Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions

jJrttuucal ncLicj. 69
themselves maintained loftier conceptions. Tlie early
Christian missionaries seemed to have adopted a like policy
in allowing their converts considerable liberty, especialK' if
safe-guarded by a change of names in their images. l'V)r
instance, as Fosbroke's British MonarcJiisiii says, " British
churches, from policy, were founded upon the site of
Druidical temples."
The three rays of the Druids, three yods, fleiir-dc-lis,
broad arrow, or otherwise named, may have represented
light from heaven, or the male attributes, in the descending
way, and female ones when in the reversed position. They
may have been Buddhist, or even ancient Egyptian—and
may have symbolized different sentiments at different times,
or in different lands.
As Druids, like other close bodies, wrote nothing, we
depend upon outside pagans, and Christian teachers, for
what we know of their doctrines. Doubtless, as many
Spanish Jew^s kept secretly their old faith after the enforced
adoption of Christianity, so may some Irish monks have
partly retained theirs, and even revealed it, under a guise,
in their writings, since ecclesiastical authority shows that
Druidism was not wholly extinct in the sixteenth century.
While some authorities imagined the Druids preceded
the ordinary polytheistic religion, others taught that they
introduced pantheism. Amedee Thierry, in Histoirc dcs
Gaulois, found it based on pantheism, material, metaphysical,
mysterious, sacerdotal, offering the most striking
likeness to the religions of the East. He discovered no
historic light as to how the Cymry acquired this religion,
nor why it resembled the pantheism of the l^ast, unless
through their early sojourn on the borders of Asia.
"
The empire of Druidism," says he, " did not destroy
the religion of exterior nature, which had preceded it.
All learned and mysterious religions tolerate an under-