part in the state. Most certainly they were not organized

into one concrete order there. No such office as that of arch-druid is known to have existed in Ireland.
Some writers from a reading of the ancient texts have concluded that there were three classes of Druids: the bards, who practised the verse singing and composing with which their name is now connected ; the vates who were concerned with divination, by many methods, including human sacrifices; the Druids proper, who were teachers, givers and administrators of the tribal laws. It will be enough to allude to this supposed division of the order without endeavouring to produce any concrete evidence of its accuracy.
This is all that we can learn about the Druids from those who were their contemporaries. As for the other traditions that have arisen from time to time concerning them, the curious inquirer can be safely commended to Mr. Kend¬ rick’s book alluded to earlier; but it is inadvisable to leave them without saying that nothing whatever is known
THE DRUIDS
51
about their places of worship, save for the mention of groves by some early writers. Whether they made use of Stonehenge and other rude stone monuments is undetermined, though the probability is that they could hardly have failed to borrow the impressiveness of such edifices for their own purposes. Nothing, however, connects them with the origin of such erections as Stonehenge, and much seems to contra¬ dict the possibility. The traditions, local or otherwise, that ascribe all such monuments to the Druids seem to have no earlier origin than the eighteenth century, and to be based on the unfounded conjectures of antiquaries.