Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions

people than either Celt or German. Prof. Rhys, one of highest living authorities, was justified in thinking that Druidism was "probably to be traced to the race or races which preceded the Celts in their possession of the British Isles." The Iberians, with dark eyes and hair, belong to these Isles, as well as in north-west and south-west Germany. In Brittany, as in Wales, to this day, the Iberian and Celt may be seen side by side.

A discussion has arisen in French scientific journals to the apparently different views of Druidism in writings attributed to Pythagoras and to Cæsar. Hermand pointed out their contradiction. Lamariouze remarked--"One says there were in all Celtic lands neither temples statues; the other, on the contrary, would declare he had found the worship of Roman divinities, and consequently temples, statues, images." Pythagoras was told by a Druid that he believed "in one Divinity alone, who is everywhere since He is in all."

Lamariouze failed to see any decided difference in two authorities, saving the modification occasioned by Roman domination. He saw in one of the constituents and principles of the Gaulish religion the proscription temples and idols, recalling the well-known fact of the destruction of the temple of Delphi by the same people. He points out that Cæsar spoke of a likeness to Roman idols, not the idols themselves, especially in the relation so many of Mercury.

Of the Gaulish Druids, Lamariouze said--"Besides the purely spiritual beliefs, they permitted a material worship for the people. They permitted the adoration of God that which the ancients named the Elements."

Some hold that the Druids were either strangers from afar, or an esoteric body of the learned, who permitted the vulgar to indulge their heathenish practices, while they

p. 69