Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions

2 8o Old Irish Relioions.
i>
his charges have been slightly heeded.
Their maintenance
of an hereditary priesthood was not merely Jewish, as he
supposed, but of Druidical sympathy.
Prof. Rhys judiciously remarks— "Irish Druidism absorbed
a certain amount of Christianity, and it would be
a problem of considerable difficulty to fix on the period
where it ceased to be Druidism, and from which onwards
it could be said of Christianity in any restricted sense of
that term."
As both St. Patrick and St. Columba have been regarded
by some modern writers as simply Culdees, and not following
orthodox views and methods, might not the many
stories told of their conflicts with Druids have been brought
forth by ancient chroniclers, in refutation of the slanders
The
abroad concerning their heretical, Druidical tendency }
same supposition may be equally directed against the early
Welsh missionaries, though these were almost all from Ireland.
Certainly their assumed miraculous powers inclined
to the old traditions of Druidical performances. They had
all of them a control over the powers of nature, and had
even raised the dead ;
for
them.
at least, their biographers claimed it
Dr. Carpenter speaks thus :—'' The incidents in St.
Columba's life have been originally recorded in the contemporary
fasti of bis religious foundation, and transmitted
in unbroken succession to Abbot Adamnan, who first
compiled a complete Vita of his great predecessor, of
which there exists a MS. copy, whose authenticity there is
no reason to doubt, which dates back to the early part of
the eighth century, not much more than one hundred
years after St. Columba's death. Now, Adamnan's Vita
credits its subject with the possession of every kind of
miraculous power. He cured hundreds of people afflicted
with inveterate diseases, accorded safety to storm-tossed