y
Hindooism--Totemists--Polytheists--Druids--Bards--Seers--Druidic
Deities--Mistletoe--Sacred herbs--"Ovum Anguinum"--Suppression of
Druidism--Druidism and Christianity.

H. 1.--The religious state of the country seems to have been in no
less confusion than its political condition. The surviving "Ugrian"
inhabitants appear to have sunk into mere totemists and fetish
worshippers, like the aboriginal races of India; while the Celtic
tribes were at a loose and early stage of polytheism, with a Pantheon
filled by every possible device, by the adoration of every kind of
natural phenomenon, the sky, the sun, the moon, the stars, the winds
and clouds, the earth and sea, rivers, wells, sacred trees, by the
creation of tribal divinities, gods and goddesses of war, commerce,
healing, and all the congeries of mutually tolerant devotions which
we see in the Brahmanism of to-day. And, as in Brahmanism, all these
devotions were under the shadow of a sacerdotal and prophetic caste,
wielding vast influence, and teaching, esoterically at least, a far
more spiritual religion.

H. 2.--These were the Druids, whose practices and tenets fortunately
excited such attention at Rome that we know more about them by far
than we could collect concerning either Jews or Christians from
classical authors. And though most of our authorities refer to
Druidism as practised in Gaul, yet we have the authority of Caesar for
Britain being the special home and sanctuary of the faith, to which
the Gallic Druids referred as the standard for their practices.[52] We
may safely, therefore, take the pictures given us by him and others,
as supplying a representation of what took place in our land ere the
Romans entered it.

H. 3.--The earliest testimony is that of Julius Caesar himself, in his
well-known sketch of contemporary Druidism ('De Bello Gallico,' vi.
14-20). He tells us that the Druids were the ministers of religion,
the sacrificial priesthood of the nation, the authorized expounders of
the Divine will. All education and jurisprudence was in their hands,
and their sentences of excommunication were universally enforced. The
Gallic Druids were under the dominion of a Primate, who presided at
the annual Chapter of the Order, and was chosen by it; a disputed
election occasionally ending in an appeal to arms. As a rule, however,
Druids were supposed not to shed blood, they were free from all
obligation to military service, and from all taxation of every k