Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race - Knowledge Rush

CHAPTER I: THE CELTS IN ANCIENT HISTORY 25easily dashed by reverses. They were extremely superstitious,submitting to their Druids in all public and private affairs, andregarding it as the worst of punishments to be excommunicatedand forbidden to approach thu ceremonies of religion:“They who are thus interdicted [for refusing to obeya Druidical sentence] are reckoned in the number of thevile and wicked; all persons avoid and fly their companyand discourse, lest they should receive any infection bycontagion; they are not permitted to commence a suit; neitheris any post entrusted to them.... The Druids are generally freedfrom military service, nor do they pay taxes with the rest....Encouraged by such rewards, many of their own accord cometo their schools, and are sent by their friends and relations.They are said there to get by heart a great number of verses;some continue twenty years in their education; neither is itheld lawful to commit these things [the Druidic doctrines] towriting, though in almost all public transactions and privateaccounts they use the Greek characters.”The Gauls were eager for news, besieging merchants andtravellers for gossip, 20 easily influenced, sanguine, credulous, [38]fond of change, and wavering in their counsels. They were at thesame time remarkably acute and intelligent, very quick to seizeupon and to imitate any contrivance they found useful. Theiringenuity in baffling the novel siege apparatus of the Romanarmies is specially noticed by Cæsar. Of their courage he speakswith great respect, attributing their scorn of death, in somedegree at least, to their firm faith in the immortality of the soul. 2120The Irish, says Edmund Spenser, in his “View of the Present State ofIreland,” “use commonyle to send up and down to know newes, and yf anymeet with another, his second woorde is, What newes?”21 Compare Spenser: “I have heard some greate warriors say, that in all theservices which they had seen abroad in forrayne countreys, they never saw amore comely horseman than the Irish man, nor that cometh on more bravelyin his charge ... they are very valiante and hardye, for the most part greatendurours of cold, labour, hunger and all hardiness, very active and stronge of