Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions

PART II.
EARLY RELIGIONS OF THE IRISH.
INTRODUCTION.
One of the most philosophical statements from Max
Muller is to this effect: "Whatever we know of early
religion, we always see that it presupposes vast periods of
an earlier development." This is exhibited in the history
of all peoples that have progressed in civilization, though
we may have to travel far back on the track of history to
notice transformations of thought or belief When the
late Dr. Birch told us that a pyramid, several
hundreds of
years older than the Great Pyramid, contained the name of
Osiris, we knew that at least the Osirian part of Egyptian
mythology was honoured some six or seven thousand years
ago. What the earlier development of religion there was,
or how the conception of a dying and risen
so remote a period, may well excite our w^onder.
Osiris arose, at
Professor Jebb writes— " There was a time when they
{early man) began to speak of the natural powers as persons,
and yet had not forgotten that they were really natural
powers, and that the persons' names were merely signs."
Yet this goes on the assumption that religion—of rather
dogmas thereof—sprang from reflections upon natural phenomena.
In this way, the French author of Sirius satisfied
himself, particularly on philological grounds, that the idea
of God sprang from an association with thunder and the
barking of a dog.