Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions

Higgins, in Celtic Druids, will have Culdees only changed Druids, and regarded the Irish hereditary Abbots of Iona, the Coarbs or Curbs, as simply Corybantes. Latin writers knew them as Colidei or God-worshippers. Bishop Nicholson thought them Cool Dubh, from their black hoods. As C and G are commutable letters in Irish, we have Giolla De, Servant of God. The word Culdee was used by Boece in 1526. Dr. Reeves, in the Irish Academy, calls the Servus Dei by the Celtic Celi-Dé, and notes the name Ceile-n-De applied to the Sligo Friars in the Four Masters, 1595. Monks were reputed Keledei in the thirteenth century. Brockham's Lexicon finds regulars and seculars called so in the ninth century.

The Four Masters record that "Maenach, a Celae-Dé, came across the sea westward to establish laws in Ireland." In the poem of Moelruein, it is the Rule of the Celae-n-dé. The Keledei of Scotland, according to Dr. Reeves, had the same discipline as the Irish Colidei. One Collideus of the Armagh church died in 1574. One Celi-dé of Clonmacnois, dying in 1059, left several sons, who became Abbots after him.

The canons of York were Culdees in Atheistan's time. Ceadda, Wilfrid's predecessor, was a Culdee. They were also called, from their mode of celebrating Easter, Quartadecimans. The last known in Scotland were in 1352. As Bede says, the Irish, being Culdees, would as soon communicate with pagans as with Saxons; the later following Latin or Romish Christianity.

Ireland, as reported by Giraldus, had a chapel of the Colidei on an island of Tipperary, as he declared some were on islands of Wales. They were in Armagh in 920. Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh, asserts that the Northern Irish, "continued still their old tradition," in spite of the declaration of Pope Honorius. In Tirechan's Life of St Patrick, Cele-de came from Briton to Ireland in 919; but

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