of the year,
and the winter festival. At the spring festival, the bâltân, or sacred
fire, was brought down by means of a burning-glass from the sun. No
hearth in the island was held sacred till the fire on it had been relit
from the bâltân. The bâltân became the Easter festival of Christianity,
as the mid-winter festival, in which the mistletoe was cut with the
golden sickle from the sacred oak, became Christmas. The mistletoe, with
its three berries, was the symbol of the Deity in his triple aspect--its
growth on the oak, of the incarnation of the Deity in man.
The canonicals of the Arch-Druid were extremely gorgeous. On his head he
wore a tiara of gold, in his girdle the gem of augury, on his breast the
_ior morain_, or breast-plate of judgment; below it, the _glan neidr_,
or draconic egg: on the forefinger of the right hand, the signet ring of
the order; on the forefinger of the left, the gem of inspiration. Before
him were borne the volume of esoteric mysteries, and the golden
implement with which the mistletoe was gathered. His robe was of a white
linen, with a broad purple border.
The sickle with which the mistletoe was cut could not have been of gold,
though so described. Stukeley maintains that the Druids cut the
mistletoe with their upright hatchets of brass, called celts, put at the
end of their staffs. The kind of mistletoe found to this day in Greece
is the same with that found in England; and Sir James Smith, the
distinguished botanist, contends that when the superstitions of the East
travelled westward, our Druids adopted the Greek mistletoe as being more
holy or efficacious than any other. The Druids, doubtless, dispensed the
plant at a high price: "as late as the seventeenth century peculiar
efficacy was attached to it, and a piece hung round the neck was
considered a safeguard against witches." (_W. Sandys, F.S.A._)
It is concluded that the Druids possessed some knowledge of arithmetic,
using the Greek characters as figures, in the public and private
computations mentioned by Cæsar; they were not unacquainted with
mensuration, geometry, and geography, because, as judges, they decided
disputes about the limits of fields, and are even said to have been
engaged in determining the measure of the world. Their mechanical skill,
and particularly their acquaintance with the lever, is generally argued
from the enormous blocks of Stonehenge, and the numerous other massive
erections of rude stone which are yet remaining in many parts of the
kingdom, and which are commonly attributed to these times.
The remains of the mystic monument of Stonehenge, which stands in the
midst of Salisbury Plain, have been variously explained, as to the
purpose for which Stonehenge was reared. When perfect, it consisted of
two circles and two ellipses of upright stones, concentric, and
environed by a bank and ditch; and outside this boundary, of a single
upright stone, and a sacred way, _via sacra_, or cursus. One writer has
beheld in Stonehenge a work of antediluvians, and another, a sanctuary
of the Danes; and Inigo Jones, a temple of the Romans. By the Saxons it
was termed _Stonhengist_, the hanging stones; and thence came
Stonehenge, of which we have this terrible historic legend:--
Ebusa, brother of Hengist, with his brother Octa, landed on the Frith of
Forth with an armament of five hundred vessels. The Britons flew to
arms. A conference was proposed by Hengist, and accepted by Vortigern.
It was held at Stonehenge (Hengist's Stones), and attended by most of
the nobility of Britain. On the sixth day, at the high feast, when the
sun was declining, was perpetrated the "Massacre of the Long Knives,"
the blackest crime, with the exception of that of St. Bartholomew, in
the annals of any nation. The signal for the Saxons to prepare to plunge
their knives, concealed in their boots and under their military cloaks,
into the breasts of their gallant, unsuspicious conquerors was, "Let us
now speak of friendship and love." The signal for action were the words,
"Nemet your Saxas," ("Out with your knives,") and the raising of the
banner of Hengist--a white horse on a red field--over the head of
Vortigern. Four hundred and eighty of the Christian chivalry of Britain
fell before sunset by the hand of the pagan assassins; three only of
name--Eidol Count of Gloucester, and the Princes of Vendotia and
Cambria--escaping, the first by almost superhuman courage and presence
of mind. Priests, ambassadors, bards, and the boyish scions of many
noble families, were piled together in one appalling spectacle on the
site of the banquet, "Moel OEore"--the Mound of Carnage, about three
hundred yards north of the great Temple.
A learned band of inquirers are induced to consider Stonehenge as a
Druidic temple, reared on the solitary plain long before Roman, Dane, or
Saxon had set foot within the country. Still, Stonehenge was the work of
two distinct eras: the smaller circles are attributed to the Celtic
Britons, and the other to the Belgæ. There is a common notion that the
stones cannot be counted twice alike; but when Charles II. visited
Stonehenge in 1651, he counted and re-counted the stones, and proved to
his satisfaction the fallacy of this notion.[4]
A few months since, Professor Nielson, in a paper read to the
Ethnological Society, considered that Stonehenge was a temple of early
fire-worshippers, and of pre-Druidical origin, and belonging to the
"Bronze Period" of the northern archæologists. The remains of
Stonehenge, he remarked, are placed, not on the summit, but on the
declivity of a hill surrounded by numerous barrows, from which bronze
articles have been exhumed, with others of flint, but never any of iron.
He considers that fire-worshippers preceded Druids in Britain and Gaul,
and gives what he regards as numerous proofs of the building of such
stone open temples by colonies of Phoenicians. Circles of large
stones, exactly identical in description with those called Celtic or
Druidical, he continued, are found in countries where neither Celts nor
Druids ever existed; but who knows at what time the ancient religion of
this country may be truly said to have been pre-Druidical or pre-Celtic
in its principles? From various considerations the author of the paper
thinks there may be sufficient reason to regard the remains of
Stonehenge as Phoenician, and connected with the rites of Baal, or the
early worship of fire.
Mr. Fergusson and others say that to the Buddhists rather than to the
Druids we owe Stonehenge. It is also thought to have been an assemblage
of burial-places.
A popular poet has thus apostrophised this mysterious circle and its
historical associations:
"Thou noblest monument of Albion's isle!
Whether by Merlin's aid from Scythia's shore
To Amber's fatal plain Pendragon bore,
Huge frame of giant hands, the mighty pile,
To entomb his Britons slain by Hengist's guile:
Or Druid priests, sprinkled with human gore,
Taught 'mid thy mighty maze their mystic lore:
Or Danish chiefs, enrich'd with savage spoil,
To Victory's idol vast, an unhewn shrine,
Rear'd the rude heap: or in thy hallow'd round,
Repose the kings of Brutus' genuine line:
Or here those kings in solemn state were crown'd:
Studious to trace thy wondrous origin,
We muse on many an ancient tale renown'd."