Culture Mixing—Classical Evidence regarding Druids—Doctrine of Transmigration of Souls—Celtic Paradises: Isles of the Blest, Land-under-waves, Fairyland, and "Loveless Land"—Paradise as Apple-land—Apples, Nuts, and Pork of Longevity—Mistletoe connected with the Oak, Apple, and Other Trees—Druids and Oracular Birds—Druids as Soothsayers—Thomas the Rhymer as "True Thomas"—Christ as the Druid of St. Columba—Stones of Worship—Druid Groves and Dolmens in Anglesea—Early Christians denounce Worship of Stones, Trees, Wells, and Heavenly Bodies—Vows over Holy Objects—Bull Sacrifices, Stone Worship, &c., in Highlands—"Cup-marked" Stones—Origin of Druidism—Milk-Goddesses and Milk-yielding Trees—European and Oriental Milk Myths—Tree Cults and Megalithic Monuments.

When the question is asked "What was the religion of the ancient Britons?" the answer generally given is "Druidism". But such a term means little more than "Priestism". It would perhaps be better not to assume that the religious beliefs of our remote ancestors were either indigenous or homogeneous, or that they were ever completely systematized at any period or in any district. Although certain fundamental beliefs may have been widespread, it is clear that there existed not a few local or tribal cults. "I swear by the gods of my people" one hero may declare in a story, while of another it may be told that "Coll" (the hazel) or "Fire" was his god. Certain animals were sacred in some districts and not in others, or were sacred to some individuals only in a single tribe.

In a country like Britain, subjected in early times to periodic intrusions of peoples from different areas, the process of "culture mixing" must have been active and constant. Imported beliefs were fused with native beliefs, or beliefs that had assumed local features, while local pantheons no doubt reflected local politics—the gods of a military aristocracy being placed over the gods of the subject people. At the same time, it does not follow that when we find a chief deity bearing a certain name in one district, and a different name in another, that the religious rites and practices differed greatly. Nor does it follow that all peoples who gave recognition to a political deity performed the same ceremonies or attached the same importance to all festivals. Hunters, seafarers, and agriculturists had their own peculiar rites, as surviving superstitions (the beliefs of other days) clearly indicate, while the workers in metals clung to ceremonial practices that differed from those performed by representatives of a military aristocracy served by the artisans.

Much has been written about the Druids, but it must be confessed that our knowledge regarding them is somewhat scanty. Classical writers have made contradictory statements about their beliefs and ceremonies. Pliny alone tells that they showed special reverence for the mistletoe growing on the oak, and suggests that the name Druid was connected with the Greek word drus (an oak). Others tell that there were Druids, Seers, and Bards in the Celtic priesthood. In his book on divination, Cicero indicates that the Druids had embraced the doctrines of Pythagoras, the Greek philosopher, who was born about 586 b.c., including that of the transmigration of souls.[108] Julius CÆsar tells that the special province of the Druids in Gaulish society was religion in all its aspects; they read oracles, and instructed large numbers of the nation's youth. Pomponius Mela[109] says the instruction was given in caves and in secluded groves. CÆsar records that once a year the Druids presided over a general assembly of the Gauls at a sacred spot in the country of the Carnutes, which was supposed to be the centre of Gaul. It is not known whether this holy place was marked by a mound, a grove, a stone circle, or a dolmen. The Archdruid was chief of the priesthood. CÆsar notes that the Germans had no Druids and paid no attention to sacrifices.

Of special interest is the statement that the Druids believed in the doctrine of Transmigration of Souls—that is, they believed that after death the soul passed from one individual to another, or into plants or animals before again passing into a human being at birth. According to Diodorus Siculus, who lived in the latter part of the first century a.d., the Gauls took little account of the end of life, believing they would come to life after a certain term of years, entering other bodies. He also refers to the custom of throwing letters on the funeral pyre, so that the dead might read them.[110] This suggests a belief in residence for a period in a Hades.

The doctrine of Transmigration of Souls did not, however, prevail among all Celtic peoples even in Gaul. Valerius Maximus, writing about a.d. 30, says that the Gauls were in the habit of lending sums of money on the promise that they would be repaid in the next world. Gaelic and Welsh literature contains little evidence of the doctrine of Transmigration of Souls. A few myths suggest that re-birth was a privilege of certain specially famous individuals. Mongan, King of Dalriada in Ulster, and the Welsh Taliessin, for instance, were supposed to have lived for periods in various forms, including animal, plant, and human forms, while other heroes were incarnations of deities. The most persistent British belief, however, was that after death the soul passed to an Otherworld.

Julius CÆsar says that Druidism was believed to have originated in Britain.[111] This cannot apply, however, to the belief in transmigration of souls, which was shared in common by Celts, Greeks, and Indians. According to Herodotus, "the Egyptians are the first who have affirmed that the soul is immortal, and that when the body decays the soul invariably enters another body on the point of death". The story of "The Two Brothers" (Anpu and Bata) indicates that the doctrine was known in Egypt. There are references in the "Book of the Dead" to a soul becoming a lily, a golden falcon, a ram, a crocodile, &c., but this doctrine was connected, according to Egyptologists, with the belief that souls could assume different shapes in the Otherworld. In India souls are supposed to pass through animal or reptile forms only. The Greek doctrine, like the Celtic, includes plant forms. Certain African tribes believe in the transmigration of souls.

In ancient Britain and Ireland the belief obtained, as in Greece and elsewhere, that there was an Underworld Paradise and certain Islands of the Blest (in Gaelic called "The Land of Youth", "The Plain of Bliss", &c.) The Underworld was entered through caves, wells, rivers or lakes, or through the ocean cavern from which the moon arose. There are references in Scottish folk-tales to "The Land-Under-Waves", and to men and women entering the Underworld through a "fairy" mound, and seeing the dead plucking fruit and reaping grain as in the Paradise of the Egyptian god Osiris. It is evident that Fairyland was originally a Paradise, and the fairy queen an old mother goddess. There are references in Welsh to as gloomy an Underworld as the Babylonian one. "In addition to Annwfn, a term which", according to the late Professor Anwyl, "seems to mean the 'Not-world', we have other names for the world below, such as anghar, 'the loveless place'; difant, the unrimmed place (whence the modern Welsh word difancoll, 'lost for ever'); affwys, the abyss; affan, 'the land invisible'." In a Welsh poem a bard speaks of the Otherworld as "the cruel prison of earth, the abode of death, the loveless land".[112]

The Border Ballads of Scotland contain references to the Fairyland Paradise of the Underworld, to the islands or continent of Paradise, and to the dark Otherworld of the grave in which the dead lie among devouring worms.

In one Celtic Elysium, known to the Welsh and Irish, the dead feast on pork as do the heroes in the Paradise of the Scandinavian god Odin. There is no trace in Scotland of a belief or desire to reach a Paradise in which the pig was eaten. The popularity of the apple as the fruit of longevity was, however, widespread. It is uncertain when the beliefs connected with it were introduced into England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. As they were similar to those connected with the hazel-nut, the acorn, the rowan, &c., there may have simply been a change of fruit rather than a religious change, except in so far as new ceremonies may have been associated with the cultivated apple tree.

A Gaelic story tells of a youth who in Paradise held a fragrant golden apple in his right hand. "A third part of it he would eat and still, for all he consumed, never a whit would it be diminished." As long as he ate the apple "nor age nor dimness could affect him". Paradise was in Welsh and Gaelic called "Apple land".[113] Its "tree of life" always bore ripe fruit and fresh blossoms. One of the Irish St. Patrick legends pictures a fair youth coming from the south[114] clad in crimson mantle and yellow shirt, carrying a "double armful of round yellow-headed nuts and of most beautiful golden-yellow apples". There are stories, too, about the hazel with its "good fruit", and of holy fire being taken from this tree, and withal a number of hazel place-names that probably indicate where sacred hazel groves once existed. Hallowe'en customs connected with apples and nuts are evidently relics of ancient religious beliefs and ceremonies.

The Druids are reported by Pliny (as has been stated) to have venerated the mistletoe, especially when it was found growing on an oak. But the popular parasitic plant is very rarely found associated with this tree. In France and England it grows chiefly on firs and pines or on apple trees, but never on the plane, beech, or birch.[115] It is therefore doubtful if the name Druid was derived from the root dru which is found in the Greek word drus (oak). In Gaelic the Druids are "wise men" who read oracles, worked spells, controlled the weather, and acted as intercessors between the gods and men. Like the dragon-slayers of romance, they understood "the language of birds", and especially that of the particular bird associated with the holy tree of a cult. One sacred bird was the wren. According to Dr. Whitley Stokes the old Celtic names of wren and Druid were derived from the root dreo, which is cognate with the German word treu and the English true. The Druid was therefore, as one who understood the language of the wren, a soothsayer, a truth-sayer—a revealer of divine truth. A judgment pronounced by Druid or king was supposed to be inspired by the deity. It was essentially a divine decree. The judge wore round his neck the symbol of the deity. "When what he said was true, it was roomy for his neck; when false, it was narrow." This symbol according to Cormac`s Glossary was called sin (sheen). Some seers derived their power to reveal the truth by tasting the blood or juice of a holy animal or reptile, or, like Thomas the Rhymer, by eating of an apple plucked from the tree of life in the Paradise of Fairyland. In an old ballad it is told that when Thomas was carried off to the Underworld by the fairy queen he was given an inspiring apple that made him a "truth-sayer" (a prophet).

"True Thomas" was "Druid Thomas".

An interesting reference to Druidism is found in a Gaelic poem supposed to have been written by St. Columba, in which the missionary says:

There are Gaelic stories about Druids who read the omens of the air and foretell the fates of individuals at birth, fix the days on which young warriors should take arms, &c.

In England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales not only trees and birds were reverenced, but also standing stones, which are sometimes referred to even in modern Gaelic as "stones of worship". Some stories tell of standing stones being transformed into human beings when struck by a magician's wand. The wand in one story is possessed by a "wise woman". Other traditions relate that once a year the stones become maidens who visit a neighbouring stream and bathe in it. A version of this myth survives in Oxfordshire. According to Tacitus there were on the island of Mona (Anglesea), which was a centre of religious influence, not only Druids, but "women in black attire like Furies"—apparently priestesses. As has been noted, a large number of dolmens existed on Mona, in which there were also "groves devoted to inhuman superstitions".[116]

The early Christian writers refer to the "worship of stones" in Ireland. In the seventh century the Council at Rouen denounced all those who offer vows to trees, or wells, or stones, as they would at altars, or offer candles or gifts, as if any divinity resided there capable of conferring good or evil. The Council at Arles (a.d. 452) and the Council at Toledo (a.d. 681) dealt with similar pagan practices. That sacred stones were associated with sacred trees is indicated in a decree of an early Christian Council held at Nantes which exhorts "bishops and their servants to dig up and remove and hide in places where they cannot be found those stones which in remote and woody places are still worshipped and where vows are still made". This worship of stones was in Britain, or at any rate in part of England, connected with the worship of the heavenly bodies. A statute of the time of King Canute forbids the barbarous adoration of the sun and moon, fire, fountains, stones, and all kinds of trees and wood. In the Confession attributed to St. Patrick, the Irish are warned that all those who adore the sun shall perish eternally. Cormac's Glossary explains that Indelba signified Images and that this name was applied to the altars of certain idols. "They (the pagans) were wont to carve on them the forms of the elements they adored: for example, the figure of the sun." Irish Gaels swore by "the sun, moon, water, and air, day and night, sea and land". In a Scottish story some warriors lift up a portion of earth and swear on it. The custom of swearing on weapons was widespread in these islands. In ancient times people swore by what was holiest to them.[117]

One of the latest references to pagan religious customs is found in the records of Dingwall Presbytery dating from 1649 to 1678. In the Parish of Gairloch, Ross-shire, bulls were sacrificed, oblations of milk were poured on the hills, wells were adored, and chapels were "circulated"—the worshippers walked round them sunwise. Those who intended to set out on journeys thrust their heads into a hole in a stone.[118] If a head entered the hole, it was believed the man would return; if it did not, his luck was doubtful. The reference to "oblations of milk" is of special interest, because milk was offered to the fairies. A milk offering was likewise poured daily into the "cup" of a stone known as Clach-na-Gruagach (the stone of the long-haired one). A bowl of milk was, in the Highlands, placed beside a corpse, and, after burial took place, either outside the house door or at the grave. The conventionalized Azilian human form is sometimes found to be depicted by small "cups" on boulders or rocks. Some "cups" were formed by "knocking" with a small stone for purposes of divination. The "cradle stone" at Burghead is a case in point. It is dealt with by Sir Arthur Mitchell (The Past in the Present, pp. 263-5), who refers to other "cup-stones" that were regarded as being "efficacious in cases of barrenness". In some hollowed stones Highland parents immersed children suspected of being changelings.

A flood of light has been thrown on the origin of Druidism by Siret,[119] the discoverer of the settlements of Easterners in Spain which have been dealt with in an earlier chapter. He shows that the colonists were an intensely religious people, who introduced the Eastern Palm-tree cult and worshipped a goddess similar to the Egyptian Hathor, a form of whom was Nut. After they were expelled from Spain by a bronze-using people, the refugees settled in Gaul and Italy, carrying with them the science and religious beliefs and practices associated with Druidism. Commercial relations were established between the Etruscans, the peoples of Gaul and the south of Spain, and with the Phoenicians of Tyre and Carthage during the archÆological Early Iron Age. Some of the megalithic monuments of North Africa were connected with this later drift.

The goddess Hathor of Egypt was associated with the sycamore fig which exudes a milk-like fluid, with a sea-shell, with the sky (as Nut she was depicted as a star-spangled woman), and with the primeval cow. The tree cult was introduced into Rome. The legend of the foundation of that city is closely associated with the "milk"-yielding fig tree, under which the twins Romulus and Remus were nourished by the wolf. The fig-milk was regarded as an elixir and was given by the Greeks to newly born children.

Siret shows that the ancient name of the Tiber was Rumon, which was derived from the root signifying milk. It was supposed to nourish the earth with terrestrial milk. From the same root came the name of Rome. The ancient milk-providing goddess of Rome was Deva Rumina. Offerings of milk instead of wine were made to her. The starry heavens were called "Juno's milk" by the Romans, and "Hera's milk" by the Greeks, and the name "Milky Way" is still retained.

The milk tree of the British Isles is the hazel. It contains a milky fluid in the green nut, which Highland children of a past generation regarded as a fluid that gave them strength. Nut-milk was evidently regarded in ancient times as an elixir like fig-milk.[120] There is a great deal of Gaelic lore connected with the hazel. In Keating's History of Ireland (Vol. I, section 12) appears the significant statement, "Coll (the hazel) indeed was god to MacCuil". "Coll" is the old Gaelic word for hazel; the modern word is "Call". "Calltuinn" (Englished "Calton") is a "hazel grove". There are Caltons in Edinburgh and Glasgow and well-worn forms of the ancient name elsewhere. In the legends associated with the Irish Saint MaedÓg is one regarding a dried-up stick of hazel which "sprouted into leaf and blossom and good fruit". It is added that this hazel "endures yet (a.d. 624), a fresh tree, undecayed, unwithered, nut-laden yearly".[121] The sacred hazel was supposed to be impregnated with the substance of life. Another reference is made to Coll na nothar ("hazel of the wounded"). Hazel-nuts of longevity, as well as apples of longevity, were supposed to grow in the Gaelic Paradise. In a St. Patrick legend a youth comes from the south ("south" is Paradise and "north" is hell) carrying "a double armful of round yellow-headed nuts and of beautiful golden-yellow apples". Dr. Joyce states that the ancient Irish "attributed certain druidical or fairy virtues to the yew, the hazel, and the quicken or rowan tree", and refers to "innumerable instances in tales, poems, and other old records, in such expressions as 'Cruachan of the fair hazels', 'Derry-na-nath, on which fair-nutted hazels are constantly found'.... Among the blessings a good king brought on the land was plenty of hazel-nuts:—'O'Berga (the chief) for whom the hazels stoop', 'Each hazel is rich from the hero'." Hazel-nuts were like the figs and dates of the Easterners, largely used for food.[122]

Important evidence regarding the milk elixir and the associated myths and doctrines is preserved in the ancient religious literature of India and especially in the MahÁ-bhÁrata. The Indian Hathor is the cow-mother Surabhi, who sprang from Amrita (Soma) in the mouth of the Grandfather (Brahma). A single jet of her milk gave origin to "Milky Ocean". The milk "mixing with the water" appeared as foam, and was the only nourishment of the holy men called "Foam drinkers". Divine milk was also obtained from "milk-yielding trees", which were the "children" of one of her daughters. These trees included nut trees. Another daughter was the mother of birds of the parrot species (oracular birds). In the Vedic poems soma, a drink prepared from a plant, is said to have been mixed with milk and honey, and mention is made of "Su-soma" ("river of Soma"). Madhu (mead) was a drink identified with soma, or milk and honey.[123]

There are rivers of mead in the Celtic Paradise. Certain trees are in Irish lore associated with rivers that were regarded as sacred. These were not necessarily milk-yielding trees. In Gaul the plane tree took the place of the southern fig tree. The elm tree in Ireland and Scotland was similarly connected with the ancient milk cult. One of the old names for new milk, found in "Cormac's Glossary", is lemlacht, the later form of which is leamhnacht. From the same root (lem) comes leamh, the name of the elm. The River Laune in Killarney is a rendering of the Gaelic name leamhain, which in Scotland is found as Leven, the river that gave its name to the area known as Lennox (ancient Leamhna). Milk place-names in Ireland include "new milk lake" (Lough Alewnaghta) in Galway, "which", Joyce suggests, "may have been so called from the softness of its water". A mythological origin of the name is more probable. Wounds received in battle were supposed to be healed in baths of the milk of white hornless cows.[124] In Irish blood-covenant ceremonies new milk, blood, and wine were mixed and drunk by warriors.[125] As late as the twelfth century a rich man's child was in Ireland immersed immediately after birth in new milk.[126] In Rome, in the ninth century, at the Easter-eve baptism the chalice was filled "not with wine but with milk and honey, that they may understand ... that they have entered already upon the promised land".[127]

The beliefs associated with the apple, rowan, hazel, and oak trees were essentially the same. These trees provided the fruits of longevity and knowledge, or the wine which was originally regarded as an elixir that imparted new life and inspired those who drank it to prophecy[128]. The oak provided acorns which were eaten. Although it does not bear red berries like the rowan, a variety of the oak is greatly favoured by the insect Kermes, "which yields a scarlet dye nearly equal to cochineal, and is the 'scarlet' mentioned in Scripture". This fact is of importance as the early peoples attached much value to colour and especially to red, the colour of life blood. Withal, acorn-cups "are largely imported from the Levant for the purposes of tanning, dyeing, and making ink".[129] A seafaring people like the ancient Britons must have tanned the skins used for boats so as to prevent them rotting on coming into contact with water. Dr. Joyce writes of the ancient Irish in this connection, "Curraghs[130] or wicker-boats were often covered with leather. A jacket of hard, tough, tanned leather was sometimes worn in battle as a protecting corslet. Bags made of leather, and often of undressed skins, were pretty generally used to hold liquids. There was a sort of leather wallet or bag called crioll, used like a modern travelling bag, to hold clothes and other soft articles. The art of tanning was well understood in ancient Ireland. The name for a tanner was sudaire, which is still a living word. Oak bark was employed, and in connection with this use was called coirteach (Latin, cortex)." The oak-god protected seafarers by making their vessels sea-worthy.

Mistletoe berries may have been regarded as milk-berries because of their colour, and the ceremonial cutting of the mistletoe with the golden sickle may well have been a ceremony connected with the fertilization of trees practised in the East. The mistletoe was reputed to be an "all-heal", although really it is useless for medicinal purposes.

That complex ideas were associated with deities imported into this country, the history of which must be sought for elsewhere, is made manifest when we find that, in the treeless Outer Hebrides, the goddess known as the "maiden queen" has her dwelling in a tree and provides the "milk of knowledge" from a sea-shell. She could not possibly have had independent origin in Scotland. Her history is rooted in ancient Egypt, where Hathor, the provider of the milk of knowledge and longevity, was, as has been indicated, connected with the starry sky (the Milky Way), a sea-shell, the milk-yielding sycamore fig, and the primeval cow.

The cult animal of the goddess was in Egypt the star-spangled cow; in Troy it was a star-spangled sow[131]. The cult animal of Rome was the wolf which suckled Romulus and Remus. In Crete the local Zeus was suckled, according to the belief of one cult, by a horned sheep[132], and according to another cult by a sow. There were various cult animals in ancient Scotland, including the tabooed pig, the red deer milked by the fairies, the wolf, and the cat of the "Cat" tribes in Shetland, Caithness, &c. The cow appears to have been sacred to certain peoples in ancient Britain and Ireland. It would appear, too, that there was a sacred dog in Ireland.[133]

It is evident that among the Eastern beliefs anciently imported into the British Isles were some which still bear traces of the influence of cults and of culture mixing. That religious ideas of Egyptian and Babylonian origin were blended in this country there can be little doubt, for the Gaelic-speaking peoples, who revered the hazel as the Egyptians revered the sycamore, regarded the liver as the seat of life, as did the Babylonians, and not the heart, as did the Egyptians. In translations of ancient Gaelic literature "liver" is always rendered as "vitals".

Cult Animals and "Wonder Beasts" (dragons or makaras) on Scottish
Sculptured Stones