Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions

—
h'ish Gods. 133
Ev^en at the funeral, in Tcinora, \vc have onl\-, " Loud at
once from the hundred bards rose the song of the tomb."
He hved in the age of Christianity. Hear the challenge
of the wild Northmen— "Are the gods of the Christians
as great as Loda (Odin) of the Lochlins?" Dr. Donald
Clark fancied that in Ossian's day the people had lost
faith
in their old Druidic religion, but had not then embraced
Christianity.
The remarks of Dr. H. Waddell are entitled to careful
attention. Referring to Ossian, he says
"All local gods, to him, were objects of ridicule. lie
recognized the Deity, if he could be said to recognize Him
at all, as an omnipresent vital essence, everywhere diffu^^ed
in the world, or centred for a lifetime in heroes. He
himself, his kindre:!, his forefathers, and the human race
at large, were dependent solely on the atmosphere their
;
souls were identified with the air, heaven was their natural
home, earth their temporary residence, and fire the element
of purification, or the bright path to immortality for them
when the hour of dissolution came.—The incremation of
Malvina's remains, on the principle of transmutation, and
escape from dark, perishable clay to luminous and immortal
ether, is a beautiful illustration of this."
After all, one is constrained to admit with Ernest Rh\-s—
" I for one am quite prepared to believe in a Druidic
residue, after you have stripped all that is mediaeval and
Biblical from the poems of Taliesin." So it is with Ossian,
or other bards of Irish origin. With all that has been
accumulating of a mediaeval character, from the hands of
supposed transcribers and translators, there >-et rcmams
something of the primeval
in
barbaric conception of religion
the grand old tales of Erin.
In the Bardic story of the Battle of Gabhra wc read—
" I return my thanks to the gods."