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OF THE DRUIDS. 65having preserved iiiiniberless monuments concerningtheDruids, that never hitherto have come tothe hands of the learned.of the Druids were formerly betterFor as the institutionslearnt in Britain,by Caesar said to be the native seat of thissuperstitious race, than in Gaule, where yet it exceedinglyflourished ;so their memory is still bestpreserved in Ireland and the highlands of Scotland,comprehending the Hebridse, Hebrides,Western Isles, among which is the Isle of Man,where they continued long after their exterminationin Gaule and South Britain, mostly by theRomans, but finally by the introduction of Christianity.Besides, that much of the Irish heathenmythology is still extant in verse, which gives sucha lustre to this matter, and, of course, to the Greekand Roman fragments concerning the Druids, ascould not possibly be had any other way.VII. Thus (to give an example in the philologicalpart) the controversy among the grammarians,whether they should writeorDriiis or Druida^ in* The Irish word for Druid is Drui^ corruptly Droi, andmore corruptly Draoi; yet all of the same sound, which in etymologiesis a great matter; and in the nominative plural it isDruidhe, whence comes no doubt the Greek and Latin Druides;as Druis in the singular was formed by only adding s to Drui^according io those nation's way of terminating. But as thesewords in Irish as well as the British Drudwn, are common toboth sexes; so the Romans, according to their inflection, distinguishedDmida for a She-Druid (which sort are mentioned by