Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race - Knowledge Rush

66 Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race[83]to Western Europe they found there a people with a powerfulpriesthood, a ritual, and imposing religious monuments; a peoplesteeped in magic and mysticism and the cult of the Underworld.The inferences, as I read the facts, seem to be that Druidismin its essential features was imposed upon the imaginative andsensitive nature of the Celt—the Celt with his “extraordinaryaptitude” for picking up ideas—by the earlier population ofWestern Europe, the Megalithic People, while, as held by these,it stands in some historical relation, which I am not able topursue in further detail, with the religious culture of ancientEgypt. Much obscurity still broods over the question, andperhaps will always do so, but if these suggestions have anythingin them, then the Megalithic People have been brought a stepor two out of the atmosphere of uncanny mystery which hassurrounded them, and they are shown to have played a veryimportant part in the religious development of Western Europe,and in preparing that part of the world for the rapid extension ofthe special type of Christianity which took place in it. Bertrand,in his most interesting chapter on “L'Irlande Celtique,” 65 pointsout that very soon after the conversion of Ireland to Christianity,we find the country covered with monasteries, whose completeorganisation seems to indicate that they were really Druidiccolleges transformed en masse. Cæsar has told us what thesecolleges were like in Gaul. They were very numerous. Inspite of the severe study and discipline involved, crowds flockedinto them for the sake of the power wielded by the Druidicorder, and the civil immunities which its members of all gradesenjoyed. Arts and sciences were studied there, and thousands ofverses enshrining the teachings of Druidism were committed tomemory. All this is very like what we know of Irish Druidism.p. 73). But we only know of it where Celts and dolmen-builders combined.Cæsar remarks of the Germans that they had no Druids and cared little aboutsacrificial ceremonies.65 “Rel. des Gaulois,” leçon xx.