ri
danno_,' the burden of an old song of the Druids, signifying, Come let
us haste to the oaken grove (Jones, Welsh Bards, vol. i., page 128), but
this I believe to be mere conjecture, and that it would now be
impossible to prove that the Druids had such a song." That Mr Chappell's
opinion is not correct, will, I think, appear from the etymological
proofs of the antiquity of this and other choruses afforded by the
venerable language which was spoken throughout the British Isles by the
aboriginal people for centuries before the Roman invasion, and which is
not yet extinct in Wales, in Ireland, in the Isle of Man, and in the
Highlands and Islands of Scotland.

Julius Caesar, the conqueror of Gaul and Britain, has left a description
of the Druids and their religion, which is of the highest historical
interest. That system and religion came originally from Assyria, Egypt,
and Phoenicia, and spread over all Europe at a period long anterior to
the building of Rome, or the existence of the Roman people. The Druids
were known by name, but scarcely more than by name, to the Greeks, who
derived the appellation erroneously from _drus_, an oak, under the
supposition that the Druids preferred to perform their religious rites
under the shadows of oaken groves. The Greeks also called the Druids
Saronides, from two Celtic words _sar_ and _dhuine_, signifying
"excellent or superior men." The Celtic meaning of the word "Druid" is
to enclose within a circle, and a Druid meant a prophet, a divine, a
bard, a magician; one who was admitted to the mysteries of the inner
circle. The Druidic religion was astronomical, and purely deistical, and
rendered reverence to the sun, moon, and stars as the visible
representatives of the otherwise unseen Divinity who created man and
nature. "The Druids used no images," says the Reverend Doctor Alexander
in his excellent little volume on the Island of Iona, published by the
Religious Tract Society, "to represent the object of their worship, nor
did they meet in temples or buildings of any kind for the performance of
their sacred rites. A circle of stones, generally of vast size, and
surrounding an area of from twenty feet to thirty yards in diameter,
constituted their sacred place; and in the centre of this stood the
cromlech (crooked stone), or altar, which was an obelisk of immense
size, or a large oblong flat stone, supported by pillars. These sacred
circles were usually situated beside a river or strea