The Druids: Piggott, Stuart, 1968
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scottycThe Druids: Piggott, Stuart, 1968
pg. 71 "There is a Ballo-Brittonic word nemeton which is used for a shrine or sanctuary in a sense that implies a sacred grove or clearing in a wood. The word is cognate with the Latin nemus, the primary sense of which (like that of lucus) is not so much a wood as a wood with a clearin gin it, or the clearing itself withing a grove.
pg. 72 "Many nemeton place/names existed in the Celtic world, from Medionemeton in Southern Scotland, Vernemeton itself between Lincoln and Leicester....".
"In the eighth century 'forest sanctuaries which they call nimidae' are listed as heathen abominations, and in the eleventh, a Breton 'wood called Nemet' is recorded. The word and idea come through into Old Irish as nemed, a sanctuary, and fidnemed, a forest shrine or sacred grove.
pg. 78 Bosence, St. Erth "...was a shaft 36 feet deep containing Roman votive deposits (note: similar to other sites on Continental Europe mentioned in the book). With all these shafts go a very strange series of what have been called wells, funerary wells, or offering-pits, mostly Romano-Celtic and scattered over Gual from the Rhineland to the Pyrenees and the Atlantic Coast....and associated with certain Romano-British temples. pg. 82 What we seem to be encountering are the representatives of the cult concepts which found expression in the Greek bothros and the Latin mundus, ritual shafts communicating with otherworld deities, and in the favissa, the pit in which objects rendered holy by sacral use, and the bones or ashes of sacrifices, where buried in the consecrated area.
pg. 83 These ritual shafts, some of which may also have functioned at one time as wells, link the Celtic cult of the underworld with that of springs and water.
pg. 22. Need literary record, usually inscriptions but no authentic pre-Christianity inscription for "druid" exists.
pg. 23 374 god's names from inscriptions but 305 of those names only occurred once and only 4 or 5 god's names were found from 20 - 30 times.
pg. 35 Posidonius main literary authority (a Syrian Greek from Apamaea (c.135-c.50BC). Pg. 92 Posidonian tradition is often unfavorable to the Celts and does not minimize their barbarous habits.
pg. 48 Below the king and the royal family, society in Gaul was tripartite, with two classes of landowning freemen, the knights or barons (equites) from whom the council of elders was chosen, and the priesthood or clerisy, including druides. This learned class comprised not only Druids, but bards (bardoi), and seersor diviners (vates or manteis) and probably other un-named functionaries. Below...the unfree and landless men, the plebes.
pg. 49 There is some evidence in the Irish vernacular sources that the 'men of art' or 'The literary class...by virtue of its sacred office, could pass freely through the iron curtain which separated the tribes... I think it is not going too far to conclude that this privilege extended to all members of that sacred class which was known to eh Gauls as druides and under varying names in ancient Ireland, they were the aes dana, the men of special gifts (note: goes on to say that the aes dana were the only national institution in Ireland).
pg. 50 Before Rome the Celtic form was "...a heroic society with a warrior elite, and for such, raids and wars between tribes, clans, septs or families provide the only means whereby the aristocratic values can be demonstrated and prestige maintained. In itself it was incompatible with civilized government).
pg. 55 "..concept of the temple as an architectural civic monument.." was alien to the Celts. Among the Alemanni, as late as the eigth century, Abbot Pirmin denounced those rites of prayer and magic which propitiated the secret powers of the forst depths and the forest soi.
pg. 56 exceptions of enclosed sanctuary areas and small timber shrines in the area of southern Gaul conquered as a Roman province in 121 B.C.
pg. 57 cult of the head and skull (archaeological finds)
pg. 86 British god-names from inscriptions. "An interesting point is that on the whole the British dedications form a group not duplicated on the Continent, demonstrating not only the insular particularity of the British Celtic tradition but also the bewildering number of rustic godlings with only a very local reputation and name."
Easier to define areas of local cults in Gaul on a rather larger scale: three-headed god, mainly in the Marne and Cote-d'Or; the wheel-bearing deity, extending to the Massif Central and the lower Rhone, or the god with a hammer, popular in the Midi, up the Rhone, and on to the Seine and the Rhineland.
pg. 88 Caesar's writings on Gaulish funerals in which "everything, even including animals, which the departed is supposed to have cared for when alive, is consigned to the flames". Slaves and retainers sacrificed.
pg. 99 Four main writers seem to have borrowed, quoted from, or adapted Posidonius, three explicitly and one with without acknowledgment. Strabo (c. 63 BC to AD 21) had known Posidonius personally, Diodorus Siculus (writing c.60 - 30 BC) was also a contemporary; Athenaeus (flourishing around AD 200) acknowledged his source. Julius Caesar, however, writing his account of the Gaulish campaigns in 52-51BC seems also to have based his account of Gualish ethnography (including the Druids) on Posidonius, though with non-Posidonian additional, the authenticity and reliability of which have been the subject of much discussion. Strabo & Diodorus wrote history and geography; Atheneaus was a gourmet compiling an erudite and entertaining anthology. Athenaeus alone does not mention druids.
pg. 101 The elder Pliny
pg. 71 "There is a Ballo-Brittonic word nemeton which is used for a shrine or sanctuary in a sense that implies a sacred grove or clearing in a wood. The word is cognate with the Latin nemus, the primary sense of which (like that of lucus) is not so much a wood as a wood with a clearin gin it, or the clearing itself withing a grove.
pg. 72 "Many nemeton place/names existed in the Celtic world, from Medionemeton in Southern Scotland, Vernemeton itself between Lincoln and Leicester....".
"In the eighth century 'forest sanctuaries which they call nimidae' are listed as heathen abominations, and in the eleventh, a Breton 'wood called Nemet' is recorded. The word and idea come through into Old Irish as nemed, a sanctuary, and fidnemed, a forest shrine or sacred grove.
pg. 78 Bosence, St. Erth "...was a shaft 36 feet deep containing Roman votive deposits (note: similar to other sites on Continental Europe mentioned in the book). With all these shafts go a very strange series of what have been called wells, funerary wells, or offering-pits, mostly Romano-Celtic and scattered over Gual from the Rhineland to the Pyrenees and the Atlantic Coast....and associated with certain Romano-British temples. pg. 82 What we seem to be encountering are the representatives of the cult concepts which found expression in the Greek bothros and the Latin mundus, ritual shafts communicating with otherworld deities, and in the favissa, the pit in which objects rendered holy by sacral use, and the bones or ashes of sacrifices, where buried in the consecrated area.
pg. 83 These ritual shafts, some of which may also have functioned at one time as wells, link the Celtic cult of the underworld with that of springs and water.
pg. 22. Need literary record, usually inscriptions but no authentic pre-Christianity inscription for "druid" exists.
pg. 23 374 god's names from inscriptions but 305 of those names only occurred once and only 4 or 5 god's names were found from 20 - 30 times.
pg. 35 Posidonius main literary authority (a Syrian Greek from Apamaea (c.135-c.50BC). Pg. 92 Posidonian tradition is often unfavorable to the Celts and does not minimize their barbarous habits.
pg. 48 Below the king and the royal family, society in Gaul was tripartite, with two classes of landowning freemen, the knights or barons (equites) from whom the council of elders was chosen, and the priesthood or clerisy, including druides. This learned class comprised not only Druids, but bards (bardoi), and seersor diviners (vates or manteis) and probably other un-named functionaries. Below...the unfree and landless men, the plebes.
pg. 49 There is some evidence in the Irish vernacular sources that the 'men of art' or 'The literary class...by virtue of its sacred office, could pass freely through the iron curtain which separated the tribes... I think it is not going too far to conclude that this privilege extended to all members of that sacred class which was known to eh Gauls as druides and under varying names in ancient Ireland, they were the aes dana, the men of special gifts (note: goes on to say that the aes dana were the only national institution in Ireland).
pg. 50 Before Rome the Celtic form was "...a heroic society with a warrior elite, and for such, raids and wars between tribes, clans, septs or families provide the only means whereby the aristocratic values can be demonstrated and prestige maintained. In itself it was incompatible with civilized government).
pg. 55 "..concept of the temple as an architectural civic monument.." was alien to the Celts. Among the Alemanni, as late as the eigth century, Abbot Pirmin denounced those rites of prayer and magic which propitiated the secret powers of the forst depths and the forest soi.
pg. 56 exceptions of enclosed sanctuary areas and small timber shrines in the area of southern Gaul conquered as a Roman province in 121 B.C.
pg. 57 cult of the head and skull (archaeological finds)
pg. 86 British god-names from inscriptions. "An interesting point is that on the whole the British dedications form a group not duplicated on the Continent, demonstrating not only the insular particularity of the British Celtic tradition but also the bewildering number of rustic godlings with only a very local reputation and name."
Easier to define areas of local cults in Gaul on a rather larger scale: three-headed god, mainly in the Marne and Cote-d'Or; the wheel-bearing deity, extending to the Massif Central and the lower Rhone, or the god with a hammer, popular in the Midi, up the Rhone, and on to the Seine and the Rhineland.
pg. 88 Caesar's writings on Gaulish funerals in which "everything, even including animals, which the departed is supposed to have cared for when alive, is consigned to the flames". Slaves and retainers sacrificed.
pg. 99 Four main writers seem to have borrowed, quoted from, or adapted Posidonius, three explicitly and one with without acknowledgment. Strabo (c. 63 BC to AD 21) had known Posidonius personally, Diodorus Siculus (writing c.60 - 30 BC) was also a contemporary; Athenaeus (flourishing around AD 200) acknowledged his source. Julius Caesar, however, writing his account of the Gaulish campaigns in 52-51BC seems also to have based his account of Gualish ethnography (including the Druids) on Posidonius, though with non-Posidonian additional, the authenticity and reliability of which have been the subject of much discussion. Strabo & Diodorus wrote history and geography; Atheneaus was a gourmet compiling an erudite and entertaining anthology. Athenaeus alone does not mention druids.
pg. 101 The elder Pliny
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<i>The Druids</i>: Piggott, Stuart, 1968
pg. 71 "There is a Ballo-Brittonic word <b>nemeton</b> which is used for a shrine or sanctuary in a sense that implies a sacred grove or clearing in a wood. The word is cognate with the Latin nemus, the primary sense of which (like that of lucus) is not so much a wood as a wood with a clearin gin it, or the clearing itself withing a grove.
pg. 72 "Many nemeton place/names existed in the Celtic world, from Medionemeton in Southern Scotland, Vernemeton itself between Lincoln and Leicester....".
"In the eighth century 'forest sanctuaries which they call <b>nimidae'</b> are listed as heathen abominations, and in the eleventh, a Breton 'wood called Nemet' is recorded. The word and idea come through into Old Irish as <b>nemed</b>, a sanctuary, and <b>fidnemed</b>, a forest shrine or sacred grove.
pg. 78 Bosence, St. Erth "...was a shaft 36 feet deep containing Roman votive deposits (note: similar to other sites on Continental Europe mentioned in the book). With all these shafts go a very strange series of what have been called wells, funerary wells, or offering-pits, mostly Romano-Celtic and scattered over Gual from the Rhineland to the Pyrenees and the Atlantic Coast....and associated with certain Romano-British temples. pg. 82 What we seem to be encountering are the representatives of the cult concepts which found expression in the Greek <b>bothros</b> and the Latin <b>mundus</b>, ritual shafts communicating with otherworld deities, and in the <b>favissa</b>, the pit in which objects rendered holy by sacral use, and the bones or ashes of sacrifices, where buried in the consecrated area.
pg. 83 These ritual shafts, some of which may also have functioned at one time as wells, link the Celtic cult of the underworld with that of springs and water.
pg. 22. Need literary record, usually inscriptions but no authentic pre-Christianity inscription for "druid" exists.
pg. 23 374 god's names from inscriptions but 305 of those names only occurred once and only 4 or 5 god's names were found from 20 - 30 times.
pg. 35 <b>Posidonius</b> main literary authority (a Syrian Greek from Apamaea (c.135-c.50BC). Pg. 92 Posidonian tradition is often unfavorable to the Celts and does not minimize their barbarous habits.
pg. 48 Below the king and the royal family, society in Gaul was tripartite, with two classes of landowning freemen, the knights or barons (equites) from whom the council of elders was chosen, and the priesthood or clerisy, including druides. This learned class comprised not only Druids, but bards (bardoi), and seersor diviners (vates or manteis) and probably other un-named functionaries. Below...the unfree and landless men, the plebes.
pg. 49 There is some evidence in the Irish vernacular sources that the 'men of art' or 'The literary class...by virtue of its sacred office, could pass freely through the iron curtain which separated the tribes... I think it is not going too far to conclude that this privilege extended to all members of that sacred class which was known to eh Gauls as druides and under varying names in ancient Ireland, they were the aes dana, the men of special gifts (note: goes on to say that the aes dana were the only national institution in Ireland).
pg. 50 Before Rome the Celtic form was "...a heroic society with a warrior elite, and for such, raids and wars between tribes, clans, septs or families provide the only means whereby the aristocratic values can be demonstrated and prestige maintained. In itself it was incompatible with civilized government).
pg. 55 "..concept of the temple as an architectural civic monument.." was alien to the Celts. Among the Alemanni, as late as the eigth century, Abbot Pirmin denounced those rites of prayer and magic which propitiated the secret powers of the forst depths and the forest soi.
pg. 56 exceptions of enclosed sanctuary areas and small timber shrines in the area of southern Gaul conquered as a Roman province in 121 B.C.
pg. 57 cult of the head and skull (archaeological finds)
pg. 86 British god-names from inscriptions. "An interesting point is that on the whole the British dedications form a group not duplicated on the Continent, demonstrating not only the insular particularity of the British Celtic tradition but also the bewildering number of rustic godlings with only a very local reputation and name."
Easier to define areas of local cults in Gaul on a rather larger scale: three-headed god, mainly in the Marne and Cote-d'Or; the wheel-bearing deity, extending to the Massif Central and the lower Rhone, or the god with a hammer, popular in the Midi, up the Rhone, and on to the Seine and the Rhineland.
pg. 88 Caesar's writings on Gaulish funerals in which "everything, even including animals, which the departed is supposed to have cared for when alive, is consigned to the flames". Slaves and retainers sacrificed.
pg. 99 Four main writers seem to have borrowed, quoted from, or adapted Posidonius, three explicitly and one with without acknowledgment. <b>Strabo</b> (c. 63 BC to AD 21) had known Posidonius personally, <b>Diodorus Siculus</b> (writing c.60 - 30 BC) was also a contemporary; <b>Athenaeus</b> (flourishing around AD 200) acknowledged his source. Julius Caesar, however, writing his account of the Gaulish campaigns in 52-51BC seems also to have based his account of Gualish ethnography (including the Druids) on Posidonius, though with non-Posidonian additional, the authenticity and reliability of which have been the subject of much discussion. Strabo & Diodorus wrote history and geography; Atheneaus was a gourmet compiling an erudite and entertaining anthology. Athenaeus alone does not mention druids.
pg. 101 The <b>elder Pliny<b/b> wrote a discursive and fascinating work on natural history which mentions Druid magic, simples and folk-medicine.
<b> Tacitus</b> in his Annals gives, us, our only glimpse of British Druids, like howling Dervishes, ritually cursing the Roman troops by the Menai Straits.
pg. 105 etymology of "druid"
pg. 113 Druid sanctuaries "...was a lonely forest clearing, perhaps delimited by an earthwork or palisade enclosure; a nemeton. The association of Druids and oak-trees underline this; Pliny in his account of the ritual gathering of the misletoe set a specific religious ceremony in such a woodland scene.
Two texts in the Posidonian group give us specific information on the recruitment and instruction of novitiates in the Druid doctine, Pomponius Mela and Caesar respectively. The former is less disjoined in his Posidonian borrowings; the Druids, he says, 'teach many things to the nobles of Gaul in a course of instructin lasting as long as 20 years, meeting in secret in a cave or <i> in abditis saltibus</i>, which could be translated as 'remote woods' or 'valleys'. Caesar says that ' a large number of young men flock to them for training' and then later add tht the studies could last 20 yers and were orally transmitted: 'it is said they commit to memory large amounts of poetry".
pg. 116 Our information on Durid ceremonies mainly centers on sacrifices, and is contained in the Posidonian sources and in Pliny. Strabo writes in the past tense of 'sacrifices and divinations that are opposed to our usage', since suppressed by the Romands, nd describes how a human victim was stabbed in the back, and omens deduced from his death-throes. Diodorus gives a slightly variant version of he same rite. Other forms of human sacrifice detailed by Strbo included shooting to death by arrows, or by impaling, and the holocaust of human and animal victims alike in a huge wickerwork figure (kolosson). Caesar likewise describes these great figures whose limbs were filled with living men and set on fire. This strange rite, which has caught the imagination of all who subsequently wrote on Druids, remains unexplained and unparoled. The St Sebastian-like death by arrows seems to indicate the retual use of a weapon not in normal use, for archery was not practiced in Celtic warfare, and probably hardly at all, in the vernacular texts of the earlies phase bows and arrows and not mention, and the Irish names for these are respectively Norse and Latin loan-words.
Pliny gives us the only detailed account of a Druid ceremony. This was determined by observing the growth of mistletoe on an oak tree, a circumstance of rare occurrence. <b>The time chosen for the subsequent rite was the sixth day of the moon, and preparations were made for a feast and sacrifices of two white bulls. A Druid in a white robe climbed the tree and cut with a golden sickle the branch of mistletoe, which was caught as it fell on a white cloak. The bulls were then sacrificed. The golden sickle is inexplicable, as if it really existed would have been useless to cut the tough stem of mistletoe; gilded bronze is more likely. Pliny's account of the ritual necessity of gathering the plant somolu left-handed and fasting, and of plucking selago without using an iron knife, barefoot and with the right hand through the left sleeve of a white tunic, are performances of private magic rather than corporate ceremonial.
pg. 118 summary of classical source's views of the three main functions of Druids:
- repositories of traditional lore and tribal knowledge (preserved orally)
- practical application of their learning in law and administration of justie
- supervised sacrifices and religious ceremonies
pg. 119 Gauls 'all assert their descent from Dis Pater'
pg. 120 The item of Druidic belief which struck the classical writers most forcibly was that of literal personal immortality.
pg. 136 discussion on how the discovery of American Indians influenced the perception of ancient Celtic culture and (mentioned in prior pages) awkward questions such as "...how could these savage heathens be related to the peopling of the world after the Deluge by the progeny of Noah?".
pg. 142 perception of Druids changing in the 18th "..Druids were being transformed into the virtuous sages of ancient Briton, almost indistinguishable from Old Testament patriarchs and prophets...". "men of sensibility were developing a concept of Nature in her wilder forms as an exemplar"
pg. 164 The Gorsedd of the Bards of Britain (Eisteddfod / Welsh Bards)
pg. 165 Iolo Morganwg
pg. 71 "There is a Ballo-Brittonic word <b>nemeton</b> which is used for a shrine or sanctuary in a sense that implies a sacred grove or clearing in a wood. The word is cognate with the Latin nemus, the primary sense of which (like that of lucus) is not so much a wood as a wood with a clearin gin it, or the clearing itself withing a grove.
pg. 72 "Many nemeton place/names existed in the Celtic world, from Medionemeton in Southern Scotland, Vernemeton itself between Lincoln and Leicester....".
"In the eighth century 'forest sanctuaries which they call <b>nimidae'</b> are listed as heathen abominations, and in the eleventh, a Breton 'wood called Nemet' is recorded. The word and idea come through into Old Irish as <b>nemed</b>, a sanctuary, and <b>fidnemed</b>, a forest shrine or sacred grove.
pg. 78 Bosence, St. Erth "...was a shaft 36 feet deep containing Roman votive deposits (note: similar to other sites on Continental Europe mentioned in the book). With all these shafts go a very strange series of what have been called wells, funerary wells, or offering-pits, mostly Romano-Celtic and scattered over Gual from the Rhineland to the Pyrenees and the Atlantic Coast....and associated with certain Romano-British temples. pg. 82 What we seem to be encountering are the representatives of the cult concepts which found expression in the Greek <b>bothros</b> and the Latin <b>mundus</b>, ritual shafts communicating with otherworld deities, and in the <b>favissa</b>, the pit in which objects rendered holy by sacral use, and the bones or ashes of sacrifices, where buried in the consecrated area.
pg. 83 These ritual shafts, some of which may also have functioned at one time as wells, link the Celtic cult of the underworld with that of springs and water.
pg. 22. Need literary record, usually inscriptions but no authentic pre-Christianity inscription for "druid" exists.
pg. 23 374 god's names from inscriptions but 305 of those names only occurred once and only 4 or 5 god's names were found from 20 - 30 times.
pg. 35 <b>Posidonius</b> main literary authority (a Syrian Greek from Apamaea (c.135-c.50BC). Pg. 92 Posidonian tradition is often unfavorable to the Celts and does not minimize their barbarous habits.
pg. 48 Below the king and the royal family, society in Gaul was tripartite, with two classes of landowning freemen, the knights or barons (equites) from whom the council of elders was chosen, and the priesthood or clerisy, including druides. This learned class comprised not only Druids, but bards (bardoi), and seersor diviners (vates or manteis) and probably other un-named functionaries. Below...the unfree and landless men, the plebes.
pg. 49 There is some evidence in the Irish vernacular sources that the 'men of art' or 'The literary class...by virtue of its sacred office, could pass freely through the iron curtain which separated the tribes... I think it is not going too far to conclude that this privilege extended to all members of that sacred class which was known to eh Gauls as druides and under varying names in ancient Ireland, they were the aes dana, the men of special gifts (note: goes on to say that the aes dana were the only national institution in Ireland).
pg. 50 Before Rome the Celtic form was "...a heroic society with a warrior elite, and for such, raids and wars between tribes, clans, septs or families provide the only means whereby the aristocratic values can be demonstrated and prestige maintained. In itself it was incompatible with civilized government).
pg. 55 "..concept of the temple as an architectural civic monument.." was alien to the Celts. Among the Alemanni, as late as the eigth century, Abbot Pirmin denounced those rites of prayer and magic which propitiated the secret powers of the forst depths and the forest soi.
pg. 56 exceptions of enclosed sanctuary areas and small timber shrines in the area of southern Gaul conquered as a Roman province in 121 B.C.
pg. 57 cult of the head and skull (archaeological finds)
pg. 86 British god-names from inscriptions. "An interesting point is that on the whole the British dedications form a group not duplicated on the Continent, demonstrating not only the insular particularity of the British Celtic tradition but also the bewildering number of rustic godlings with only a very local reputation and name."
Easier to define areas of local cults in Gaul on a rather larger scale: three-headed god, mainly in the Marne and Cote-d'Or; the wheel-bearing deity, extending to the Massif Central and the lower Rhone, or the god with a hammer, popular in the Midi, up the Rhone, and on to the Seine and the Rhineland.
pg. 88 Caesar's writings on Gaulish funerals in which "everything, even including animals, which the departed is supposed to have cared for when alive, is consigned to the flames". Slaves and retainers sacrificed.
pg. 99 Four main writers seem to have borrowed, quoted from, or adapted Posidonius, three explicitly and one with without acknowledgment. <b>Strabo</b> (c. 63 BC to AD 21) had known Posidonius personally, <b>Diodorus Siculus</b> (writing c.60 - 30 BC) was also a contemporary; <b>Athenaeus</b> (flourishing around AD 200) acknowledged his source. Julius Caesar, however, writing his account of the Gaulish campaigns in 52-51BC seems also to have based his account of Gualish ethnography (including the Druids) on Posidonius, though with non-Posidonian additional, the authenticity and reliability of which have been the subject of much discussion. Strabo & Diodorus wrote history and geography; Atheneaus was a gourmet compiling an erudite and entertaining anthology. Athenaeus alone does not mention druids.
pg. 101 The <b>elder Pliny<b/b> wrote a discursive and fascinating work on natural history which mentions Druid magic, simples and folk-medicine.
<b> Tacitus</b> in his Annals gives, us, our only glimpse of British Druids, like howling Dervishes, ritually cursing the Roman troops by the Menai Straits.
pg. 105 etymology of "druid"
pg. 113 Druid sanctuaries "...was a lonely forest clearing, perhaps delimited by an earthwork or palisade enclosure; a nemeton. The association of Druids and oak-trees underline this; Pliny in his account of the ritual gathering of the misletoe set a specific religious ceremony in such a woodland scene.
Two texts in the Posidonian group give us specific information on the recruitment and instruction of novitiates in the Druid doctine, Pomponius Mela and Caesar respectively. The former is less disjoined in his Posidonian borrowings; the Druids, he says, 'teach many things to the nobles of Gaul in a course of instructin lasting as long as 20 years, meeting in secret in a cave or <i> in abditis saltibus</i>, which could be translated as 'remote woods' or 'valleys'. Caesar says that ' a large number of young men flock to them for training' and then later add tht the studies could last 20 yers and were orally transmitted: 'it is said they commit to memory large amounts of poetry".
pg. 116 Our information on Durid ceremonies mainly centers on sacrifices, and is contained in the Posidonian sources and in Pliny. Strabo writes in the past tense of 'sacrifices and divinations that are opposed to our usage', since suppressed by the Romands, nd describes how a human victim was stabbed in the back, and omens deduced from his death-throes. Diodorus gives a slightly variant version of he same rite. Other forms of human sacrifice detailed by Strbo included shooting to death by arrows, or by impaling, and the holocaust of human and animal victims alike in a huge wickerwork figure (kolosson). Caesar likewise describes these great figures whose limbs were filled with living men and set on fire. This strange rite, which has caught the imagination of all who subsequently wrote on Druids, remains unexplained and unparoled. The St Sebastian-like death by arrows seems to indicate the retual use of a weapon not in normal use, for archery was not practiced in Celtic warfare, and probably hardly at all, in the vernacular texts of the earlies phase bows and arrows and not mention, and the Irish names for these are respectively Norse and Latin loan-words.
Pliny gives us the only detailed account of a Druid ceremony. This was determined by observing the growth of mistletoe on an oak tree, a circumstance of rare occurrence. <b>The time chosen for the subsequent rite was the sixth day of the moon, and preparations were made for a feast and sacrifices of two white bulls. A Druid in a white robe climbed the tree and cut with a golden sickle the branch of mistletoe, which was caught as it fell on a white cloak. The bulls were then sacrificed. The golden sickle is inexplicable, as if it really existed would have been useless to cut the tough stem of mistletoe; gilded bronze is more likely. Pliny's account of the ritual necessity of gathering the plant somolu left-handed and fasting, and of plucking selago without using an iron knife, barefoot and with the right hand through the left sleeve of a white tunic, are performances of private magic rather than corporate ceremonial.
pg. 118 summary of classical source's views of the three main functions of Druids:
- repositories of traditional lore and tribal knowledge (preserved orally)
- practical application of their learning in law and administration of justie
- supervised sacrifices and religious ceremonies
pg. 119 Gauls 'all assert their descent from Dis Pater'
pg. 120 The item of Druidic belief which struck the classical writers most forcibly was that of literal personal immortality.
pg. 136 discussion on how the discovery of American Indians influenced the perception of ancient Celtic culture and (mentioned in prior pages) awkward questions such as "...how could these savage heathens be related to the peopling of the world after the Deluge by the progeny of Noah?".
pg. 142 perception of Druids changing in the 18th "..Druids were being transformed into the virtuous sages of ancient Briton, almost indistinguishable from Old Testament patriarchs and prophets...". "men of sensibility were developing a concept of Nature in her wilder forms as an exemplar"
pg. 164 The Gorsedd of the Bards of Britain (Eisteddfod / Welsh Bards)
pg. 165 Iolo Morganwg
