Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions PREFACE CONTENTS

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of this century, and yet hardly of the High Church order. The Patriarchal Religion of Britain, by the Rev. Dr. James, made many converts to the system. But the ceremonies associated with it have something of the Masonic character. This is the Summary of the Bardo-Druidic creed:-- There was one God. There were five elements--earth, water, fire, air, and heavens. The soul--refined, vital, and imperishable--is a lapsed intelligence, regaining happiness by transmigration. Creation improved as man improved, and animals gradually became men. Man develops by experience in different states of being. Celestial beings aid man in development. Ultimately all will be happy, and evil finally extinguished. All these views were gathered from the said Triads, though regarded by many pious Welshmen as teaching opposed to Christianity. Morien's reading of the Triads is something very different; p. 64 for The Light of Britannia has no Bardo-Druidic creed. Immortality was adjudged to be a Druidic creed. DRUIDICAL BELIEF. The Inverness Gaelic Society's Journal has this affirmation: "They looked for an immortality more substantial than the rewards of fame, in a heroic state in the far-off spirit land, to which the bards, it would appear, issued the passport --There lay the realms of mystery." Beyond that, however, was "the roofless house of lasting doom," to which illustrious spirits eventually passed. As a Skye tale implies, there was a happier region in the Beyond, from which there was no return. The ghosts, that appeared, came, as they are said by Spiritualists of our day still to come, from a sort of pleasant Purgatory, where they enjoyed awhile a free and easy condition of existence. Ammianus Marcellinus recorded: "The Druids, who united in a Society, occupied themselves with profound and sublime questions, raised themselves above human affairs, and sustained the immortality of the soul." On the other hand, Archbishop Whately, and many more, maintained that there was no proof of immortality independent of revelation. This idea of life had, however, a peculiar connection with pre-existence and transmigration. Thus, George Eliot refers to their finding "new bodies, animating them in a quaint and ghastly way with antique souls." So Wordsworth-- "Our life's star Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from far." The soul descended into the womb of nature to be re-born p. 65 in another body. Cæsar ascertained that Druids "are anxious to have it believed that souls do not die, but after death pass from one to another." Troyon fancied men of the Stone Age accepted reincarnation; since they buried their dead crouching, to imitate the babe in the womb. Lord Brougham asserted that the ancients "all believed in the soul's pre-existence." Theosophists hold that Druids recognized the Karmic land. Mormons share the like faith. Morien refers to souls waiting in the Sea of Annwn, to be called up to inhabit new bodies. Taliesin sang, "My original country is the land of Cherubim." What said the Irish upon immortality? Their word Nullog, newbeily, implied regeneration. Their many tales of transmigration, or life under varied conditions, are well known. An old MS. has this of a ghost "Fionn never slept a calm sleep From that night to the day of his death." This, says O'Kearney, "is a poetical licence, and evidently refers to the time when the spirit of Fionn, according to the Druidic doctrine of the transmigration of souls, should assume mortality in some other shape and character, and revisit the earth." The same author--noting the dialogue between St. Patrick and Oisin the Fenian, who had been three hundred years in the Land of Youth--observes, "It is doubtful if St. Patrick ever saw the real Oisin, but only some Druid or old Seanchaidhe who believed himself to be Oisin revived." Donald Ross, taking the creed of the old Scots, said, "They held a modified form of Pythagorean metempsychosis; for the soul is represented as emigrating into the lower animals, and even into trees, stones, and other inanimate objects." Two versions are given of the lives of Tuan Mac Coireall one, that he lived 100 years as a p. 66 man, 300 as a deer, 300 as a boar, 300 as a bird, and 300 as a salmon; the other was, that he was zoo years a man, 20 a hog, 30 a stag, 100 an eagle, and 30 a fish. To this day butterflies are spoken of as souls of some deceased persons. file:///I|/mythology/witchcraft/8/8.html (24 of 114) [02/05/2004 8:38:14 AM]
Dr. A. G. Richey, Q. C., when quoting from pre-Christian MSS., is careful to intimate that they were "not more historically credible or useful than the Hellenic--the Tain Bo than the Iliad." He gives the wonderful adventures of Fintan, who passed through many lives on earth, and appeared to St. Patrick. He was for a year beneath the waters of the Deluge, but in a fast sleep. A couple of verses of the poem will suffice. "I was then in Ireland,-- Pleasant was my condition When Partholon arrived From the Grecian country in the East. After that the Tuatha De arrived, Concealed in their dark clouds; I ate my food with them, Although at such a remote period." Dr. H. Waddell, dealing with the Druids, points out--"Purification by fire for body and soul, and assimilation thereby to the purest essence of the universe, were the fundamental ideas of their creed--the infallible means of the highest and most acceptable apotheosis." Rhys remarks--"That they believed in a dominant faith and transmigration is pretty certain." "Irish transmigration," remarks O'Beirne Crowe, "means the soul's passing from man into other animals--man and all subordinate animals included. This is Irish transmigration, called by the Greeks, transformation of one body into another, while the Gaulish is transmigration of a soul into the body of another human being." He adds--"But is this transformation a Druidic doctrine? Most certainly p. 67 not; it is purely Pythagorean, and must have for many centuries preceded Druidism in this strange land of ours." The revival of Reincarnation, by Madame Blavatsky, and the Theosophists under the eloquent Mrs. Besant, shows the persistency of the idea that so entranced the semi-civilized Irish long ago, and seemed so satisfactory a way to account for the existence of man after death. Transmigration being found in Ireland, has led some to assert their conviction that Buddhist missionaries conveyed it thither. The Soc. des Antiquiaires de France had an article, from the pen of Coquebert-Montbret, advancing this opinion, relying upon the known ardour and extensive proselytism of early Buddhist missionaries. He knows the Irish deity Budd or Budwas, and asks if that be not Buddha. In the Hebrides, spirits are called Boduchs, and the same word is applied to all heads of families, as the Master. The Druids were, says one, only an order of Eastern priests, located in Britain, adoring Buddwas. The St. Germain Museum has, in its Gaulish department, an altar, on which is represented a god with the legs crossed after the manner of the Indian Buddha. That relic is the fourth of the kind found in France. Anderson Smith, in his Lewisiana, writes reluctantly--"we must accept the possibility of a Buddhist race passing north from Ireland." This means, that Ireland is to be regarded as the source of so many Buddhist significations which are discovered on the west of Scotland, and in the Hebrides. It has been generally accepted that Druidism was Celtic in origin and practice, because Cæsar found it in Gaul and Britain. But he records three races in Gaul itself--the Celtic, the German, and the Aquitani. The Britons were, to him, Belgæ, or of German connection. He knew nothing of Ireland or Wales, in which two countries he would have seen the fellows of his Aquitani, a darker p. 68 people than either Celt or German. Prof. Rhys, one of highest living authorities, was justified in thinking that Druidism was "probably to be traced to the race or races which preceded the Celts in their possession of the British Isles." The Iberians, with dark eyes and hair, belong to these Isles, as well as in north-west and south-west Germany. In Brittany, as in Wales, to this day, the Iberian and Celt may be seen side by side. A discussion has arisen in French scientific journals to the apparently different views of Druidism in writings attributed to Pythagoras and to Cæsar. Hermand pointed out their contradiction. Lamariouze remarked--"One says there were in all Celtic lands neither temples statues; the other, on the contrary, would declare he had found the worship of Roman divinities, and consequently temples, statues, images." Pythagoras was told by a Druid that he believed "in one Divinity alone, who is everywhere since He is in all." Lamariouze failed to see any decided difference in two authorities, saving the modification occasioned by Roman domination. He saw in one of the constituents and principles of the Gaulish religion the proscription temples and idols, recalling the well-known fact of the destruction of the temple of Delphi by the same people. He points out that Cæsar spoke of a likeness to Roman idols, not the idols themselves, especially in the relation so many of Mercury. Of the Gaulish Druids, Lamariouze said--"Besides the purely spiritual beliefs, they permitted a material worship for the people. They permitted the adoration of God that which the ancients named the Elements." Some hold that the Druids were either strangers from afar, or an esoteric body of the learned, who permitted the vulgar to indulge their heathenish practices, while they p. 69 file:///I|/mythology/witchcraft/8/8.html (25 of 114) [02/05/2004 8:38:14 AM]
Page 1 and 2: p. iii Irish Druids And Old Irish R
Page 3 and 4: ROUND TOWER CREED 263 OSSIAN THE BA
Page 5 and 6: p. 6 with the Irish Carrick. Carric
Page 7 and 8: This, perhaps, the ordinary and mos
Page 9 and 10: ear cups. Torques are often spiral.
Page 11 and 12: Spiritualists we can assign the Dru
Page 13 and 14: ecome a Christian. p. 30 Colgan con
Page 15 and 16: p. 36 but the charlatanerie of barb
Page 17 and 18: it is written, "The Bards and Senna
Page 19 and 20: p. 48 that in the time of Pliny tra
Page 21 and 22: Through that, Cormac, grandson of C
Page 23: A fine poem--The Fate of the Son of
Page 27 and 28: "The strict bond of secrecy--the oa
Page 29 and 30: few histories are so charged with f
Page 31 and 32: and the appearance of clouds. Prodi
Page 33 and 34: who were hired for the purpose; but
Page 35 and 36: As elsewhere noted, the Irish fairi
Page 37 and 38: "She was like the new moon seen thr
Page 39 and 40: When by some blasting ban-- Ah! pit
Page 41 and 42: procuring answers to questions. Cio
Page 43 and 44: chapters of what has been usually r
Page 45 and 46: Patrick." The Mother of the Irish g
Page 47 and 48: fountains, or rivers. Seeing his pa
Page 49 and 50: Jocelin, an interesting romancer, s
Page 51 and 52: As the Revue Celtique contains a we
Page 53 and 54: xii. 30, we read, "Their sons and t
Page 55 and 56: ecclesiastical supervision, dispute
Page 57 and 58: astonished at a similar weakness in
Page 59 and 60: ceremonies. The Gentleman's Magazin
Page 61 and 62: Although tradition declares that al
Page 63 and 64: them. Fionn, in particular, was the
Page 65 and 66: Isles of the Pacific, alike in swel
Page 67 and 68: p. 185 the eternal foe of the would
Page 69 and 70: enter the great hail of the Nile te
Page 71 and 72: A Scotch writer observes--"The hear
Page 73 and 74: Two sects were said to be in the is
Page 75 and 76:
threefold leaper. Before eating the
Page 77 and 78:
The Cabir doctrine came convenientl
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inging a ship on shore, for the ben
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greyhound. Elsewhere it is stated,
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But Wit perceives The triple leaves
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The Indian and Cingalese Bo or Asva
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What was the age of Well-worship? T
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The pagan crosses being just the sa
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The base of the cross at Kells, Co.
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When Widow Feelin, the guide,--wrin
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on the top served as a warning of a
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Anna Wilkes in Ireland, Ur of the C
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semi-barbarous people, who were end
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had wives they abstained from them,
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Prof. Whitney thus speaks of the Hi
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Ireland was associated with the wes
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was to grant the request of the win
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Normans were great patrons of monas
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The Book of Invasions refers to "th
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Keepe's Monumenta Westmonasteriensi
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