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 DRUILLETTES

164

DRUMGOOLE

gin and that it was to Great Britain that they went to make a tliorough study of their doctrine, but the au- thors of antiquity throw very Uttle Hght on the insti- tution and practices of druidism in the island of Britain.

Our information concerning the druids of Ireland is drawn from what the Christian hagiographers have written of them and what can be gathered from the casual references to them in the epic literature of Ire- land. We have only fragmentary notices of the mat- ter of their teachings, but it is clear that there were the most striking resemblances between the druids of Ireland and those of Gaul. In both lands they appear as magicians, diviners, physicians, and teachers, and not as the representatives of a certain religion. In the saga tales of Ireland they are most often found in the service of kings, who employed them as advisers because of their power in magic. In the exercise of this they made use of wands of yew, upon which they wrote in a secret character called ogham. This was called their "keys of wisdom". In Ireland, as in Gaul, they enjoyed a high reputation for learning, and some Irish druids held a rank even higher than that of the king. But they were not exempt from military service nor do they seem to have formed a corporation as in Gaul. In the earliest Christian literature of Ire- land the druids are represented as the bitterest oppo- nents of Christianity, but even the Christians of the time seem to have believed in their supernatural power of prophecy and magic. The principal thesis in M. Alexandre Bertrand's book on the religion of the Gauls is that druidism was not an isolated institution in antiquity, without analogy, but that its parallel is to be looked for in the lamaseries which still survive in Tatary and Tibet. He maintains that great druidic communities flourished in Gaul, Britain, and Ireland many centuries before the Christian Era, and that these were the models and beginnings of the abbeys of the Western monks. In this way he would explain the literary and scientific superiority of the monas- teries of Ireland and Wales in the early Middle Ages. However ingenious and attractive this hypothesis may be, it is not supported by any historical docu- ments, and many negative arguments might be brought to bear against it.

Rhys, Leclurat nn the Orinin nni! Ormoth of Religian as illus- Iraled bij Celtic Hrn'h. „.(,..., i., //,(.<,. r^;..,'..r,, (London, 1SS6);

Asviii.. Celtic U.I /■ -' ' ' / ■' 'London, 1906);

Bertrand, La /i' i ' i im, i '■.>: d'Arbois de

JUBAINVILLE, C... .; / ,,,'.. , ,,;, ■ I -n 1.. 1S83), I, S3-

240; DOTTIN, La I,,U,j.„u ..!,.., li;!i„ a'.tii.-. I'.Wl).

Joseph Dunn.

Dniillettes (orDREOiLLBTs), Gabriel, missionary, b. in France, 29 September, 1610; d. at Quebec, 8 April, 1681. Druillettes entered the Society of Jesus at Toulouse, 28 July, 1629, and went to Canada in 1643. After studying the Algonquin tongue, he ac- companied the Indians on their winter hunting expe- ditions, sharing in all their privations. Parkman calls attention to the extraordinary piety of those Montagnais, who were mostly Christians, as well as to the great sufferings undergone by the missionary. On the same day that Jogues was sent to the Mohawks, 26 August, 1646, Druillettes was given a mission among the Abnaki, on the Kennebec. He ascended the Chaudiere, reached what is now Moosehead Lake by portage, and then entered the Kennebec. Continu- ing down the river he arrived at the English post of Coussinoc, now Augusta, where he met the agent, John Winslow, who became his life-long friend. From (Joussinoe he journeyed on mitil he reached the sea and then travelled along the coast as far as the Penob- scot, where he was welcomed by the Capuchins who had established a mi.ssion there. Druillettes was the first white man to make this remarkable journey from the St. Lawrence. Retracing his steps, he established a mission on the Kennebec about a league above Cous- Binoc. Subsequently it grew into the famous Nor-

ridgewock, where Father Rasle was slain. He returned to Quebec in June, but as the Capuchins considered that the entire district of Maine was under their juris- diction, the Jesuits resolved to abandon the mission. In 1648, however, both the Capuchins and Abnaki asked Druillettes to return. But he did not resume his work until 1650, and when he left Quebec the second time it was as envoy of the Government to negotiate a treaty at Boston with the Puritans of New England for commercial purposes, as well as for mutual protec- tion against the Iroquois. He was received with great kindness by the principal men in the English colonies, notably by the famous missionary John Eliot, and by Major-General Gibbons, who kept him at his house. Druillettes speaks in the highest terms of Endicott. Shea is of the opinion that Father Druillettes said Mass privately in Boston, in December, 16.50. He returned to the Kennebec in January, and in the fol- lowing June was again sent as French commissioner to attend a meeting of the representatives of the Eng- lish colonists at New Haven, September, 1651 Fail- ing to induce the deputies to make a treaty, he re- sumed his labours among the Abnaki, returning finally to Quebec in March, 1652.

After this date he laboured among the Montagnais Indians, and at Sillery and Three Rivers. In 1658 he embarked with Father Garreau on an Indian flotilla to go to the Ottawas near Lake Superior; but the party was attacked near Montreal, Garreau was slain, and the expedition seems to have been abandoned. Druillettes and Father Dablon then attempted to reach the North Sea. In 1660 they paddled up the Saguenay, reached Lake St. John and continued their course up a tributary, which they called the River of the Blessed Sacrament, finally coming to Nekouba, which was twenty-nine days from Tadousac- As the Indians refused to go any farther north and the country offered no prospect of a mission the travellers returned to Quebec. In 1670 he was at Sault Sainte Marie and was one of those who participated with AUouez and Marquette in the famous "taking posses- sion" of the countiy by Saint-Lusson in May, 1671. He laboured chiefly among the Mississauga, besides attending to other dependent missions towards Green Bay. Druillettes was regarded as a man of great sanctity, and miracles are attributed to him. He was remarkable for his knowledge of the Indian languages, and Marquette, before going West, was sent to study Algonquin under his direction at Three Rivere. Hia work among the Indians extended over a period of thirty-eight years. There is a great diversity in the spelling of his name; Charlevoix writes it Dreuillets. He is also called Droullettes and even Brouillettes.

Thw.utes, Jesuit Relations {Cleveland, 1901), passim; She.\, Catholic Church in Colonial Days (New York, 18S6); Charle- voix, Histoire de la Nouvelle-France (New York, 1868), II, III, tr.; RocHEMONTElx, Les Jesuites et la Nouvelle-France (Paris, 1S96), II: Parkman, The Jesuits in North America (Boston, 1901).

T. J. Campbell.

Drumgoole, John C, priest and philanthropist, b. at Granard, Co. Longford, Ireland, 15 August, 1816; d. in New York, 28 March, 1888. He emigrated to New York in 1824, and to support his widowed mother worked as a shoemaker. His piety and zeal attracted the notice of the pastor of St. Mary's church who made him the sexton of that parish in 1844. He had always cherished an aspiration to study for the priesthood, and to provide the means for this and to maintain his mother he conducted a small book-store. In 186:i he left St. Mary's to carrj' out his intention of entering the seminary; after making preliminary studies at St. Francis Xavier's and St. John's Colleges, he was admitted as an ecclesiastical student at the seminary of Our Lady of Angels, Sus- pension Bridge, New York, in 1865. He was ordained priest there 24 May, 1869, and assigned as an assistant at St. Mary's, where he had formerly been sexton.