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Druid
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A druid was a member of the priestly and learned class in the ancient Celtic societies of Western Europe, Britain and Ireland. They were suppressed by the Roman government and disappeared from the written record by the second century CE. Druids combined the duties of priest, judge, scholar, and teacher. Little contemporary evidence for them exists, and thus little can be said of them with assurance, but they continued to feature prominently in later Irish myth and literature.
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A druid was a member of the priestly and learned class in the ancient Celtic societies of Western Europe, Britain and Ireland. They were suppressed by the Roman government and disappeared from the written record by the second century CE. Druids combined the duties of priest, judge, scholar, and teacher. Little contemporary evidence for them exists, and thus little can be said of them with assurance, but they continued to feature prominently in later Irish myth and literature. Most of what is known about them comes from the Roman writers.
The earliest record of the name druidae (????da?) is reported from a lost work of the Greek doxographer Sotion of Alexandria (early second century BCE), who was cited by Diogenes Laertius in the third century CE.
The Celtic communities that Druids served were polytheistic. They also show signs of animism, in their reverence for various aspects of the natural world, such as the land, sea and sky, and their veneration of other aspects of nature, such as sacred trees and groves (the oak and hazel were particularly revered), tops of hills, streams, lakes and plants such as the mistletoe. Fire was regarded as a symbol of several divinities and was associated with cleansing. Purported ritual killing and human sacrifice were aspects of druidic culture that shocked classical writers.
Modern attempts at reconstructing, reinventing or reimagining the practices of the druids are called Neo-druidism.
Etymology
The English word druid derives from Latin druides , which is the same as the term used by Greek ethnographers, (druides).
The Latin and Greek terms are loans from a Proto-Celtic stem *druwid-, which combines the Proto-Indo-European roots *deru- and *weid-.
The word was etymologized (as per Aristides) as containing d??? "oak tree"), and the Greek suffix -?d??.
*deru- is indeed the Indo-European "oak" word (cognate to English tree), but the root has a wider array of meanings related to "to be firm, solid, steadfast" (whence e.g. English true), and it isn't clear whether the term was originally derived from a meaning involving "oak", or the wider meaning of "true, solid".
*weid- is the Indo-European root for "to see" and, by extension and figurative use, also referred to knowledge, as in English wit, wisdom, Latin vision or Sanskrit veda.
The Old Celtic (Gaulish) term from which the Greek and Latin druides was derived has survived in its Insular Celtic form, in Old Irish druídecht (/), which yields Modern Irish draoiocht (/), "magic." The Welsh dryw (//), "seer", may be cognate. The Modern Irish for druid is drúa (//), from Old Irish druí (//); which also produced Irish draoi (//), "magician" and Modern Gaelic druidh (//), meaning "enchanter" and draoidh (//), "magician."
History
The scholar Ronald Hutton points out "we can know virtually nothing of certainty about the ancient Druids, so that—although they certainly existed—they function more or less as legendary figures."
There is no historic evidence during the period when Druidism was flourishing to suggest that Druids were other than male. Ronald Hutton points out that all the early Classical authors say they were male. Phillip Freeman, a classics professor, discusses a later reference to Dryades, which he translates as Druidesses, writing that "The fourth century A.D. collection of imperial biographies known as the Historia Augusta contains three short passages involving Gaulish women called "Dryades" ("Druidesses")." He points out that "In all of these, the women may not be direct heirs of the Druids who were supposedly extinguished by the Romans—but in any case they do show that the druidic function of prophesy continued among the natives in Roman Gaul." Additionally, Druidesses are mentioned in later Irish mythology, including the legend of Fionn mac Cumhaill, who, according to the 12th century The Boyhood Deeds of Fionn, is raised by the druidess Bodhmall and a wise-woman.
Greek and Roman writers on the Celts commonly made at least passing reference to Druids, though before Caesar's report merely as "barbarian philosophers". These writers were not concerned with ethnology or comparative religion, and consequently our historical knowledge of druids is very limited. Druidic lore consisted of a large number of verses learned by heart, and Caesar remarked that it could take up to twenty years to complete the course of study.
What was taught to Druid novices anywhere is conjecture: of the druids' oral literature, not one certifiably ancient verse is known to have survived, even in translation.
Surviving folklore of the medieval and modern Celtic nations embodies some "druidic" themes and practices; however there is no way to trace the origins of these practices or customs conclusively to the druids.
Roman sources
The nineteenth-century idea, gained from uncritical reading of the Gallic Wars, that under cultural-military pressure from Rome, the druids formed the core of first-century BCE resistance among the Gauls was examined and dismissed before World War II, though it remains current in folk history.
Caesar
Julius Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico, book VI, published in the 50s or 40s BCE, gives the first surviving and the fullest account of the druids, whom, in an apparent contradiction of the social importance he alleges for them, he has scarcely any occasion to mention elsewhere, though Caesar is generally at pains to explain political situations that affected the progress of his narrative. In his single excursus on druids, based in part on Eratosthenes and other Greeks, Caesar notes that all men of any rank and dignity in Gaul were included either among the druids or among the nobles (equites), indicating that they formed two classes. The druids constituted the learned priestly class (disciplina), and as guardians of the unwritten ancient customary law, they had the power of executing judgments, among which exclusion from society was the most dreaded. Druids were not a hereditary caste, though they enjoyed exemption from military service as well as from payment of taxes. The course of training to which a novice had to submit was protracted.
All instruction was communicated orally, but for ordinary purposes, Caesar reports, the Gauls had a written language in which they used Greek characters. In this he probably draws on earlier writers; by the time of Caesar, Gaulish inscriptions had moved from the Greek script to the Latin script. As a result of this prohibition — and of the decline of Gaulish in favour of Latin — no druidic documents, if there ever were any, have survived.
"The principal point of their doctrine", says Caesar, "is that the soul does not die and that after death it passes from one body into another" (see metempsychosis). Alexander Cornelius Polyhistor (Greek, born circa 105 BCE) had already written of the Druids as philosophers and called this doctrine "Pythagorean":
"The Pythagorean doctrine prevails among the Gauls' teaching that the souls of men are immortal, and that after a fixed number of years they will enter into another body."
Caesar wrote:
This led Diodorus Siculus and others to the unlikely conclusion that the druids may have been influenced by the teachings of Pythagoras, One modern scholar has speculated that Buddhist missionaries had been sent by the Indian king Ashoka. A more likely explanation is that Druids, Plato, Pythagoras and Buddha were drawing on a common Indo-European belief.
Caesar noted the druidic doctrine of the original ancestor of the tribe, whom he referred to as Dispater, or Father Hades. Linguistically Dis Pater is related to Jupiter (Jovis Pater), from Proto-Indo-European word Dyeus, but Caesar is apparently indicating the God of the Underworld - the "Fairy King".
Caesar also reported that druids could punish members of Celtic society by a form of "excommunication", preventing them from attending religious festivals. As these religious festivals were common and well-attended, this was an effective means of excluding punished persons from society.
Many historians argue that Caesar's description of the role of druids in Gaulish society may report an idealised tradition, based on the society of the second century BCE, before the pan-Gallic confederation led by the Arverni was smashed in 121 BCE, followed by the invasions of Teutones and Cimbri, rather than on the demoralised and disunited Gaul of his own time, Norman J. DeWitt surmised. John Creighton has speculated that in Britain the druidic social influence was already in decline by the mid-first century BCE, in conflict with emergent new power structures embodied in paramount chieftains, while others find the decline in the context of Roman conquest itself.
Other historians argue that despite Caesar's execution of Dumnorix, his problem dealt with anti-Romans and not just druids. Historically speaking, the brother of Dumnorix, Diviciacus, was a good friend to Cicero and Rome. Diviciacus was the only specifically identified individual druid in any classical literary source.
Cesar also wrote of the importance of gui(french); mistletoe, which would grow on the hard wood of oak trees, and was sacred to the Druid. It was used durring Nouvel An; new years.
Other writers in Antiquity
Writers such as Diodorus Siculus and Strabo, with less firsthand experience than Caesar and relying on lost writings, wrote about the role of Druids in Gallic society. Diodorus divided the learned classes into bards, soothsayers and Druids, who he said were philosophers and theologians. It was these different roles that lie behind the name of the Neo-Druid organisation OBOD (Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids). Strabo had slightly different divisions: Druids (moral philosophy and the workings of nature), bards, and vates (soothsayers, and experts in natural science). Both reported that Druids were held in such respect that if they intervened between two armies they could stop the battle.
Caesar also claimed that a general assembly of the order was held once every year within the territories of the Carnutes in Gaul.
Pomponius Mela
Pomponius Mela is the first author who says that the druids' instruction was secret, and was carried on in caves and forests. Certain groves within forests were sacred, and the Romans and Christians alike cut them down and burned the wood. Human sacrifice has sometimes been attributed to druidism. While this may be Roman propaganda, human sacrifice was an old European inheritance and the Gauls may have offered human sacrifices, whether of criminals or, to judge from Roman reports, of war captives.
Cicero
Cicero remarks on the existence among the Gauls of augurs or soothsayers, known by the name of druids; he had made the acquaintance of one Diviciacus, an Aeduan also known to Caesar.
Diodorus
Diodorus Siculus asserts, on unnamed sources, that a sacrifice acceptable to the Celtic gods had to be attended by a druid, for they were the intermediaries. He also claims that before a battle they often threw themselves between two armies to bring about peace.
Diodorus remarks upon the importance of prophets in druidic ritual: "These men predict the future by observing the flight and calls of birds and by the sacrifice of holy animals: all orders of society are in their power… and in very important matters they prepare a human victim, plunging a dagger into his chest; by observing the way his limbs convulse as he falls and the gushing of his blood, they are able to read the future."
Archaeological excavations at Ribemont in Picardy, France and at Gournay-sur-Aronde carried out by Jean-Louis Brunaux in the late 1990s were interpreted by Brunaux as human sacrifices, but the British archaeologist Martin Brown has suggested that these might be war memorials honouring the dead for their courage. At a bog in Lindow, Cheshire, England was discovered a body which may also have been the victim of a druidic ritual, but it is just as likely that he was an executed criminal or a victim of violent crime. The body is now on display at the British Museum, London.
Imperial decrees
Druids were seen as essentially non-Roman: a prescript of Augustus forbade Roman citizens to practice "druidical" rites. Under Tiberius, Pliny reported, the druids were suppressed—along with diviners and physicians— by a decree of the Senate, but this had to be renewed by Claudius in 54 CE.
Strabo
In Strabo, we find the druids still acting as arbiters in public and private matters, but they no longer dealt with cases of murder. Strabo suggests that druids were "the most just of men."
Tacitus
Tacitus, in describing the attack made on the island of Mona (Anglesey, Ynys Môn in Welsh) by the Romans under Suetonius Paulinus, represents the legionaries as being awestruck on landing by the appearance of a band of druids, who, with hands uplifted to the sky, poured forth terrible imprecations on the heads of the invaders. He states that these "terrified our soldiers who had never seen such a thing before..." The courage of the Romans, however, soon overcame such fears, according to the Roman historian; the Britons were put to flight, and the sacred groves of Mona were cut down.
Tacitus is also the only primary source that gives accounts of Druidism in Britain, but maintains a hostile point of view. Druids in the eyes of Tacitus were seen as ignorant savages who "deemed it indeed a duty to cover their altars with the blood of captives and to consult their deities through human entrails." Professor Ronald Hutton points out that there "is no evidence that Tacitus ever used eye-witness reports" and casts doubt upon the reliability of Tacitus's report.
Late Roman
After the first century CE the continental druids disappeared entirely and were referred to only on very rare occasions. Ausonius, for one instance, apostrophizes the rhetorician Attius Patera as sprung from a "race of druids".
Archaeological evidence
Druidic associations with the ritual deaths of some of the bog bodies recovered in the British Isles and northern Europe from the Netherlands to Denmark, presented by Anne Ross is resisted by some historians, such as Jane Webster, who asserted in 1999, "individual druids (let alone druid princes) are unlikely to be identified archaeologically" A.P. Fitzpatrick, in examining astral symbolism on Late Iron Age swords has expressed difficulties in relating any material culture, even the Coligny calendar, with druidic culture. Slain bodies as far east as Celtic Galatia and elsewhere in Northern and Western Europe are widely cited as evidence of human sacrifice.
Medieval sources
The story of Vortigern, as reported by Nennius, provides one of the very few glimpses of druidic survival in Britain after the Roman conquest: unfortunately, Nennius is noted for mixing fact and legend in such a way that it is now impossible to know the truth behind his text. For what it is worth, he asserts that, after being excommunicated by Germanus, the British leader Vortigern invited twelve druids to assist him.
The most important Irish documents are contained in manuscripts of the 12th century, but many of the texts themselves date back to the 8th century. In these stories, druids usually act as advisers to kings. Once again legendary elements crept in: they were said to have the ability to foretell the future (Bec mac Dé, for example, predicted the death of Diarmait mac Cerbaill more accurately than three Christian saints) and there is little reference to their religious function. They do not appear to form any corporation, nor do they seem to be exempt from military service.
In the Ulster Cycle, Cathbad, chief druid at the court of Conchobar, king of Ulster, is accompanied by a number of youths (100 according to the oldest version) who are desirous of learning his art. Cathbad is present at the birth of the famous tragic heroine Deirdre, and prophesies what sort of a woman she will be, and the strife that will accompany her, although Conchobar ignores him. The following description of the band of Cathbad's druids occurs in the epic tale, the Táin Bó Cúailnge: The attendant raises his eyes towards the heavens and observes the clouds and answers the band around him. They all raise their eyes towards the heavens, observe the clouds, and hurl spells against the elements, so that they arouse strife amongst them and clouds of fire are driven towards the camp of the men of Ireland. We are further told that at the court of Conchobar no one had the right to speak before the druids had spoken.
Also in the Táin Bó Cúailnge, before setting out on her great expedition against Ulster, Medb, queen of Connacht, consults her druids regarding the outcome of the war. They hold up the march by two weeks, waiting for an auspicious omen. Druids were also said to have magical skills: when the hero Cúchulainn returned from the Other World, after having been enticed there by a fairy woman or goddess, named Fand, whom he is now unable to forget, he is given a potion by some druids, which banishes all memory of his recent adventures and which also rids his wife Emer of the pangs of jealousy.
More remarkable still is the story of Étaín. This lady, later the wife of Eochaid Airem, High King of Ireland, was in a former existence the beloved of the god Midir, who again seeks her love and carries her off. The king has recourse to his druid, Dalgn, who requires a whole year to discover the haunt of the couple. This he accomplished by means of four wands of yew inscribed with ogham characters.
In other texts the druids are able to produce insanity. Mug Ruith, a legendary druid of Munster, wore a hornless bull's hide and an elaborate feathered headdress and had the ability to fly and conjure storms.
In Christian literature
In the lives of saints and martyrs, the druids are represented as magicians and diviners. In Adamnan's vita of Columba, two of them act as tutors to the daughters of Lóegaire mac Néill, the High King of Ireland, at the coming of Saint Patrick. They are represented as endeavouring to prevent the progress of Patrick and Saint Columba by raising clouds and mist. Before the battle of Culdremne (561) a druid made an airbe drtiad (fence of protection?) round one of the armies, but what is precisely meant by the phrase is unclear. The Irish druids seem to have had a peculiar tonsure. The word druí is always used to render the Latin magus, and in one passage St Columba speaks of Christ as his druid. Similarly, a life of St Beuno states that when he died he had a vision of 'all the saints and druids'.
Once the public ordination of Christian bishops in strongly pagan territories was possible, it was essential for a fourth-century bishop to demonstrate powers comparable to a druid's. Sulpicius Severus' Vita of Martin of Tours relates how Martin encountered a peasant funeral, carrying the body in a winding sheet, which Martin mistook for some druidic rites of sacrifice, "because it was the custom of the Gallic rustics in their wretched folly to carry about through the fields the images of demons veiled with a white covering." So Martin halted the procession by raising his pectoral cross: "Upon this, the miserable creatures might have been seen at first to become stiff like rocks. Next, as they endeavored, with every possible effort, to move forward, but were not able to take a step farther, they began to whirl themselves about in the most ridiculous fashion, until, not able any longer to sustain the weight, they set down the dead body." Then discovering his error, Martin raised his hand again to let them proceed: "Thus," the hagiographer points out," he both compelled them to stand when he pleased, and permitted them to depart when he thought good."
This account partly depends on information from the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1911 and the Catholic Encyclopedia, 1908.
Late druidic survivals
The oratory role of bards in Wales and the mystic visions of seers as late as the time of Owain Glyndwr might suggest continuity with parts of the Druidic tradition perhaps until the middle of the 15th century. Gruffudd ap Cynan (c.1055-1137) of Gwynedd is recorded to have made laws governing their training and selection. Alleged purges of bards during the Welsh campaigns of Edward I supposedly culminated with the legendary suicide of The Last Bard (c.1283). There is some evidence that the druids of Ireland survived into the mid- to late-seventh century. In the De Mirabilibus Sacrae Scripturae of Augustinus Hibernicus (f. 655), there is mention of local magi who teach a doctrine of reincarnation in the form of birds. The word magus was often used in Hiberno-Latin works for a translation of druid.
Modern revivals
From the 18th century, England and Wales experienced a revival of interest in the druids. John Aubrey (1626–1697) had been the first modern writer to connect Stonehenge and other megalithic monuments with the druids; since Aubrey's views were confined to his notebooks, the first wide audience for the misconception were readers of William Stukeley (1687–1765). John Toland (1670-1722) shaped ideas about the druids current during much of the 19th century and founded the Ancient Druid Order, which existed from 1717 until it split into two groups in 1964. The order never used the title "Archdruid" for any member, but in retrospect credited William Blake as having been its "Chosen Chief" from 1799 to 1827, without corroboration in Blake's numerous writings or among modern Blake scholars. Blake's bardic mysticism derives instead from the pseudo-Ossianic epics of Macpherson; his friend Frederick Tatham's depiction of Blake's imagination, "clothing itself in the dark stole of mural sanctity"— in the precincts of Westminster Abbey— "it dwelt amid the Druid terrors", is generic rather than specifically neo-Druidic. John Toland was fascinated by Aubrey's Stonehenge theories, and wrote his own book about the monument without crediting Aubrey. Toland founded the Ancient Druid Order in London in 1717.
Druids began to figure widely in popular culture with the first advent of Romanticism. Chateaubriand's novel Les Martyrs (1809) narrated the doomed love of a druid priestess and a Roman soldier; though Chateaubriand's theme was the triumph of Christianity over Pagan druids, the setting was to continue to bear fruit. Opera provides a barometer of well-informed popular European culture in the early 19th century: in 1817 Giovanni Pacini brought druids to the stage in Trieste with an opera to a libretto by Felice Romani about a druid priestess, La Sacerdotessa d'Irminsul ("The Priestess of Irminsul"). The most famous druidic opera, Vincenzo Bellini's Norma was a fiasco at La Scala, when it premiered the day after Christmas, 1831; but in 1833 it was a hit in London. For its libretto, Felice Romani reused some of the pseudo-druidical background of La Sacerdotessa to provide colour to a standard theatrical conflict of love and duty. The story was similar to that of Medea, as it had recently been recast for a popular Parisian play by Alexandre Soumet: the diva of Normas hit aria, "Casta Diva", is the moon goddess, being worshipped in the "grove of the Irmin statue".
A central figure in 19th century Romanticist Neo-Druidism is the Welshman Edward Williams, better known as Iolo Morganwg. His writings, published posthumously as The Iolo Manuscripts (1849) and Barddas (1862), are not considered credible by contemporary scholars. Williams claimed to have collected ancient knowledge in a "Gorsedd of Bards of the Isles of Britain" he had organized. Many scholars deem part or all of Williams's work to be fabrication, and purportedly many of the documents are of his own fabrication, but a large portion of the work has indeed been collected from meso-pagan sources dating from as far back as 600 A.D. Regardless, it has become impossible to separate the original source material from the fabricated work, and while bits and pieces of the Barddas still turn up in some "Neo-druidic" works, the documents are considered irrelevant by most serious scholars.
T.D. Kendrick's dispelled (1927) the pseudo-historical aura that had accrued to druids, asserting that "a prodigious amount of rubbish has been written about druidism"; Neo-druidism has nevertheless continued to shape public perceptions of the historical druids and continues to shape some modern forms of Neo-druidism. The British Museum website is suitably blunt:
Some strands of contemporary Neodruidism, like the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids (OBOD), are a continuation of the 18th-century revival and thus are built largely around writings produced in the 18th century and after by second-hand sources and theorists. Some are monotheistic. Members of other Neo-druid groups may be Neopagan, occultist, Reconstructionist or non-specifically spiritual.
Further reading
- Aldhouse-Green, Miranda J.,
Exploring the World of the Druids (London: Thames and Hudson, 1997)Ellis, Peter, B., "The Druids" (William B. Eerdmans, 1994)Fitzpatrick, A. P,. Who were the Druids? (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997)Piggott, Stuart, The Druids (London: Thames and Hudson, 1975)
See also
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