CHAPTER VII

THE DRUIDS
In discussing the Druids a careful distinction must be drawn between the evidence ancient writers furnish on the subject and the fantastical notions that have become popular about them within only the last couple of centuries. Judged by the reports of contemporaries the Druids seem to have possessed in their organization few if any of the characteristics of a secret society; but popular opinion has come to think of them with that connotation, and therefore some account of them is necessary in this book.
Almost all our knowledge of them is drawn from Gaul. They are seldom even mentioned by the ancient historians in connexion with Britain, two notable exceptions being Caesar’s statement that their rule of life was evolved in Britain and transferred thence to Gaul, and Tacitus’s account of the Druids at the battle in Anglesea. The account given of them, then, by Julius Caesar in De Bello Galileo must be referred to the continental variety that came under his own observation.
He tells us that in Gaul1 two classes bore sway over the rest of the people, the Druids and the chiefs. The former were the priests who conducted divine worship, performed the sacrifices, public or private and determined all questions of ritual. They acted as teachers to the youth of the country, and as judges in civil and criminal matters. There was no appeal from their decrees. The chief authority amongst them was exercised by an arch-druid, who seems to have
1 Those who wish to consult the original texts will find them collected in The Druids by T. D. Kendrick, London, 1927, a work of great scholarship whose guidance I here gratefully acknowledge.
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48 FAMOUS SECRET SOCIETIES
borne office for life. His successor was elected by vote of the whole body of Druids, but sometimes by force of arms.
Once a year a general assembly of the Druids was held in the land of the Carnutes (near Chartres) in a consecrated place that was reckoned to be the centre of all Gaul, when judgment was given by them in lawsuits. The druidic system, Caesar adds, was believed to have arisen in Britain, and those who wished to study it accurately travelled into that island for the purpose.
Since the rank of a Druid exempted a man from war service or taxes, many young men sought to attain it by a training that lasted sometimes for as long a period as twenty years. Though they were acquainted with the art of writing, everything was taught orally, in verse, partly to train the memory, partly so that their wisdom might not become common property. Their chief doctrine was that of metempsychosis, a belief in which enhanced the valour of the nation. They also lectured their disciples on astro¬ nomy, geography and theology.
An important part of their religious duties consisted in offering sacrifices, human or otherwise. They burnt their human victims alive enclosed in a huge wicker-work frame representing a giant; while these were usually crim¬ inals, sometimes even innocent persons were immolated. Strabo, writing about sixty years later than Caesar, gives a different account of these human sacrifices in some details, and describes the Roman attitude towards them as antagonistic.
The foregoing account, the result of Caesar’s nine years’ acquaintance with the Gauls, may be accepted as tolerably accurate, even if the importance of the Druids was exag¬ gerated in some respects by those from whom he obtained his information. It should not be forgotten that he was describing a religion that was confined to Gaul and the British Isles; for there were no Druids in Germany or Spain.
The testimony of other classic writers adds very little to Caesar’s account. The earliest reference to the subject is a passage from a book by the Greek Sotion of Alexandria, written about 200 b.c. and now lost; according to this author, as quoted by Diogenes Laertius, the cardinal precepts
THE DRUIDS 49
of the Druids were, to worship the gods, to do no evil, and to act as became a man.
The rank of Druid entailed no separation from the rest of the nation or desistence from civil or even warlike duties, if its holder did not wish to avail himself of legal exemption from the latter. This is illustrated by Cicero, who alludes to a Druid whom he knew, named Divitiacus, who was famous as a man of affairs in Gaul, and devoted much time to such secular duties. So even thus early in their history we may discard the idea of the Druids as practising an exclu¬ sive profession. Neither is there any reliable evidence that they were bound together by any strict discipline; because in the revolt of Vercingetorix in 52 b.c. the organization was not proof against inter-tribal jealousies, and became divided against itself, even as were those tribes; thus the order was tried, and failed as a spiritual means of binding a nation together. Strabo, writing about 8 B.c., speaks of the decline in the weight of their authority, and of the Romans as having suppressed the human sacrifices which had been an integral part of their rites. A complete sup¬ pression took place under the Emperor Claudius. Whether this aimed at an extinction of the Druids or not is hard to determine; if so, it failed. Pomponius Mela writing in the time of Claudius (a.d. 41-54) says that the Druids now refrain from the slaughter of victims, but still draw blood from those led to the altar; and he adds particulars about their other customs, which read as if copied from Caesar, and show the order in full existence, teaching its disciples the doctrine of the immortality of the soul in novitiates stretching through many years.
By the time of Pliny the Elder (a.d. 77) the Druids had been shorn of much of their importance in the nation as law-givers or teachers, but still carried on their priestly functions ; and he describes their gathering of mistletoe and sacrificing of white oxen in the oak-groves. He also recounts charms and magic ceremonies that savour of shamanism, and accuses them of having practised cannibalism in the past. This mention of druidical ceremonies in a grove (to which Lucan also alludes in his Pharsalia) is worth noting,
50 FAMOUS SECRET SOCIETIES
because no suggestion is found that these rites were cele¬ brated in any other place than a grove until the time of Aubrey at the close of the seventeenth century.
In Britain during the first century a.d. the profession of Druid would seem to have been negligible, if one may argue from the fact that Tacitus only mentions it once when des¬ cribing the invasion of Anglesea by Suetonius Paulinus.
Later writers attributed the gift of divination to the Druids; but this testimony is not of much value. In one case, described by Vopiscus ( circa 300), the Druidess who promised Diocletian the Imperial purple was keeper of a small inn, so there can have been little to choose between the profession of Druid then and that of a modern fortune¬ teller.
There was one country in which, by reason of its situation, Druidism might have been supposed to survive for a much longer period in its full prestige. But except for their teach¬ ing functions, which appear to have continued down to the time of the introduction of Christianity in the fifth century, the Druids of Ireland do not seem to have played any great