Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions

opinions on Irish
Druids.
OD
bear in mind the assurance of the Irish historian, O'Currx-,
that " there are vast numbers of allusions to the Druids,
and of specific instances of the exercise of their vocation
be it
magical, religious, philosophical, or educational—to be
found in our old MSS."
Has not much misapprehension been caused, by authors
concluding that all varieties of religion in Ireland proceeded
from a class of men who, while popularh- called
Druids, may not have been connected with them ? We
know very far more about these varieties of faith in Ireland,
before Christianity, than we do about any description of
religion in Wales ;
and yet the Druidism of one country
is reported as so different from that in the other immediately
contiguous. Such are the difficulties meeting the
student of History.
The Irish Druidical religion, like that of Britain and
Gaul, has given rise to much discussion, whether it began,
as some say, when Suetonius drove
Druids from Wales, or
began in Ireland before known in either Britain or Gaul,
direct from the East.
"The Druidical religion," says Kenealy in the Book of
G'^^, " prevailed not only in Britain, but likewise all over
the East."
Pictet writes, "There existed very ancientl\' in
Ireland a particular worship which, by the nature of its
doctrines, by the character of its symbols, by the names
even of its gods, lies near to that religion of the Cabirs of
Samothrace, emanated probably from Phoenicia." Mrs.
Sophie Bryant thinks that " to understand the Irish non-
Christian tradition and worship, we should
corresponding tradition and worship, and their
understand the
history, tor
all the peoples that issued from the same Ar\'an home."
Ledwich is content with saying, that "the Druids possessed
no internal or external doctrine, either veiled by
symbols, or clouded in enigmas, or any religious tenets