ll trample the mighty
Yet stumble on heads thou lovest."

TODHUNTER: _Druid song of Cathvah._

They kept their lore for the most part a secret, forbidding it to
be written, passing it down by word of mouth. They taught the
immortality of the soul, that it passed from one body to another at
death.

"If, as those Druids taught, which kept the British rites,
And dwelt in darksome groves, there counselling with sprites,
When these our souls by death our bodies do forsake
They instantly again do other bodies take----"

DRAYTON: _Polyolbion._

They believed that on the last night of the old year (October 31st)
the lord of death gathered together the souls of all those who had
died in the passing year and had been condemned to live in the
bodies of animals, to decree what forms they should inhabit for the
next twelve months. He could be coaxed to give lighter sentences by
gifts and prayers.

The badge of the initiated Druid was a glass ball reported to be
made in summer of the spittle of snakes, and caught by the priests
as the snakes tossed it into the air.

"And the potent adder-stone
Gender'd 'fore the autumnal moon
When in undulating twine
The foaming snakes prolific join."

MASON: _Caractacus._

It was real glass, blown by the Druids themselves. It was supposed
to aid the wearer in winning lawsuits and securing the favor of
kings.

An animal sacred to the Druids was the cat.

"A slender black cat reclining on a chain of old silver" guarded
treasure in the old days. For a long time cats were dreaded by the
people because they thought human beings had been changed to that
form by evil means.

The chief festivals of the Druids fell on four days, celebrating
phases of the sun's career. Fires of sacrifice were lighted
especially at spring and midsummer holidays, by exception on
November 1st.

May Day and November Day were the more important, the beginning and
end of summer, yet neither equinoxes nor solstices. The time was
divided then not according to sowing and reaping, but by the older
method of reckoning from when the herds were turned out to pasture
in the spring and brought into the fold again at the approach of
winter--by a pastoral rather than an agricultural people.

On the night before Beltaine ("Baal-fire"), the first of May, fires
were burned to Baal to celebrate the return of the