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A son of King Pellinore and a Knight of the Round Table who received his death wound from Gawain.
# 156
or Droll-teller. See: WANDERING DROLL-TELLER.
Undoubtedly the single aspect of Celtic life and culture which springs most readily to mind when the subject is discussed is the existence of the mysterious priesthood known as the Druids. Little or nothing is known about them beyond the descriptions found in the writings of Julius Caesar, who founded most of his knowledge on the Gaulish Celts rather than the native Britons. Beyond this we know that the word 'Druid' probably stems from the word Duir, 'oak', which has given rise to the assumption that the Druids were priests of the sacred oak groves believed to have once proliferated in Britain and Ireland. Other fragments of informations suggests that there were a number of Druid Schools which taught the precepts of their religion, and trained their formidable memories (they were required to momorize vast genealogies for the scattered tribes of the island). Beyond this, all is speculation - or nearly all. While we still do not possess any valid documentation on the Druids, there are hints and clues scattered throughout Celtic literature and archaeology which enable us to piece together a sketchy picture*.
*See: # 386: Anne Ross and Don Robins: Life and Death of a Druid Prince, Rider, 1989, for the very latest speculations, in which the author's convey evidence that one of the well known finds in a bog in the northern part of Jutland, Denmark, were the remains of a famous Druid Prince).
# 455 p 13 ff
A dwarf on whom Gawain bestowed his mistress Ydain who had tried to leave him.
# 153 - 156
That the Druids regulated all religious ceremonies and festivals goes without saying. Like other ancient priesthoods they studied the movement of the sun, moon and stars and regulated the calendar accordingly. As with many other nations they had festivals at the equinoxes and solstices. The year was personified at these festivals at the spring by a youth, at the summer by a middle aged man, at the autumn by an elderly man and at the winter by an old man. It is probable that the lighting of bonfires at certain times, which is a very ancient British costum and has continued until recent times, is of Druidic origin. Besides lighting these at the solstices and probably also at the equinoxes there were two other festivals which were of especial importance. These are Beltaine on the 1st May, and Samhaine on the 1st November. The Druids, however, attached even more importance to the moon, and there were festivals on the day of the new moon on the sixth day of the moon and on the day of the full moon.
It is not believed, however, that they celebrated any nocturnal ceremonies; all their services are said to have taken place in daylight.
All the ancient religions were sacrificial in nature, and it has been alluded to the allegation that the Druids offered human sacrifices. A recent exponent of Druidism, however,(# 207) repudiates the idea that human victims were ever sacrificed, but admits that sheep, oxen, deer and goats were burnt, their charred remains having been found at Avebury, Stonehenge and even under St Paul's, which was built over a Druidical place of worship. Professor Canney says, 'It is doubtful whether human sacrifice was common. It would seem to have sufficed to take a few drops of blood from the victim and to burn only the wickerwork dummy.' White bulls were, however, offered, according to Welsh bards. This reminds one of Ancient Egypt.
# 455 ( W. B. Crow: The Mistletoe Sacrement, p 51 ff) - # 207
In THE BOOK OF DRUIDRY by Ross Nichols, the foreword is written by a Chosen Chief of the Order of Bards, Ovates & Druids, Philip CarrGomm. These words describe the Druidry from a very knowing point of this Order, and the following is a briefing from that.
'Many people these days are turning to the native traditions of various cultures in an attempt not only to reconnect with their roots and their heritage, but also in an attempt to find a living spirituality that can lead them out of the psychological wasteland that has been created by industrial society. Great attention has been paid to the native American tradition, and to the shamanistic practices of such diverse cultures as the Siberian, Tibetan and Australian Aborigine. Less attention, however, has been given to a tradition which lies closer to the ancestral roots of most European, and hence many North American, people - the Celtic tradition, whose spirituality is epitomized in the path of the Druid. The reason for this lack of attention has almost certainly been the belief that the Druid path has been lost. In reality, although the Druid path has often disappeared from the historian's view, it has never been lost as a tradition - only hidden from the public gaze. But often that which we think of as lost is only in fact hidden from us for a time, in order that we may discover or rediscover it at the right moment.
For nine years after Ross Nichols' death the manuscript of THE BOOK OF DRUIDRY appeared to be lost, until in 1984 a strange series of events led to its rediscovery and preparation for publication. During the last two years of his life, Ross Nichols, the Chosen Chief of the Order of Bards, Ovates & Druids, had been working on a book that he hoped would be able to convey most of what he knew of Druidry to those who were not initiated into its inner workings. Having just completed the final pages of the book, he died unexpectedly in 1975. The Order that he had led with such competence and enthusiasm soon became dormant, and his successor closed the Order in 'the apparent world'. During the confusion that ensued after his death - from the inadequacy of his Will and the fact that his study and flat remained unlocked for a considerable time - the manuscript, the Order teachings and papers passed into a number of different hands rather than to his successor. Nine years later, these scattered documents were assembled again to revive the Order in its modern form and to bring THE BOOK OF DRUIDRY to publication in the form that it is today. It is important for readers of this book to remember that this book was written back in 1973-74, and to know that since that time a number of writers - such as John and Caitlín Matthews, Bob Stewart, John Michell and Gareth Knight amongst others - have explored the areas of research covered by Ross in great detail from both a scholastic and an esoteric viewpoint, and a study of their work will add a depth and richness to the understanding gained from reading this book. Ross clearly came to a decision in writing this that he wanted to reveal much of the nature of Druidic teaching, and yet he was still bound by his position within the Order to be discreet and cautious.'
Philip Carr-Gomm, London, 1989. From the Introductory Ross writes this: 'Druidry is the Western form of an ancient universal philosophy, culture or religion, dating from the days of early man when the three were one. It is of the stone circle culture, the groves of sacred trees, the circular dance. It has been traced by some as far as India in the cult of Siva; its oak tree burials are not infrequent in the West. With the numerology, orientations and magical square calculations recently made, it is seen to link with the near-universal surveying system, with its meaningful number and mystical geometry, that lends colour to the ideas of a race of highly-developed beings originating from an Atlantis somewhere, or coming in flying chariots from another world or dimension. At no time has Druidry agreed with the idea of evolution from the animal as the main human origin, but has always conceived of a supernal, giant or deific basis to its universal shape. Druidry has never been tied to the cult of any god-focus; its members, earlier and later, seem always to have been experimenters and explorers in various lines of learning. Pythagoras, sometimes considered as a founder, in such a perspective was a collector and developer of much earlier geometrical ideas.
William Blake was an intuitive teacher, often by hyperbole, of the highest truth: 'Ancient man contained in his mighty limbs all things in heaven and earth.' Always profoundly conscious of a great supernal design, such thinkers linked with the mystical sides of many religions, but found Druidry itself something larger than any of them. The Sufi, the Arhat, the higher Christian mystic, even Augustine of Hippo or the German stigmatist, Theresa Neumann, share certain concepts of Druidry. Meanwhile, the Romans attempted to exterminate, the Roman Church excommunicated, and the seventeenth and even the earlier eighteenth-century Christians decided that on the whole Druidry had been, and was, intolerable. Only an antiquarian vicar who was also an alchemist dared, from his own entrenched position, to break the general rule: The Revd William Stukeley was head of the Order in England from 1722 to 1765. The intolerant intellectual atmosphere meant that Druidry has largely developed underground in recent centuries, and Druids became as cagey as Freemasons in admitting their connection. So successful were they in laying false trails that one recent professor, writing in full ignorance of modern Druidry, dismisses as laughable the idea that the eighteenth-century movement could possibly have begun its assembly of groves from many quarters under the aegis of John Toland (HISTORY OF THE DRUIDS, 1719), although he had written papers, later edited as a book, on Druid culture and antiquities. Lord Bulwer Lytton's family in times past furiously denied that he was a Druid, whereas we know the grove of which he was Chief. William Blake, although frequently using Druids as horrifying semi-mythological figures in his writings, managed to keep secret his connection with them so deftly that the chief authority on Blake today, Kathleen Raine, did not know of the link. Yet Blake had told no lies about it, and at least once had announced his Druidry, on the one occasion he came publicly into conflict with authorithy, at Chichester in 1802. Blake was indeed a Druid; he was Chief for 28 years, and through him, jointly with Stukeley, appear to come the main inner ideas of Druidry today. At no time, it now appears, have reasonable records of the Order been kept or, if so, they have been destroyed through the various schisms and quarrels over succession that have occurred from time to time. Mainly, however, it has been the early Druidic prohibition of writing and the insistence upon the learning by heart of long wisdom-poems that have handed on the learning, mouth-to-ear, through the centuries. A sense of secretive power and a great poetic metaphorical ability have indeed characterized the Welsh side of Druidry, so that even when written it has been difficult to interpret the meaning and teaching hidden in the ENGLYNS. To give any account of the development of Druidry is therefore impossible in the documentary historical sense. Whilst one may be fairly sure of the general outline, the gaps are larger than the areas covered by what is known.
# 497
Regarded as intermediaries between God and man; the sovereign power in Celtica; suppressed by Emperor Tiberius; Aryan root for the word discovered; testimony of Dion Chrysostom to the power of the Doctrines of Druids; religious, philosophic and scientific culture superintended by the Doctrines; record of Caesar regarding the Doctrines of Druids; cosmogonic teaching died with their order.
# 562
Magic among the Celtic peoples in ancient times was so closely identified with Druidism that its origin may be said to have been Druidic. That Druidism was of Celtic origin, however, is a question upon which much discussion has been lavished, some authorities, among them Rhys, believing it to have been of non-Celtic and even non-Aryan origin. This is to say that the earliest non-Aryan or so-called 'Iberian' or Megalithic people of Britain introduced the immigrant Celts to the Druidic religion. An argument in favour of this theory is that the continental Celts sent their neophyte Druid priests to Britain to undergo a special training at the hands of the Druids there, and there is little doubt that this island was regarded as the headquarters of the cult. The people of Cisalpine Gaul, for instance, had no Druidic priesthood. Caesar has told us that in Gaul Druidic seminaries were very numerous, and that in them severe study and dicipline were entailed upon the neophytes, the principal business of whom was to commit to memory countless verses enshrining Druidic knowledge and tradition. That this instruction was astrological and magical we have the fullest proof, and it is with these aspects of the Celtic religion alone that we have to deal in this place. The Druids were magi as they were hierophants in the same sense that the American-Indian medicine-man is both magus and priest. That is, they were medicine-men on a higher scale, and possessed a larger share of transcendental knowledge than the shamans of more barbarous races. Thus they may be said to be a link between the shaman and the magus of medieval times. Many of their practices were purely shamanistic, whilst others were more closely connected with medieval magical rite. But they were not the only magicians among the Celts, for we find that magic power is frequently the possession of women and the poetic craft. The art magic of Druidism had many points of comparison with most magical systems, and may be said to have approximated more to that black magic which desires power to render oneself invisible, to change the bodily shape, to produce an enchanted sleep, to induce lunacy, and the utterance of spells and charms which caused death. The art of rain-making, bringing down fire from the sky, and causing mists, snow-storms and floods was also claimed by the Druids. Many of the spells probably in use among the Druids survived until a comparatively late period, and are still in use in some remote Celtic localities - the names of Saints being substituted for those of Celtic deities, - as in Well-worship a possibly Druidic cultus, and certain ritual practices which are still carried out in the vicinity of megalithic structures. In pronouncing incantations, the usual method employed was to stand upon one leg, to point to the person or object on which the spell was to be laid on the fore-finger, at the same time closing an eye, as if to concentrate the force of the entire personality upon that which was to be placed under ban.
A manuscript preserved in the Monastery of St Gall and dating from the eight or ninth century, has preserved magical formulae for the preservation of butter and the healing of certain diseases in the name of the Irish god Diancecht. These and others bear a close resemblance to Babylonian and Etruscan spells, and this goes to strengthen the hypothesis often put forward with more or less ability that Druidism had an eastern origin. All magical rites were accompanied by spells. Druids often accompanied an army to assist by their magical art in confounding the enemy. There is little doubt that the conception of a Druidic priesthood has descended down to our time in a more or less debased condition in British Celtic areas. Thus the existence of guardians and keepers of wells said to possess magical properties, and the fact that certain familiar magical spells and formulae are handed down from one generation to another, is a proof of the survival of Drudic tradition, however feeble. Female are generally the conservators of these mysteries, but that there were Druid priestesses is fairly certain. There are also indications that to some extent Scottish witchcraft was a survival of Celtic religio-magical practice.
# 612 - 613
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