Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/342

 324 Reviews.

by pictures of imaginary scenes in the life of Neolithic man. From this period he passes on to what he calls the borderland of history and to a discussion of the beliefs of Pagan Ireland. The second volume contains a mass of information on well, animal, tree, and stone worship, and on marriage and fairy lore. This is to a folklorist, the only useful part of the book. It contains a vast accumulation of examples, many of them already well-known, but some few the result of the author's own observation. As a repository of data his work may have a certain value, but he lacks the critical and constructive faculty, and the book is rambling and ill-digested, full of untenable theories and of misunderstandings of evidence. To choose a few points. In speaking of the Druids he remarks :

' ' The peculiar character of the Druidic organisation precluded the existence of any very abnormal difference in the Druidism of Gaul, Britain, and Erin. Nay, further, if we assume, as Coesar states, that Druidism had not only its origin but even its chief seat in Britain, we cannot but conclude that at what- ever period we may fix on for its first introduction into Ireland there could have been but little difference between it and the Druidism of Gaul. There is, there- fore, little in Ccesar that might not be applied to Irish Druidism., as that religion is faintly depicted in alleged early Irish manuscripts. Casar styles the priests by the general name of Druids," &c.

Here are a series of assumptions made on the sole authority of a foreigner, a Roman general, who however accurate an observer, could have been only imperfectly informed of the religious beliefs and social practices of the peoples among whom he came as con- queror ; and who, moreover, never was in Ireland. As regards Irish Druidism, it would seem that the observations of Caesar stand in need of modification. The popular idea derived from him of the Druid as a sacrificing priest, cutting the sacred mistle- toe in the recesses of the woods and offering holocausts of human sacrifices, is totally unlike any conception that we get of the Irish Druids from the more purely pagan records, or indeed from any Irish records. In Britain the religious functions of the Druid were the prominent feature of his office ; in Ireland he is hardly ever, if at all, connected with religious ceremonies. He was soothsayer and diviner of the future, wizard possessed of super- natural powers, but not, so far as we know, priest or sacrificer. This function, if he possessed it, does not definitely appear in the Irish records. The Druid is not mentioned in connection with