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The visitor to the ancient monument of Stonehenge, on Salisbury Plain in southern England, may well encounter a remarkable spectacle at the time of the Summer Solstice. If he is there around sunrise on June 21st or at noon on that day, he may find a grave body of white-robed men and women engaged in ceremonies and processions among the stones, and if he enquires, will be told that they are The Druids. If he gives the matter further thought he may well ask himself the question 'Who are these Ancient People, and are they in their rightful Ancient Place?' The answer is not a simple one. It involves archaeology and ancient history; literary souces in classical and Celtic languages; the history of ideas and of literary and artistic fashions from the last few centuries up to yesterday. It is also bedevilled with almost unbelievably fatuous speculations and fantasies, and shot through and through with (in Leacock's famous phrase) Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy. With these words begin Professor of Archaelogy in the University of Edinburgh, Stuart Piggott his Introductory to his book THE DRUIDS from 1968. And he continues, 'This Book tries to present a sober account of a subject all too often given a cosy place among the Comforts of Unreason. Perhaps it may be asked why an uncertainty should present itself at this point. The Druids have in fact achieved a place in the average Englishman's mind as part of his heritage, set with Magna Carta or Cavaliers and Roundheads in a misty perspective where Hampton Court, Stonehenge or Chatsworth can act as a back-cloth as required. The more knowledgeable may remember that Julius Caesar wrote about them; the less critical may accept the unbroken survival of the priesthood until today. Like the past, they are felt to be only marginally interesting, and are accepted without more thought than is allotted to the rest of what passes for history in most persons' minds. But the Druids do, in fact, have a remarkable interest as a phenomenon, for in the form they are seen today they are the endproduct of a long story which illuminates in the most fascinating way, how a consistent and recurrent pattern of thought, emotion and belief about some of mankind's eternal problems can persist to worry thinkers from Hesiod in Greece of the eighth century BC to modern writers of science fiction on both sides of the Atlantic. Quite apart from the archaeology of Early Iron Age Europe and the nature of pagan Celtic religion, we shall have in this book to consider the Golden Age and News from Nowhere; the Noble Savage and the Fall from Grace; natural wisdom and remotely-dwelling superior intelligences. ... We shall see how the ideas of Primitivism and the Noble Savage were taken up again from their classical origins by scholars whose training in thought and unconscious apprehensions in feeling came in fact from the same Greek and Roman sources. To this were soon to be added elements of increasing fantasy, as the Druids, now standing charismatically within the Stonehenge horseshoe, became a compelling magnet for many a psychological misfit and lonely crank, and we find ourselves in a world of books which all too frequently, are like that on witchcraft written by the sinister Mr Karswell in M. R. James' ghost story, who 'seemed to put the GOLDEN LEGEND and the GOLDEN BOUGH exactly on a par, and believe both: a pitiable exhibition, in short'. As we can see from this brief notes from Stuart Piggott, his book THE DRUIDS promise to be a critical but sober investigation of the whole phenomenon called Druids. For many years another scholar, Lewis Spence, waited for a book to be published on the subject of Celtic-British magic. Many essays and articles appeared, but no comprehensive single volume. Finally Mr Spence could wait no longer. He decided to write that book himself. THE MAGIC ARTS IN CELTIC BRITAIN became that book, and a considerable part of it is about the Druids, a subject which Lewis Spence through his profounding research aquired a formidable knowledge of.
# 612: The very name of "Druid" has been the subject of obstinate contention. Generally, and probably because of a statement of Pliny the Elder, it has been interpreted as referring to the Greek word Drus, "an oak". Rhys criticizing this, remarks that no recourse need be had to Hellenic sources, and finds the genesis of the term in the ancient Gaulish Celtic name for that tree. Other examples are presented like "dru-vid" 'very wise', "druid" from the British dar 'superior' and Gwydd, a 'priest'. Drud in old British, signified 'a discreet or learned person'. In Scottish Gaelic Druidh means "a magician, or sorcerer". Spence's own impression is that it is scarcely possible to divorce the word "druid" from the Old Celtic Derw 'an oak'. Still, he feels that the derivation of the word from Drud or Druidh, "wise" or "learned", has much to commend it, although it may well have been accepted from the name of the practitioners of an oak-cult. In any case does he believe that the etymological study of the term does not appear to have arrived at that stage where conclusive statement regarding it may be indulged in. We know rather more about Druidism than we do of the beginnings of the Christian faith in this island, yet we are invited to regard the whole question of the existence of Druidism as a hypothetical one! 'One thing at any rate is clear,' remarked the late Professor Edward Anwyl, 'that the Druids and their doctrines, or supposed doctrines, had made a deep impression on the writers of the ancient world. There is a reference to them in a fragment of Aristotle (which may not, however, be genuine) that is of interest as assigning them a place in express terms both among the Celts and the Galatae.
In his HISTORY OF THE DRUIDS John Toland suggests that when Druidism was banished from what is now England it took refuge in Scotland and Ireland. So far as Scotland is concerned, precise record fails us for the earlier centuries. One of the first allusions to Druidism in that region tells us that Drostan, the Druid of the Irish Picts, designed in war-time a magic bath of milk which healed the wounded. But these Irish-Pictish Druids, we are informed, were driven into Scotland. 'From them are every spell, and every charm, and every sreod (sneeze), and voices of birds, and every omen' - in short, all Magic in Scotland proceeded from them. A similar magic bath of milk was resorted to by the Druid of Criomhthan, Chief of Leinster, in a war waged by the Irish and their Pictish allies with the British. The latter had poisoned their weapons, Keating informs us, but Trosdane, the Druid in question, advised the Irish leader to dig a large pit, in which the milk of 150 white-faced cows was to be poured. In this the wounded Irish and Pictish warriors were immersed, with the result that a perfect cure was effected in every case and the invading Britons were vanquished.
That Druidism, or the indwelling spirit thereof, survived in Ireland for generations is merely the plain unvarnished fact, and those writers who make question of this survival delude not only their readers but themselves. That the Irish Druids were in some manner associated with the tradition of the mystical Tuatha De Danann appears probable. 'They [the Druids] are represented,' says Miss Eleanor Hull, an authority of standing, 'as having come to Ireland with the Tuatha De Danann, the early magicians and kings, and to have been in the service of the Irish Cruithnigh' (or Picts). 'According to tradition they must have been in Alba (Scotland) long before, for we hear that King Cormac of Tara in the third century sent for Druids from Alba to practise magic for him against the King of Munster.' She adds that every Irish king had his personal Druid, as had every queen, that these priests took rank next to the king, that Druids were themselves occasionally kings, that they received large territorial grants for their services, that they married and were succeeded in office by their sons (as in the case of the early Christian priests in Scotland, up to the eleventh century), that they were genealogists, annalists and physicians. But upon Druidism was to be imposed a cult which was to have the most powerful repercussions upon its general religious and magical texture. This was the cult of the divine king. It may or may not have been an idea extraneous to Druidism. The likelihood-nay, the certainty-is that it took on a various semblance in every country to which it penetrated, mingling in all probability with the older and primitive faiths of each. But, Egyptian as it was in its remoter origin, it certainly did not supersede the Celtic element in Druidism, which absorbed it and transfused it with the Celtic spirit.
# 572: Generosity has emerged as aprized virtue. In the ACCALLAM na SENORECH or Colloquy of the Elders, the aged Cailte, last of the Fenians, finds himself in the monastery of Drogheda where he engages in a somewhat testy debate with St Patrick, making unfavourable references to the saint's God whom he regards as vengeful, pettyminded and parsimonious. He tells him that if the leaves of the autumn trees were true gold or 'the white wave silver', Finn would have given it all away. No less important a virtue was a robust self-reliance and integrity. Asked by St Patrick what maintained them through life, Cailte answers, 'The truth in our hearts, the strength in our arms and the fulfilment in our tongues'. The tripartite form of this indicates it may have a genuinely Druidic origin and a somewhat similar tripartite list is given by DiogenesLaertius who tells us the Druids taught that 'the gods must be worshipped, no evil done and manly behaviour maintained'. We are also told that the Otherworld was a place where truth reigned. Manly behaviour was obviously important. Alexander the Great, who asked a Celt what he most feared, was told, nothing 'so long as the sky does not fall or the sea burst its bounds'. The phrase is peculiar insistent. Sualdam Setanta, trying to rally the Ulstermen to the support of his son, CuChulain, shouts, 'Are the heavens rent? Is the sea bursting its bounds? Is the end of the world upon us?' Later in the same epic, the warriors of Conchobar assure him they will continue to fight until overcome by these cataclysms. In 1282, when news reached his fellow countrymen that Llewelyn, the last Prince of Wales, had been killed by the English, the bard Gruffydd ab yr Ynad Coch, lamented:
Oh, God, why does not the sea cover the land?
Why are we left to linger?
# 412: The religion of the ancient Celtic peoples has been one of the most misunderstood of the pre-Christian European religions. The priesthood of this religion has been the object of more speculative fantasies than any other European priesthood. Since the rediscovery of the 'barbarian' past of ancient Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, each generation has made the druids representatives of the irrational ideals of the times. This is mainly because at the time the druids were rediscovered from classical sources, the philosophies then current in Britain had developed the ideal of the 'noble savage' and the concept of 'natural religion' - both of which played a large role in the rise of the antiquarians' fascination with the druids, megalithic monuments and the origins of the British people. The 'Age of Enlightenment' had seen the rise of scientific thinking, but also following it came the rise of Romanticism and many fringe areas of speculation. British and Anglo-Irish antiquarians such as William Stukeley, John Toland and Edward Davies, to name a few, started publishing a great deal of this sort of work. To many of these writers and to their followers in later times, the idea that the Celtic people and their druids were polytheists and made sacrifices to their gods and goddesses was abominable. Many tended to project their Christian religious ideas onto the druids and created a smokescreen of fantasy around them. Others, despising the 'barbarism' of their ancestors, took a very grim view, thought of them as nasty savages and made up horror stories about them in much the same way as they had done with the American Indians or Polynesian peoples. There have been countless other fantasies created about the Celtic peoples and their druids since the 19th century. Mainly each group has tried to project something of its own ideals of the 'noble savage' into the Celtic tradition, whether it be 'British-Israelism,' matriarchy, pan-shamanism, UFOlogy and megaliths or a kind of sword and sorcery fantasy. However, there is another version of the Celtic traditions which is grounded in solid scolarship and the scientific methods. This is the view grounded in comparative studies of linguistics, history, folklore and the mythologies of Indo-Europeanspeaking cultures. With these methods and tools we can truly discover what the Celts believed in by asking the Celts themselves what their old religion was about instead of telling them what their religion was about. This means not to allow oneself to create an old Celtic religion or druidism from one's own aspirations and beliefs, but instead to reconstruct the religion based on the oldest documents that preserve the authentic elder faith. This is what Tadhg MacCrossan has done in his book THE SACRED CAULDRON. He has asked the old Irish storytellers, brehons, filidh, druidh, ollamhs and so on what they believed and did and he got the answers through careful study of the native traditions. The author continues: 'I have used the best critical materials and primary sources available in the relevant fields. I have diligently compared the Celtic traditions with other Indo-European traditions with which they are closely related. (Although the term 'IndoEuropean' is normally considered to be a linguistic designation, it is used in my book, for the sake of convenience and in accordance with modern scholarly practice, to refer to peoples and cultures which historically have used Indo-European languages.)
Whenever Celtic tradition was silent on a particular matter, I have reverted to the traditions of the Indo-Europeans - the ancestors of the Celts - as reconstructed by great comparative mythologists such as Georges Dumézil, Emil Benveniste, Bruce Lincoln, C. Scott Littleton, Jarich Oosten and many others referred to in the bibliography of the book. But the important thing to remember is that I have endeavoured to keep the Celtic tradition as authentic as possible. My book is not intended to provide a simple do-it-yourself religion, but as a true guide for those who want to follows the ways of their ancient Celtic forebearers or those who are fascinated by the ancient Celtic religion and want to understand something of its metaphysics.' THE SACRED CAULDRON is the result of a decade of study and research. Not only has the author studied the old Celtic materials but has even put many of the ideas into practice and experimented with the system as a whole in practical ways, and more or less written the book as a guidebook for becoming part of a new 'Celtic Renaissance'. It is a fact, says MacCrossan, that the ancient Celtic peoples had a male-dominated society. The ancient Celtic way of life was rugged and rough, and we must take this into account when we consider what they were doing in the elder days. To fail to take these differences between our modern society and their ancient culture into account is to be not only ethnocentric but also chronocentric.
# 177 - 214 - 301 - 328 - 412 - 526 - 554 - 572 - 612
The cave at Drumadoon, on Arran Island, Strathclyde, which is now called 'the King's Cave' after Robert Bruce but in earlier times was identified with the legendary Fionn (as were the many stone circles on the island - see: BRODICK, ARRAN), has several Viking carvings on the central pillar, the most interesting of which appears to represent a man holding what might be a bow over the top of his head; what the 'instrument' really represents is anybody's guess, however. Other carvings include the image of a horse, and what might be a twohanded sword or cross, suggesting that the cave might once have been used for religious purposes. The notion that Robert Bruce was associated with the cave appears to rest on the fourteenth-century Scottish-verse chronicle 'The Bruce', written by John Barbour, The Archdeacon of Aberdeen, which makes no mention of Bruce or his men even visiting the cave. It was during his stay in Arran, presumably at Whiting Bay, that Bruce met the Arran woman with 'second sight', who predicted that he would eventually free Scotland from the enemy. In order to show her own faith in the prophecy she had made, she sent her two sons in his service.
# 702
The son of King Tryffin of Denmark. While he is listed as a follower of Arthur, one story (#92) tells how he was to meet Arthur in a single combat. He craftily told his three pet griffins to go ahead and kill the first man who came to the field, expecting it to be Arthur. However, Drudwas's sister was Arthur's mistress and she delayed her lover. Drudwas himself arrived first and the griffins, not recognizing him, killed him. See: TWENTY-FOUR KNIGHTS.
# 30 - 156
(doov) (means Black) She was a druidess who, on discovering that her husband had another wife, drowned her rival. Her husband then cast at her with his sling and she fell into a pool which was called Dubhlinn or Dublin. The Romans called it Nigratherma - literally Black Pool, but perhaps a more ancient name for Dublin is Baile Atha Cliath or the Town of the Ford of Hurdles. Michael Scott in his IRISH FOLK AND FAIRY TALES, 'The Dawn', claims that it was the 'savage northern Vikings who discovered the small, almost circular valley surrounded by the mountains on the east coast of the fresh green land they sought to conquer, and there they would build the city they would call Dubh Linn.'
# 166 - 454 - 579
She was the wife of Mongan, born on the same night as he. She was loved by Brandubh, to whom Mongan was tricked into giving her up. However, with the help of Cuimhne, the hag, she was regained.
# 454
He loved Aoibhell who prophesied that he would die in battle unless he put on her cloak of invisibility.
# 454
Conary goes toward Dublin; Conary's foster-brothers land at Dublin, for raiding purposes. Possibly origin of the name, Dublin, see: DUBH, and PLACE NAME STORIES.
# 562
(also Dubric; in Welsh: Dyfrig) An important Celtic saint, who died about the year AD 550. He was a bishop and possibly also abbot of Caldey. According to Geoffrey, he was Archbishop of Caerleon and crowned Arthur. In her recent book MERLIN (1988) N. L. Goodrich has sought to identify the saint with Merlin.
# 156
(doov'tah däl'cheng a) 'Duffy Chafer-Tongue.' Son of Lugaid; an Ulster warrior noted for his evil disposition; shares with Bricriu the role of the Thersites of the Ulster cycle.
# 166
(die nyeh)
A considerable British kingdom in post-Roman times. It covered Devon, Cornwall and other areas of the south-west of England. Constantine, whom legend makes Arthur's successor, was King of Dumnonia.
# 156
(doon) A stronghold, a royal residence surrounded by an earthen wall.
# 166
(doon dal'gan) CuChulain's chief stronghold; now an ancient mound near Dundalk, co. Louth.
# 166
A horse of Arthur's said to haunt the Co. Durham village of Castle Eden.
# 156 - 753
(909-88) Abbot of Glastonbury and Archbishop of Canterbury. Patron of goldsmiths, jewellers and blacksmiths. Dunstan regularized monastic procedures and codified the present Coronation Rite. He was extremely talented, being able to embroider, paint and play the harp, as well as being a goldsmith and working with other metals. During his making of a golden chalice, he was said to have been assaulted by the devil whom he held fast by the nose with his red-hot tongs. His emblem is still that of a pair of pincers. A treatise on alchemy entitled 'On the Philosopher's Stone' is attributed to him. His feast-day is 19 May.
# 454
These Border spirits, also called Powries, like the more sinister Redcaps inhabit old peel-towers and Border keeps. They make a constant noise, like beating flax or grinding barley in a hollow stone quern. William Henderson mentions them in FOLK-LORE OF THE NORTHERN COUNTIES and says that if the sound gets louder it is an omen of death or misfortune. He mentions that the foundation of these towers, supposed to have been built by the Picts, were according to tradition sprinkled with blood as a foundation sacrifice. The suggestion is that dunters and redcaps were the spirits of the original foundation sacrifices, whether human or animal.
# 100 - 302
Reference to cup-and-ring markings in book 'Monuments of New Spain'.
# 562
Germany is the great home of dwarfs, and the Isle of Rügen has dwarfs both black and white. The Swiss mountains are also the homes of dwarfs, but though there are many stunted and grotesque figures in English fairy-lore, it is doubtful if they were ever explicitly called 'dwarfs'. The best candidates for the name would be the pygmy king and his followers who accosted King Herla in Walter Map's story in his DE NUGIS CURIALIUM; but he is described as more like a satyr; the spriggans of Cornwall are small and grotesque and travel in troops like some of the German dwarfs, but they are never so called. There are more solitary fairies of the dwarfish kind, such as the 'wee, wee man' of one of the Child ballads (No.38), who is stunted and grotesque and of great strength. His description is anticipated in a 14th-century poem quoted in the Appendix to No. 38. The nearest approach to a black dwarf is the North Country Duergar, and the Brown Man of the Muirs is like him. Dwarfs are often mentioned as attendants on ladies in Arthurian legends, but these ladies hover so much between a fairy and a mortal estate that their attendants are equally nebulous. On the whole it is best, as Kirk would say, to 'leave it to conjecture as we found it'.
# 100 - 424
(fifth or sixth century). The daughter of King Brychan. Acertain Maelon wished to marry her but she rejected him; she dreamt that she was given a drink which delivered her from him but turned Maelon to ice. She then prayed that he be unfrozen, that all lovers should find happiness in each other, or else be cured of love, and that she herself should never marry. She is accordingly the patron of lovers in Wales. Fish were kept at her holy well where she became a nun. They were believed to reveal the destiny of querents at her shrine. She was invoked for the curing of animals. Her feast-day is 25 January.
# 454
(duv it) Pryderi and Manawyddan at Dyfed; Gwydion and Gilvaethwy at Dyfed. See also: DEMETIA.
# 562
See: DUBRICIUS.
# 562: ('Son of the Wave'). Son of Arianrhod. His deathgroan the roar of the tide at mouth of the river Conway.
# 454: He was the brother of Llew. He was nicknamed Son of the Wave because he swam off into the sea after being baptized. One of the Triads relates to a lost story concerning his death at the hands of his uncle, Gofannon, where it is called one of the Three Unfortunate Blows.
# 104 - 272 - 439 - 562
(seventh century) The daughter of an Irish king. She looked so like her dead mother that her father conceived an adulterous passion for her, to escape from which she fled with her confessor to Holland. She is patron of the mentally afflicted and is remembered on 15 May.
# 454
Mortal visitors to the Otherworld.
# 384 p 32
The father of Vivienne, according to the VULGATE VERSION.
#156
Brother of Gereint.
# 156 - 346
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