Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/343

 Reviews. 325

the offerings to the great idol Crom Cruach, which demanded human sacrifices, but he is the author of all foretelling dreams, he has power over mists, and winds, and waves, and in the later Christian tales he is the determined foe of Christianity. He is, too, the guardian of the sacred fire, whose rites St. Patrick ruth- lessly trampled upon when, within sight of Tara, he lighted the Christian Pascal fire. If, as is possible, the Druid in Ireland assumed in later pre-Christian times the functions of a priest, it was probably added to his original office. Again, as regards the original home of Druidism, it is at least as likely that it passed over to Anglesea from Ireland with the Irish settlers from thence, as that it came the other way. Druidism is connected with the very earliest stratum of Irish folk-tradition, and appears in the most primitive tales. It may have adopted fresh forms in Britain. The mistletoe rites, at all events, were not Irish, as the plant did not grow in Ireland.

"We may infer," says our author, "that Druidism was never thoroughly established in the kingdom [of Ireland] ; that the Druids, whom Roman perse- cution in Gaul and Britain drove over to Ireland, were regarded as magicians, and were taken under the protection of the various petty kings and chiefs. Irish Druidism was in the act of spreading and organising itself, but had not time for universal development before the arrival of St. Patrick."

With this inference we see no grounds whatever for agreeing. There is absolutely no ground for supposing that the Druids were driven to Ireland from Gaul and Britain. On the contrary, they formed part of the oldest system of things we know anything of in Ireland, and held an established position in the remotest pagan times. The author seems to have failed to find Druidism in old Irish legend because he sought for the sacrificial and priestly form of Druidism with which Caesar had familiarised him, and which was not the form which Druidism, so far as we know, adopted in Ireland. In its Irish form as wizardry its presence is everywhere felt. The functions of law-giver, arbitrator, and instructor of youth, which belonged to the Gaulish bards, seem also to have been performed by the Irish Druid, although there was, as in Gaul, a subdivision of these duties among three or more grades.

To take another point. In speaking of the Irish literary re- mains, which the author loses no opportunity of decrying, he says :

" If it be granted that the country possessed a literature prior to the arrival of the Christian missionaries, surely the Pagan priesthood were quite capable