Chapter 34

Chapter XXXIV
The Druids Iona The Druids were the priests or ministers of religion among the
ancient Celtic nations in Gaul, Britain, and Germany. Our
information respecting them is borrowed from notices in the Greek
and Roman writers, compared with the remains of Welsh and Gaelic
poetry still extant. The Druids combined the functions of the priest, the magistrate,
the scholar, and the physician. They stood to the people of the
Celtic tribes in a relation closely analogous to that in which
the Brahmans of India, the Magi of Persia, and the priests of the
Egyptians stood to the people respectively by whom they were
revered. The Druids taught the existence of one God, to whom they gave a
name "Be'al," which Celtic antiquaries tell us means "the life of
everything," or "the source of all beings,:" and which seems to
have affinity with the Phoenician Baal. What renders this
affinity more striking is that the Druids as well as the
Phoenicians identified this, their supreme deity, with the Sun.
Fire was regarded as a symbol of the divinity. The Latin writers
assert that the Druids also worshipped numerous inferior Gods.
They used no images to represent the object of their worship, nor
did they meet in temples or buildings of any kind for the
performance of their sacred rites. A circle of stones (each
stone generally of vast size) enclosing an area of from twenty
feet to thirty yards in diameter, constituted their sacred place.
The most celebrated of these now remaining is Stonehenge, on
Salisbury Plain, England. These sacred circles were generally situated near some stream, or
under the shadow of a grove or wide-spreading oak. In the centre
of the circle stood the Cromlech or altar, which was a large
stone, placed in the manner of a table upon other stones set up
on end. The Druids had also their high places, which were large
stones or piles of stones on the summits of hills. These were
called Cairns, and were used in the worship of the deity under
the symbol of the sun. That the Druids offered sacrifices to their deity there can be no
doubt. But there is some uncertainty as to what they offered,
and of the ceremonies connected with their religious services we
know almost nothing. The classical (Roman) writers affirm that
they offered on great occasions human sacrifices; as for success
in war or for relief from dangerous diseases. Caesar has given a
detailed account of the manner in which this was done. "They
have images of immense size, the limbs of which are framed with
twisted twigs and filled with living persons. These being set on
fire, those within are encompassed by the flames." Many attempts
have been made by Celtic writers to shake the testimony of the
Roman historians to this fact, but