Dr. Stuart On the Druids--Their Deities--Augury--Human
Victims--Nature of the Gods--Gauls descendants of
Dis--Funeral Rites--Slaves and Clients burned--What
Pliny says--Tallies used in making known the Will of
Heaven--Walking through the Fire--Barbarous mode of
discovering Future Events--Wonder-working
Eggs--Colours of Eggs, and by whom worn--Virtue of
Globule of Ink--Easter Eggs represent Druidical
Eggs--Origin of the Druids dated from the Dispersal of
Babel--Arch-Druid of the Mountains--Wise Men of the
East were probably Druids--Island of Iona--Druidical
Cairns--Stones of Judgment--Mr. Rust's
Opinion--Misletoe regarded as a Charm--Rings worn as
Preventatives against Witchcraft--Legend concerning
Stonehenge--A Famous General--Merlin the
Magician--Stones brought from Africa by Giants--Graves
of British Lords.
Dr. Stuart, writing of the Druids, says their chief deity was Mercury,
of whom they have many images. They also worship Apollo and Mars, and
Jupiter and Minerva. They held a meeting at a certain time of the year
in a consecrated spot. They used rites of augury from the slaughter of
human victims. According to Strabo, three classes of persons were much
venerated among the Gauls--the Bards, Druids, and Soothsayers.
Caesar, from whom Dr. Stuart largely borrows, tells us that the whole
of the Gallic nation was exceedingly superstitious. People of
distinction who laboured under the more fatal diseases, and those who
engaged in battles and other dangerous undertakings, either immolated
human beings, or vowed that they would immolate themselves. They
employed the Druids as their ministers at those sacrifices. It was
thought the divine nature of the immortal gods could not be
propitiated but by human life being substituted for human life. There
were, Caesar continues, effigies of immense magnitude, interwoven with
osiers, filled with living men. Then these former being ignited, the
latter perished in the flames. The people thought that the sacrifices
of guilty human victims, apprehended in the act of theft, robbery, or
any other crime, were more agreeable to the immortal gods than those
of innocent persons; but when the supply of culprits failed,
non-guilty victims were sacrificed. All the Gauls boasted that they
were descended from Dis as their father--a tradition communicated to
them by the Druids. Funeral rites, considering the culture of the
Gauls, were magnificent and sumptuous. Everything dear to the
deceased, when alive, was carried into the fire. Even the animals did
not escape; and, to manifest high esteem for a person of note, his
slaves and clients who were beloved by him, were cremated together
after the obsequies demanded by justice had been performed.
Pliny writes that the Druids exhibited the herb vervain in the
exercise of their rites. They had tallies, consisting of sprigs lopped
from a fruit-bearing tree, marked in a particular manner, thrown into
a garment or covered with a veil, and drawn out by chance, through
which means, it was supposed, the will of heaven was made known.
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. When a victim was put to death by
the sword, the Druids who investigated the deed, pretended to discover
future events by the manner in which he fell, the flavouring of the
reeking blood, and the quivering of the body in the agonies of death.
The wonder-working eggs possessed by the Druids were insignia of a
sacred character, set in gold, and worn suspended from the neck.
The Rev. John B. Pratt, in his work on the Druids, says: "These eggs
were wholly artificial. Some of them were blue, some white, a third
sort green, and a fourth regularly variegated with all these colours.
They are said to have been worn by different orders--the white by the
Druids; the blue by the presiding bards; the green by the Vains; and
those with the three colours blended were pendants of the disciples.
That the secret of manufacturing these amulets was totally unknown in
Britain, except to the Druids, is thought most probable; and the
secret of discovering things by looking into a globule of ink, which,
it is asserted by some, the Egyptian jugglers still possess, may be a
remnant of the ancient sortilege by means of the Druid's egg."
Probably the coloured eggs children play with at Easter were anciently
intended to represent the Druidical eggs.
Mr. Pratt concludes, that if it be true that the Druids came from the
East, and that the traces of their existence there run back, as some
suppose, into the remotest antiquity, "it is not altogether
preposterous," he continues, "to suppose that their origin is to be
dated from the dispersion at Babel.... Balaam, the Eastern magician,
was probably the Arch-Druid of the mountainous country in which he
lived. The offerings he made were at the high places of Baal, and for
the purpose of enchantments, although he was not ignorant of the Most
High.... The magi, or wise men of the East, probably were Druids, who,
from their knowledge of astronomy, at once detected the star which
indicated the fulfilment of Balaam's prophecy."
The earliest name borne by the island of Iona, so far as known in
modern times, was Innis-nan Druidneach, or Isle of the Druids. The
Druids retained their power not only in Iona until the year 563 or
564, but also on the mainland and in the islands. Mullingar is
supposed to have been the last place in Ireland where the Druids had
a residence. In the beginning of the last century a number of gold
coins, found on the hill Karn Bre, near Truro, were thought to be
Druidical coins. Some of them, Mr. Davies thinks, were impressed with
rude hieroglyphics, symbolical of Ceridiven. Objects of different
kinds are combined in one compound figure. To an arc or half moon is
added the head of a bird, probably symbolical of the mother of the
mystical egg. On other coins found there, magical ceremonies are
represented, and on others the mystical sow appears sketched out.
In Druidical times there were rocking stones, or stones of judgment.
They were large, some of them weighing fifty tons, and having sharp
edges, on which they stood nicely balanced. A rocking stone of
judgment, says Mr. Rust, "had been intended to test difficult
questions, which could not be proved, disproved, or solved in the
ordinary way, or for want of evidence, or which required the divine
interposition of some particular deity, likely a bloodthirsty one; for
as they had different deities, different temples, and different
altars, they had also different judgment stones attached to them, and
different ordeals through which the tried individuals, whether
devotees, criminals, or captives, had to pass. These judgment stones
had been anciently very common." According to the number of times a
stone oscillated or refused to oscillate, the Druids determined to
convict or acquit the suspected person.
Of the misletoe, and the esteem in which it was held by the Druids, we
have written in page 127. This parasitical plant was regarded as a
charm of no ordinary virtue. But the misletoe was only one of many
articles they had possessing occult virtue.
Glass rings, manufactured by Druidical priests, were worn by the
ancient Britons, as preventatives against witchcraft and the
machinations of evil spirits.
A ridiculous legend is told concerning Stonehenge, the supposed
Druidical temple near Salisbury. Aurelianus Ambrosius, a famous
general of the ancient Britons, of Roman extraction, was, at the
request of the Britons, sent over with ten thousand men to assist them
against the Saxons, whom Vortigern had invited into Britain. Ambrosius
had such successes against the Saxons that the Britons chose him for
their king, and compelled Vortigern to give up to him all the western
parts of the kingdom divided by the Roman highway, called Watling
Street. Ultimately Ambrosius became sole monarch of Britain. Geoffrey
says that this monarch built Stonehenge. Ambrosius, we are told,
coming to a monastery where lay buried three hundred British lords who
had been massacred by Hengist, resolved to perpetuate the memory of
this action by raising a monument over their remains.
By the advice of Tremounus, Archbishop of Caerleon, Ambrosius
consulted Merlin, the celebrated magician, as to how he should
proceed. Merlin recommended him to send to Ireland for certain great
stones, called _chorea gigantum_, the giant's dance, placed in a
circle on a hill called Killaci, which had been brought there by
giants from the farthest borders of Africa. A strong force was, in
accordance with this advice, sent to Ireland, but the king of that
country derided the folly of the Britons in undertaking such a
ridiculous expedition, and opposed them in battle. The Irish king was
vanquished, and, by the direction and assistance of Merlin, who had
accompanied the expedition, the wonderful stones were conveyed to
Salisbury, and, by order of Ambrosius, placed over the graves of the
British lords. These gravestones are what are now called Stonehenge.
Such stories, as may be expected, are discredited by historians, but
our best antiquaries disagree as to the origin of these monuments of
antiquity.
Gale, Dickenson, and others say the Druids borrowed their philosophy
and religion from the Jews and Eastern heathen nations. Our older
antiquarians believe that cromlechs are Druidical altars, in
imitation of older heathen altars--a theory supported by reference to
the stones called Petroma, near the temple of Eleusinian Damater in
Arcadia: The Philistines pointed to the Deluge in their hieroglyphics
of the serpent and mundane egg, the history which the serpent is
supposed to designate being that of Noah, and the egg being reckoned
an emblem of the ark, from the circumstance of it containing the
rudiments of future life. The serpent is not unfrequently represented
when reference is made to the betrayal of Eve.
People making acknowledgment to the gods for continual benefits,
surrendered part of their increase for the service of the altar.
Egyptian offerings consisted of fruits and herbs, while shepherds
offered firstlings of their flocks. For this cause the Egyptians
disliked shepherds almost with the cruel hatred Cain bore his brother
Abel.
As the oak and misletoe were sacred to the Druids, so were they to the
Israelites in their days of declension. And in Greece we find the
famous oracle of Jupiter at the oaks of Dodona. To the ancient
inhabitants of Italy the misletoe was a sacred emblem; and the golden
branches of Virgil were none other than those of the misletoe.
As the Druids studied the heavenly bodies as a book (so says Origen),
the heathen learned through the discovery of a new star the birth of a
great person. From Virgil, it appears, it was commonly imagined the
gods sent stars to point the way to their favourites in perplexity.
The Jews entertained similar opinions.
According to Suckford, the ancients believed that heroes and other
great men were transferred at death to some bright planet. In
consequence of such belief, eminent persons were deified. Julius Caesar
was canonised, because it was thought he was translated to a new star,
discovered at the hour of his death.
DEMONOLOGY.