Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions

Siui- Worship. 1
89
power of serpent expulsion on behalf of St. Columba, as
others have done for St. Patrick, or any other Saint;
saying, " Then he turned his face westward, and said,
'
May the Lord bless the Island, with its indwellcrs.' And
he banished toads and snakes out of it."
Thus have we seen that Ireland, above most countries
of the earth, retained a vivid conception of ancient serpent
w^orship, though some of the myths were naturally and
gratefully associated with the reputed founders of a purer
faith.
" Search where we will," says Kennersley Lewis, " the
nuptial tree, round which coils the serpent, is connected
with time and with life as a necessary condition ;
and with
knowledge—the knowledge of a scientific priesthood, inheriting
records and traditions hoary, perhaps, with the
snows of a glacial epoch."
SUN-WORSHIP.
Whatever the earlier savage races may have thought
of religion, if they thought at all about it, those who came
after, with more or less touch of civilization, were led, in
Ireland, as elsewhere, to contemplate Deity in the Sun.
Sun-worship may have superseded other and grosser forms
of Nature worship.
Stuart-Glennie has well expressed our thoughts thus
" We should be quite unable truly to understand how the
central myths and poesies originated, if we cannot, in some
degree at least, realize the wonder with which men saw
the daily and yearly renewed sublime spectacle of the
birth, the life course, and the death of the life-and-lightgiving
Creator actually visible in the Heavens.—A wonder
of eternal Re-birth."