Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

DRUIDS. 263
Druids, or tbat the Eastern Magi were such ; as if that
had not been proved already. It is quite as easy as
proving- that Colog-ne lies to the east of Jerusalem.
That Keysler derives Druid from Draoi and Draoithe,
Magician, and that Owen derives it from Derw, an oak,
that the Dryad of Greece and the Dervish of the East
are the same term, are merely etymological amusements,
which go for as much as they are worth.
Yet it is far from improbable, that if the Celts of
Gaul and Britain were under a Druidical Hierarchy, the
same system extended to Ireland and Scotland during
the Celtic periods of those countries. Even that ad-
mission takes us back to a remote date, and limits us to
a small portion of both countries, in the only times of
which we have any information ;
since we know that a
large portion of the population of both, consisted of
Gothic tribes at the sera of the Roman invasion. That
this people did not submit to a Druidical government or
religion, is so clear from their whole history, that it is
superfluous to produce the proofs: and if testimony were
necessary, Csesar says decidedly that the Germans had
no Druids.
The confusion which has been thrown into this sub-
ject, by extending the system of Druidism more widely
than the evidence warrants, must be attributed partly to
the love of system in the antiquaries who have attached
themselves to the subject, and partly to that ignorance
respecting the distinctions between the Goths and Celts,
already noticed, which has been so prevalent, and which
has not been entirely corrected in the popular mind, nor
even in the minds of loose antiquaries, to this day. That
the Goths and Celts worshipped the same divinities, if
under different names, has been one source of these un-
pardonable errors. But the same fact would prove that
the mythology of Greece and Egypt and India were, not