Druidism

DRUIDISM was the faith of the Celtic inhabitants of Gaul until the time of the Romanization of their country, and of the Celtic population of the British Isles either up to the time of the Romanization of Britain, or, in parts remote from Roman in fluence, up to the period of the introduction of Christianity. From the standpoint of the available sources the subject presents two distinct fields for enquiry, the first being pre-Roman and Roman Gaul, and the second pre-Christian and early Christian Ireland and Pictland. In the present state of knowledge it is difficult to assess the interrelation of druidic paganism.

Gaul.

The earliest mention of druids is reported by Diogenes Laertius (Vitae, intro., i and 5) and was found in a lost work by a Greek, Sotion of Alexandria, written about 200 B.C., a date when the greater part of Gaul had been Celtic for over two centuries and the Greek colonies had been even longer established on the south coast. The Gallic druids subsequently described by Caesar were an ancient order of religious officials, for when Sotion wrote they already possessed a reputation as philosophers in the out side world. Caesar's account, however, is the mainspring of our information, and it is an especially valuable document as Caesar's confidante and friend, the Aeduan noble Divitiacus, was himself a druid. Caesar's description of the druids (B.G., vi.) emphasizes their political and judicial functions. Although they officiated at sacrifices and taught the philosophy of their religion, they were more than priests; thus at the annual assembly of the order near Chartres, it was not to worship nor to sacrifice that the people came from afar, but to present their disputes for lawful trial. Moreover, it was not only minor quarrels that the druids decided, for their functions included the investigation of the gravest crim inal charges and even inter-tribal disputes. This, together with the fact that they acknowledged the authority of an archdruid in vested with supreme power, shows that their system was con ceived on a national basis and was independent of ordinary inter tribal jealousy ; and if we add to this political advantage their in fluence over educated public opinion as the chief instructors of the young, and, finally, the formidable religious sanction behind their decrees, it is evident that before the clash with Rome the druids must very largely have controlled the civil administration of Gaul.

Of druidism itself, little is said except that the druids taught the immortality of the human soul, maintaining that it passed into other bodies after death. This belief was identified by later writers, such as Diodorus Siculus, with the Pythagorean doctrine, but probably incorrectly; for there is no evidence that the druidic belief included the notion of a chain of successive lives as a means of ethical purification, or that it was governed by a doctrine of moral retribution having the liberation of the soul as the ultimate hope, and this seems to reduce the druidic creed to the level of ordinary religious speculation. Of the theology of druidism, Caesar tells us that the Gauls, following the druidic teaching, claimed descent from a god corresponding with Dis in the Latin pantheon, and it is possible that they regarded him as a Supreme Being; he also adds that they worshipped Mercury, Apollo, Mars, Jupiter and Minerva, and had much the same notion about these deities as the rest of the world. In short, Caesar's remarks imply that there was nothing in the druidic creed, apart from the doc trine of immortality, that made their faith extraordinary, so that it may be assumed that druidism professed all the known tenets of ancient Celtic religion and that the gods of the druids were the familiar and multifarious deities of the Celtic pantheon. The philosophy of druidism does not seem to have survived the test of Roman acquaintance, and was doubtless a mixture of astrology and mythical cosmogony. Cicero (De Divin. xli., 9o) says that Divitiacus boasted a knowledge of physiologia, but Pliny decided eventually (N.H. xxx., 13) that the lore of the druids was little else than a bundle of superstitions. Of the religious rites them selves, Pliny (N.H. xvi., 249) has given an impressive account of the ceremony of culling the mistletoe, and Diodorus Siculus (Hist., v., 31, 2-5) describes their divinations by means of the slaughter of a human victim, Caesar having already mentioned the burning alive of men in wicker cages. It is likely that these victims were malefactors, and it is accordingly possible that such sacrifices were rather occasional national purgings than the common practice of the druids.

The advent of the Romans quickly led to the downfall of the druidic order. The rebellion of Vercingetorix must have ended their inter-tribal organization, since some of the tribes held aloof or took the Roman side ; furthermore, at the beginning of the Christian era their cruel practices brought the druids into direct conflict with Rome, and led, finally, to their official suppression. At the end of the 1st century their status had sunk to that of mere magicians, and in the and century there is no reference to them. A poem of Ausonius, however, shows that in the 4th cen tury there were still people in Gaul who boasted of druidic descent.

British Isles.

There is one mention of druids in Great Britain as contemporaries of the Gallic clergy, and that is the reference to them by Tacitus (Annals, xiv., 3o) from which we learn that there were elders of that name in Anglesey in A.D. 61 ; but there is no mention of the druids in the whole of the history of Roman England, and it may be questioned whether there ever were any druids in the eastern provinces that had been subjected, before the Roman invasion, to German influence. On the other hand, there were certainly druids in Ireland and Scotland, and there is no reason to doubt that the order reaches back in antiquity at least to the 1st or end century B.e.; the word drai (druid) can only be traced to the 8th century Irish glosses, but there is a strong tradition current in Irish literature that the druids and their lore (druidecht) were either of an aboriginal or Pictish ori gin. As to Wales, apart from the existence of druids in Anglesey, there is little to be said except that the earliest of the bards (the Cynfeirdd) very occasionally called themselves derwyddon.

The Irish druid was a notable person, figuring in the earliest sagas as prophet, teacher and magician ; he did not possess, never theless, the judicial powers ascribed by Caesar to the Gallic druids, nor does he seem to have been a member of a national college with an archdruid at its head. Further, there is no mention in any of the texts of the Irish druids presiding at sacrifices, though they are said to have conducted idolatrous worship and to have celebrated funeral and baptismal rites. They are best de scribed as seers who were, for the most part, sycophants of princes.

Origin.

Some confusion is avoided if we distinguish between the origin of the druids and the origin of druidism. Of the officials themselves, it seems most likely that their order was purely Celtic, and that it originated in Gaul, perhaps as a result of contact with the developed society of Greece ; but druidism, on the other hand, is probably in its simplest terms the pre-Celtic and abor iginal faith of Gaul and the British Isles that was adopted with little modification by the migrating Celts. It is easy to under stand that this faith might acquire the special distinction of antiquity in remote districts, such as Britain, and this view would explain the belief expressed to Caesar that the discipline of druidism was of insular origin.

The etymology of the word druid is still doubtful, but the old orthodox view taking drat as a strengthening prefix and uid as meaning knowing, whereby the druid was a very learned man, has been abandoned in favour of a derivation from an oak-word. Pliny's derivation from Greek SEVS is, however, improbable.

A great revival of interest in the druids, largely promulgated by the archaeological theories of Aubrey and Stukeley, and by Ro manticism generally, took place in the 18th and 19th centuries. One outcome of this interest was the invention of neo-druidism, an extravagant mixture of helio-arkite theology and Welsh bardic lore, and another result is that more than one society has pro fessed itself as inheriting the traditional knowledge and faith of the early druids. The Ancient Order of Druids, however, a friendly society founded in the i8th century, makes no such claim.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.-G. F. Black, Druids and Druidism: a list of referBibliography.-G. F. Black, Druids and Druidism: a list of refer- ences (New York Public Library, 192o) ; J. A. MacCulloch, The Religion of the Ancient Celts (Edinburgh, 1911), and in Hastings, E.R.E., s.v. Druids; A. MacBain, Celtic Mythology and Religion (Stirling, 1917) ; Camb. Med. Hist., ii., xv., pp. 46o, 472 ; T. D. Kendrick, The Druids (2nd ed. 1928—all classical refs. in original and with trans.) . (T. D. K.)