Chap. IV
1. All the Britons, like the Gauls, were much addicted to superstitious ceremonies; and those who laboured under severe disorders, or were exposed to the dangers of war, either offered human victims, or made a vow to perform such a sacrifice.
2. The druids were employed in the performance of these cruel rites; and they believed that the gods could not be appeased unless the life of a man was ransomed with human blood. Hence arose the public institution of such sacrifices; and those who had been surprised in theft, robbery, or any other delinquency, were considered as the most acceptable victims. But when criminals could not be obtained, even the innocent were put to death, that the gods might be appeased.
3. The sacred ceremonies could not be performed except in the presence of the druids; and on them devolved the office of providing for the public as well as private rites. They were the guardians of religion and the interpreters of mysteries; and being skilled in medicine, were consulted for the preservation or restoration of health.
4. Among their gods, the principal object of their worship was Mercury.386 Next to him they adored justice (under the name of Astarte), then Apollo, and Mars (who was called Vitucadrus), Jupiter, Minerva, Hercules, Victory (called Andate), Diana, Cybele, and Pluto. Of these deities they held the same opinions as other nations.
5. The Britons, like the Gauls, endeavoured to derive their origin from Dis or Pluto, boasting of this ancient tradition of the druids. For this reason they divided time, not by the number of days, but of nights, and thus distinguished the commencement of the month, and the time of their birth. This custom agrees with the ancient mode of computation adopted in Genesis, chapter i.387
6. The druids, being held in high veneration, were greatly followed by the young men for the sake of their instructions. They decided almost all public and private controversies, and determined disputes relative to inheritance or the boundaries of lands. They decreed rewards and punishments, and enforced their decisions by an exclusion from the sacrifices. This exclusion was deemed the severest punishment; because the interdicted, being deemed impious and wicked, were shunned as if contagious; justice was refused to their supplications, and they were allowed no marks of honour.388
7. Over the druids presided a chief, vested with supreme authority. At his death he was succeeded by the next in dignity; but if there were several of equal rank, the contest was decided by the suffrages of their body; and sometimes they even contended in arms for this honour.389
8. The druids went not to war, paid no tribute like the rest of the people, were exempted from military duties, and enjoyed immunities in all things. From these high privileges many either voluntarily entered into their order, or were placed in it by friends or parents.
9. They learned a number of verses, which were the only kind of memorials or annals in use among them.390 Some persons accordingly remained twenty years under their instruction, which they did not deem it lawful to commit to writing, though on other subjects they employed the Greek alphabet. “This custom,” to use the words of Julius Cæsar, “seems to have been adopted for two reasons: first, not to expose their doctrines to the common people; and, secondly, lest their scholars, trusting to letters, should be less anxious to remember their precepts; for such assistance commonly diminishes application, and weakens the memory.”
10. In the first place they circulated the doctrine that souls do not die, but migrate into other bodies.391 By this principle they hoped men would be more powerfully actuated to virtue, and delivered from the fear of death. They likewise instructed students in the knowledge of the heavenly bodies, in geography, the nature of things, and the power of the gods.392
11. Their admiration of the mistletoe must not be omitted. The druids esteemed nothing more sacred than the mistletoe, and the tree on which it grew, if an oak. They particularly delighted in groves of oaks,393 and performed no sacred rite without branches of that tree, and hence seems to be derived their name of druids, Δρυιδες. Whatever grew on an oak was considered as sent from heaven, and as a sign that the tree was chosen by God himself. The mistletoe was difficult to be found, and when discovered was gathered with religious ceremonies, particularly at the sixth day of the moon (from which period they dated their months and years, and their cycle of thirty years,) because the moon was supposed to possess extraordinary powers when she had not completed her second quarter. The mistletoe was called in their language all heal.394 The sacrifice and the feast being duly prepared under the tree, they led thither two white bulls, whose horns were then bound for the first time.395 The priest, clothed in a white vestment, ascending the tree, cut off the mistletoe with a golden bill, and received it in a white cloth. They then slew the victims, invoking the favour of the Deity on their offering. They conceived that the mistletoe cured sterility in animals; and considered it as a specific against all poisons. So great was the superstition generally prevailing among nations with respect to frivolous objects.
13. At a certain time of the year the druids retired to a consecrated grove in the island of Mona, whither all persons among whom controversies had arisen, repaired for the decision of their disputes.
14. Besides the druids, there were among the Gauls and Britons poets, called bards,396 who sang in heroic measures the deeds of the gods and heroes, accompanied with the sweet notes of the lyre.
15. Concerning the druids and bards, I shall conclude this chapter in the words of Lucan:—
“You too, ye bards! whom sacred raptures fire.
To chant your heroes to your country’s lyre;
Who consecrate, in your immortal strain,
Brave patriot souls, in righteous battle slain,
Securely now the tuneful task renew,
And noblest themes in deathless songs pursue.
The druids now, while arms are heard no more,
Old mysteries and barbarous rites restore,
A tribe who singular religion love,
And haunt the lonely coverts of the grove.
To these, and these of all mankind alone,
The gods are sure revealed or sure unknown.
If dying mortals’ doom they sing aright,
No ghosts descend to dwell in dreadful night;
No parting souls to grisly Pluto go,
Nor seek the dreary silent shades below;
But forth they fly immortal in their kind,
And other bodies in new worlds they find;
Thus life for ever runs its endless race,
And like a line death but divides the space,
A stop which can but for a moment last,
A point between the future and the past.
Thrice happy they beneath their northern skies,
Who that worst fear—the fear of death—despise
Hence they no cares for this frail being feel,
But rush undaunted on the pointed steel;
Provoke approaching fate, and bravely scorn
To spare that life which must so soon return.”
Rowe’s Lucan, book i.
Footnotes
386 This passage has puzzled the British antiquaries, because it militates against the grand principle of the druidic theology, and because, as they assert, no traces of the Greek or Roman deities are found among the early Britons. Possibly some of the British tribes might have brought this mode of worship from Gaul; but more probably the assertion was derived from the misconception of the ancient authors themselves, who gave the names of their own deities to the objects of adoration distinguished by similar attributes in other countries. The account is borrowed from Cæsar’s description of the Gauls, lib. vi. § 15.
387 “And the evening and the morning were the first day,” &c. ver. 5. We also still say a se’nnight, a fortnight.
388 Like the excommunication of the catholic church.
389 Such a custom would contravene the principles of the druidic or bardic system, which prohibited them from using arms. The remark seems to have been extended to a general application by Richard, from a single instance recorded by Cæsar, of a druidic election in Gaul thus decided.
390 According to the opinion of the Welsh antiquaries, the system of druidical knowledge forms the basis of the Triads. If this be the case, it must be confessed that the bards possessed a profound knowledge of human nature, uncommon critical sagacity, and a perfect acquaintance with the harmony of language and the properties of metre. For example, the subjects of the poetical Triads are,
The Welsh language.
Fancy and invention.
The design of poetry.
Nature of just thinking.
Rules of arrangement.
Rules of description.
Variety of matter and invention.
Rules of composition; comprising the laws of
verse, rhyme, stanzas, consonancy or alliteration,
and accent.
We quote a few of these Triads to show their nature and structure.
The three qualifications of poetry;—endowment of genius, judgment from experience, and happiness of mind.
The three foundations of judgment;—bold design, frequent practice, and frequent mistakes.
The three foundations of learning;—seeing much, suffering much, and studying much.
The three foundations of happiness;—a suffering with contentment, a hope that it will come, and a belief that it will be.
The three foundations of thought;—perspicuity, amplitude, and justness.
The three canons of perspicuity;—the word that is necessary, the quantity that is necessary, and the manner that is necessary.
The three canons of amplitude;—appropriate thought, variety of thought, and requisite thought.
391 According to the Triads, the theology of the bards was pure monotheism. They taught also the transmigration of souls; believing that the soul passed by death through all the gradations of animal life, from Anoom, the bottomless abyss, or lowest degree of animation, up to the highest degree of spiritual existence next to the Supreme Being. Human nature was considered as the middle point of this scale. As this was a state of liberty, in which the soul could attach itself to either good or evil; if evil predominated, it was after death obliged to retrace its former transmigrations from a point in the animal creation equal to its turpitude, and it again and again became man till it was attached to good. Above humanity, though it might again animate the body of man, it was incapable of relapse; but continued progressively rising to a degree of goodness and happiness, inferior only to the Deity.
It is remarkable that many singular points of coincidence have been discovered in comparing the religious system of the Hindoos with that of the ancient Britons; and in the languages of these two people some striking similarities occur in those proverbs and forms of expression which are derived from national customs and religious ceremonies.
392 This account of the druids, like some of the preceding paragraphs, is borrowed from Cæsar’s description of the Gauls.
393 Gen. xxi. 33.
394 The worship and religious ceremonies of the druids have formed the subject of many and voluminous dissertations; and the mistletoe, from its connection with their sacred rites, is a plant that has always been interesting to antiquaries. In a letter recently received by the editor from the learned and scientific Professor of Botany, Dr. Daubeny, of Magdalen College, Oxford, that gentleman observes, that though the mistletoe is occasionally found on the oak in Britain, yet this occurs so rarely that it is difficult to suppose the druids could have got a supply for their purposes from such a source.
“There is a plant nearly allied to the mistletoe, the Loranthus Europæus, which grows freely on the oak, when it occurs; but unfortunately the most western locality known is the garden of Schoenbrunn near Vienna, but out of the limits, I believe, within which the druidical worship existed: it is very uncommon in Hungary.
“This circumstance has given rise to an hypothesis, which I may repeat without attaching to it any very great importance, namely, that the Loranthus is the mistletoe of the druids, and that when the druidical worship was exterminated, this plant, as being introduced into their rites, was extirpated from all those parts of Europe, where the druids were known.”
The oak among the ancient Britons was peculiarly sacred as the place of worship, and consequently branches of this tree were used to adorn the altar, and garlands of its leaves to decorate the priest or druid; and the mistletoe, being so seldom found on the oak, was considered so great and desirable an appendage, that no solemn festival was held without it. It has been observed by naturalists that the blossom of the mistletoe falls within a few days of the summer solstice, and the berry within a few days of the winter solstice. These incidents therefore marked the return of two of the usual seasons for holding the bardic conventions and festivals. When the sacrifice was over, the berries of this plant were taken by the ovate, the physician of the tribe, and converted to medical purposes. That these berries possessed medicinal virtues can hardly be doubted. The following passage respecting this sacred plant occurs in Bacon:—“Mistletoe groweth chiefly upon crab trees, apple trees, sometimes upon hazels, and rarely upon oaks; the mistletoe whereof is counted very medicinal. It is ever green, winter and summer, and beareth a white glistening berry: and it is a plant utterly differing from the plant on which it groweth.”
Sir John Colbach published a Dissertation on the efficacy of the mistletoe in 1720; but in medicine, as in fashion, what is deemed of high value in one age is discontinued in the next, and thought nothing of. Such is the fate of the mistletoe in the present day as to any medicinal use that is made of it.
395 As the plough was fastened to the horns of the beasts, this expression signifies that the animal had never been employed in labour.
The doctrine of the druids is said to have been first invented in Britain, and from thence carried into Gaul; on which account Pliny says (in his thirtieth book), “But why should I commemorate these things with regard to an art which has passed over the sea, and reached the bounds of nature? Britain even at this time celebrates it with so many wonderful ceremonies, that she seems to have taught it to the Persians.” Julius Cæsar affirms the same in his Commentaries: “And now those persons who wish to acquire a more extensive knowledge of such things, repair to Britain for information.”
It is a singular coincidence of circumstances that bulls perfectly white were sacrificed by the Egyptians to Apis. When such an animal was found unblemished, and without a single black hair, the priest tied a fillet about his horns, and sealed it with the signet of his ring; it being a capital crime to sacrifice one of these animals except it was thus marked.—Herodotus.
396 According to the Welsh antiquaries, these distinctions are erroneous. The druidical, or rather bardic, system consisted of three classes: the bard proper, whose province was philosophy and poetry; the druid, or minister of religion; and the ovate, or mechanic and artist. For a curious account of the bardic system and institutions the reader is referred to the Introduction to Owen’s Translations of the Elegies of Llywarch Hên.