SKILL IN MEDECINE, &C.

The British Druids, like the Indian Gymnosophists, or the Persian Magi,
had two sets of doctrines; the first for the initiated; the second for
the people. That there is one God the creator of heaven and earth, was a
secret doctrine of the Brachmans. And the nature and perfection of the
deity were among the druidical arcana.

Among the sublimer tenets of the druidical priesthood, we have every
where apparent proofs of their polytheism: and the grossness of their
religious ideas, as represented by some writers, is very inconsistent
with that divine philosophy which has been considered as a part of their
character. These, however, were popular divinities which the Druids
ostensibly worshipped, and popular notions which they ostensibly
adopted, in conformity with the prejudices of the vulgar. The Druids
well knew that the common people were no philosophers. There is reason
also, to think that a great part of the idolatries were not sanctioned
by the Druids, but afterwards introduced by the Phoenician colony. But
it would be impossible to say how far the primitive Druids accommodated
themselves to vulgar superstition, or to separate their exterior
doctrines and ceremonies from the fables and absurd rites of subsequent
times. It would be vain to attempt to enumerate their gods: in the eye
of the vulgar they defied everything around them. They worshipped the
spirits of the mountains, the vallies, and the rivers. Every rock and
every spring were either the instruments or the objects of admiration.
The moonlight vallies of Danmonium were filled with the fairy people,
and its numerous rivers were the resort of genii.

The fiction of fairies is supposed to have been brought, with other
extravagancies of a like nature from the Eastern nations, whilst the
Europeans and Christians were engaged in the holy war: such at least is
the notion of an ingenious writer, who thus expresses himself: "Nor were
the monstrous embellishments of enchantments the invention of romancers,
but formed upon Eastern tales, brought thence by travellers from their
crusades and pilgrimages, which indeed, have a cast peculiar to the wild
imagination of the Eastern people."[22]

That fairies, in particular, came from the East, we are assured by that
learned orientalist, M. Herbelot, who tells us that the Persians called
the fairies _Peri_, and the Arabs _Genies_, that according: to the
Eastern fiction, there is a certain country inhab