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The Druids of Ireland
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 February 2009
Extract
Byzantines, Romans, Kelts, Germans, and Sclavs form the five civilising peoples of mediaeval Europe. Three of them inhabited, and still inhabit, the actual body of the Continent, whereas the Byzantines were driven into the extreme southeast, and the Kelts into the extreme north-west, even farther than suited their capacities and pursuits, owing to the continued onward march of the others. It was also unfortunate for the Kelts that they were, so to say, a distinctly unhistorical and unsettled people; that they had no history of any importance; did not keep any record even of such events as occurred around them; and that other communities, distinct from themselves as regards place and speech, took but little notice of them. Hence, of the earlier history of the mediaeval Kelts, and especially of their chief branch, the Irish, we know practically nothing; and this although there is yet extant concerning them a literature which compares favourably in extent with that of any other early people. Imagination and the works of scholars, especially after the tenth century, supplied that which was painfully wanting in actuality.
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- Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1893
References
page 58 note 1 Some investigators (e.g. Encycl. Brit. v. 302) consider the Druids as a higher order of the Filé—hence, as poets with priestly duties; this is certainly not correct.
page 59 note 1 According to a canon ascribed to St. Gildas, the Druids tonsured the front of the head from ear to ear, while they let the hair on the back of the head grow. This is the same tonsure as that of the early Irish ecclesiastics. The canon can hardly date from Gildas, but shows the opinion of a somewhat later time.
page 74 note 1 Conlavin of Connaught is said to have written a treatise against the Druids, and King Cormac to have had a theological dispute with them (cf. Trans. xvi. 89). Even though this evidence is legendary and worthless, still it is no bad manifestation of internal disruption.
page 75 note 1 D'Arbois, , Cours, i 198Google Scholar, says: ‘La quatrième case est affectée au savant en lettres, c'est-à-dire au prêtre chrétien.’ We believe this is erroneous. Had the author of the list meant the priest, he would have named him, above all abbot and bishop. The man of letters appears as a layman like the resl. That the Ollam Filé sat two steps lower cannot be accepted.