druid

druid, druidess [origin disputed; see second paragraph below]. An order of male and female priest-philosophers of pre-Christian Celtic society, known in Continental Europe, the Mediterranean basin, Great Britain, and Ireland; often thought to be comparable to Roman flāmines or the brahmins of India. According to classical commentators, druids in Gaul, and perhaps elsewhere, had authority over divine worship, officiated at sacrifices (including, perhaps, human sacrifices), exercised supreme authority over legislative and judicial matters, and educated élite youth along with aspirants to their order. They ate acorns to make themselves ready for prophecy. Druids paid no taxes and were not required to do battle. At important assemblies they took precedence in speaking before kings or chieftains, as was the case in the court of Conchobar mac Nessa. Teaching and sacred knowledge was oral, pupils being required to memorize a great number of verses, spending as long as twenty years in study. Many lessons were taught in the form of riddles. Because of the lack of written texts, we must infer their teaching from nondruidical sources. The curriculum included astronomy and natural science. Druidical calculation of time perceived night or darkness as preceding day or light; see CALENDAR. Druids evidently held to a version of metempsychosis in which human souls do not die but are reborn under different forms; classical commentators saw parallels with Pythagoras. As healers they are associated especially with mistletoe and its ritual gathering. In Ireland druids practised a form of tonsure, airbacc giunnae [Ir., frontal curve of tonsure], which ran from ear to ear instead of being a circular form on the crown like the Roman and Christian pattern. Roman persecution led to the decline of the druidical order, especially after the slaughter on Anglesey, AD 61, when it disappeared from Britain and Wales. Druids survived in Ireland until the coming of Christianity (5th cent.) and in Scotland, when the mantle of druidical magic passed on to Celtic Christian saints, while other aspects passed to the filid who accommodated themselves to the new religion.

The oldest references to druids appear in classical texts, always in plurals, Gk. druidai, L druidae, druides. These presuppose the Gaulish form druvis, from druvids, although neither occurs in any Romano-Celtic inscriptions. The OIr. druí is sometimes translated as ‘druid’ but may also mean magician, wizard, diviner, or, in more modern poetry, poet, learned man. W dryw, ‘seer’ may be a cognate. From these, Kenneth H. Jackson hypothesizes a Gaulish original, druwids, ‘wise man of the woods’, ‘very wise man’. The Indo-European root deru-implies being firm, solid, or steadfast, as a tree is, or it may be an affirmative prefix or element. Other commentators have seen a cognate in the second syllable with the Indo-European root wid-, ‘to know’. Celtic words for ‘oak’ make an evocative sound: OIr. and ModIr. dair; ScG darach; Manx daragh; W derwen, dâr; Corn. derowen; Bret. dervenn. The root dru- from the Greek for ‘oak’ is implicit in the name of the druidical sanctuary in Galatia (Asia Minor), Drunemeton, as described by the ancient geographer Strabo (1st cent. AD). Pliny the Elder (1st cent. AD) observed that druids held oaks in high esteem, adorning them with flowers at religious ceremonies and worshipping them as symbols of Jupiter; nevertheless, druidic association with the oak has not been proved beyond reasonable doubt. Modern consensus, for example, rejects the earlier speculative root dervovidos, ‘knowledge of the oak’. The English word druid derives from the Latin druidae via the French druide, and is not borrowed from any Celtic language.

Classical commentators provide us with a substantial body of information about the druids, but it is neither consistent nor always supported by literary texts in Irish and Welsh. Julius Caesar (1st cent. BC) describes druids as constituting a single learned caste, while his near-contemporaries Strabo and Diodorus Siculus distinguish three learned orders: (a) druidae, philosophers and theologians, (b) vates or mantis, diviners and seers, and (c) bardi, panegyric poets. Although links between ancient Gaul and Ireland are tenuous, a similar division is recorded in early Ireland: (a) druídh, (b) filidh, seers, diviners, and (c) baird, poets. By the 7th century encroaching Christianity allowed the filidh to assume many of the functions and privileges of the druids, who were disappearing from the scene. Tacitus (2nd cent. AD) observed that druids ruled it unlawful to build temples to the gods or to worship them within walls or under roofs. The classical attribution of human sacrifice in druidical practice, especially by being burned within a wickerwork figure, is not supported in Irish or Welsh texts.

Several druids figure prominently in the three great cycles of Old Irish literature, the Mythological, Ulster, and Fenian. In the Lebor Gabála [Book of Invasions], the Partholonians arrive with three druids, Fios [intelligence], Eólas [knowledge], and Fochmarc [enquiring]. In the same work the druid of the Nemedians, Mide, an eponym for the province of Mide [Meath], lights the first fire in Ireland, which lasts for seven years and from which every other fire is lit. Irish druids are portrayed as masters of divination, including such powers as díchetal do chennaib, imbas forosnai, and teinm laída. They also, reportedly, watched flame and smoke for signs and chewed raw flesh (cf. the magical thumb of Fionn mac Cumhaill). Instead of oak, druids in Ireland favoured the wood of the yew, hawthorn, and rowan, especially for wands. Ogham figures could be carved into these wands. At the introduction of Christianity they unsuccessfully disputed with St Patrick and St Colum Cille.

Much bogus scholarship, beginning with John Aubrey (1626–97) and continuing in the 18th and 19th centuries, asserted that druids had migrated to Britain from ancient India, but were nevertheless linked to North American Indians. This tradition also ascribed almost every remnant of prehistoric culture in Britain and Ireland to druidical influence, so that megalithic monuments such as Stonehenge, now known to be pre-Celtic, were called ‘druid circles’. The phrases ‘druids’ tables’ or ‘druids’ altars’ denoted dolmens. William Stukeley (1687–1765) established a religion based on his vision of druidism; adherents of his views still parade in Britain at the solstice and at changes of the season. Other romantic misinformation persists in print, e.g., Godfrey Higgins, The Celtic Druids, etc. (London, 1829; repr. Los Angeles, 1977). Another living heritage from the romantic misinterpretation of druidism is the Gorsedd [W, throne, i.e. meeting of the bards] established by Iolo Morganwg (né Edward Williams, 1747–1826) in 1792.

A full list of druids in Celtic history would be too extensive to include here, but among the names most often mentioned are: Allaid in Macpherson's Ossian; Bresal Etarláim; Broichan; Caicer; Cailitin; Cathbad, among the most famous of all druids; Corán; Dáire (4); the historical Divitiacus the Aeduan, cited by classical commentators; Dil Maccu Crecga; Duanach mac Morna; Eliavres, a Breton; Fer Doirich; Fer Fidail; Figol of the Tuatha Dé Danann; Finnéces; Fíngen; Fis; Gebann; Lóbais; Máel, druid of Conn Cétchathach [of the Hundred Battles]; Mide, druid of the Nemedians and eponym of Meath; Morann; Mug Ruith, second in renown to Cathbad; Sithchenn in Niall's sovereignty story; Tadg mac Nuadat of the Fenian Cycle. Notable druidesses include: Béchuille; Birog; Bodhmall; Dornoll; Dub[h], after whom Dublin is named; the Gallizenae.

Among the thousands of representations of druids in modern literature, the most significant artistically is Vincenzo Bellini's opera Norma, libretto by F. Romani (1821), in which the young heroine is torn between love and duty. See also T. D. Kendrick, The Druids (London, 1928, 1966); Françoise Le Roux, Les Druides (Paris, 1961; Rennes, 1986); A. L. Owen, Famous Druids: A Survey of Three Centuries of English Literature on Druids (Oxford, 1962); Stuart Piggott, The Druids (London, 1968, 1975); P. B. Ellis, The Druids (London and Grand Rapids, Mich., 1994); Paul R. Lonigan, The Druids: Priests of the Ancient Celts (Westport, Conn., 1996).