Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions

1^2 Old h^ish Religions.
One ;
Divyv, I am Daiu, being Gzvaivr, dawn of day
; ; ;
Gwerthevin, supreme ToJi, source
; ;
Tor, one of yore ;
Nudd, manifest ; Perydd, cause ;
Rh:n, pervader ;
Rhzvyf,
overlooker, &c.
There is no mention of their recognition of the Three
Attributes—/^/tv/;//^^, A lawn, and Giuron, indicated by
the three divergent rays. They had no Circle of Cengant
as the infinite space ; nor did they look upon the cromlech
as representing, in three stones upholding the cap-stone,
the doctrine of Trinity in Unity.
We cannot conceive of an Irish bard writing, as did a
Welsh bard, of Ceridwen— " Her complexion is formed of
the mild light in the evening hour, the splendid, graceful,
bright, and gentle Lady of the Mystic Song." But we
do know that
the early Crusaders brought home much of
this mystic talk from the East, and that ecclesiastics of
an imaginative turn w^ere charmed with pseudo-Christian
gnosticism. The Irish pagan, as the Welsh pagan, was
ignorant of such refinement of speech or ideas. The
Welsh Archdruid assured the writer of his belief that socalled
pagan philosophy was the source of Bardism, that
the teaching of the Triads was but the continuation of a
far older faith in his fathers.
Ossian more properly pictures the opinions of his race
in Ireland and Scotland, though they are rather negative
than affirmative. He, doubtless, never entered the esoteric
circle of Druidism, and is very far from displaying any
tincture of mysticism in his verses.
His gods were hardly spiritual, but vulnerable ;
as, when
Fingal fought the Scandinavian Deity, that shrieked when
wounded, " as rolled into himself, he rose upon the wind."
Yet the gods could disturb the winds and waves, bring
storms on foes, and so destroy them. Dr. Blair was struck
with the almost total absence of religious ideas in Ossian.