Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions

I 82 Old Irish Religions.
notes that in processions "The fire-born serpent leads the
way."
Etruria, of which Rome was a colony, probably borrowed
its serpent worship from Egypt.
It was there, as elsewhere,
a form of sun-worship, as the reptile hybernates to renew
its strength, and casts off its slough to renew its youth, as
the sun is renewed at spring. And yet Ruskin says, " The
true worship must have taken a dark form, when associated
Avith the Draconian one."
Africa is well known to be still under the cruel bondage
of serpent worship, and that of the evil Apophis kind. The
negro's forefathers appear to him as serpents. Over the
Pacific Ocean, the serpent, carved in stone, was adored.
Tales, in Fiji Isles, spoke of a monster dragon dwelling in
a cave. Samoa had a serpent form for the god Dengie.
Even in Australia, though in ruder style, the serpent was
associated, as in Oceana, with some idea of a creator.
America astonished Spaniards of the sixteenth century
with its parody of their own faith. The civilized Aztecs
and Peruvians adored serpents. Vitzliputuli of Mexico
held, like Osiris, a serpent staff. Cihuacohuatziti, wife of
the Great Father, was an immense serpent. The name of
the goddess Cihuacohuatl means the female serpent.
But the wilder North American Indians bow^d to the
serpent, as may be known from Squier's Serpent Symbol.
A serpentine earthwork in Adam's County, Ohio, upon a
hill, is looo ft. in length. Mounds in low^a, arranged
in serpentine form, extend over two miles. A coiled
serpent mound by St. Peter's River, Iowa, is 2310 ft.
long.
In the desert of Colorado have been reported lately
the remains of a temple. It is said that the capitals for
the two remaining pillars are stone serpents' heads, the
feet of the columns look like rattlesnakes. The pillars
seem to be rattlesnakes standing on their tails.