A druid was a member of the high-ranking class in ancient
Celtic
Celtic, Celtics or Keltic may refer to:
Language and ethnicity
*pertaining to Celts, a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia
**Celts (modern)
*Celtic languages
**Proto-Celtic language
*Celtic music
*Celtic nations
Sports Foo ...
cultures. Druids were religious leaders as well as legal authorities, adjudicators, lorekeepers, medical professionals and political advisors. Druids left no written accounts. While they were reported to have been literate, they are believed to have been prevented by doctrine from recording their knowledge in written form. Their beliefs and practices are attested in some detail by their contemporaries from other cultures, such as the Romans and the Greeks.
The earliest known references to the druids date to the 4th century BCE. The oldest detailed description comes from
Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar (; ; 12 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC), was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in a civil war, an ...
's ''
Commentarii de Bello Gallico
''Commentarii de Bello Gallico'' (; en, Commentaries on the Gallic War, italic=yes), also ''Bellum Gallicum'' ( en, Gallic War, italic=yes), is Julius Caesar's firsthand account of the Gallic Wars, written as a third-person narrative. In it C ...
'' (50s BCE). They were described by other Roman writers such as
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the esta ...
,
[ Cicero (44) I.XVI.90.] Tacitus, and
Pliny the Elder. Following the Roman invasion of
Gaul
Gaul ( la, Gallia) was a region of Western Europe first described by the Romans. It was inhabited by Celtic and Aquitani tribes, encompassing present-day France, Belgium, Luxembourg, most of Switzerland, parts of Northern Italy (only during ...
, the druid orders were suppressed by the Roman government under the 1st-century CE emperors
Tiberius and
Claudius, and had disappeared from the written record by the 2nd century.
In about 750 CE, the word ''druid'' appears in a poem by
Blathmac, who wrote about
Jesus
Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label= Hebrew/ Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and relig ...
, saying that he was "better than a prophet, more knowledgeable than every druid, a king who was a bishop and a complete sage." The druids appear in some of the medieval tales from Christianized Ireland like "
Táin Bó Cúailnge", where they are largely portrayed as
sorcerers who opposed the coming of Christianity. In the wake of the
Celtic revival
The Celtic Revival (also referred to as the Celtic Twilight) is a variety of movements and trends in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries that see a renewed interest in aspects of Celtic culture. Artists and writers drew on the traditions of Gae ...
during the 18th and 19th centuries, fraternal and
neopagan groups were founded based on ideas about the ancient druids, a movement known as
Neo-Druidism. Many popular notions about druids, based on misconceptions of 18th-century scholars, have been largely superseded by more recent study.
Etymology
The English word ''druid'' derives from Latin ''druidēs'' (plural), which was considered by ancient Roman writers to come from the native Celtic Gaulish word for these figures.
[ Piggott (1968) p. 89.][Caroline aan de Wiel, "Druids the word", in ''Celtic Culture''.] Other Roman texts employ the form ''druidae'', while the same term was used by
Greek ethnographers as (''druidēs''). Although no extant Romano-Celtic inscription is known to contain the form,
the word is cognate with the later insular Celtic words,
Old Irish
Old Irish, also called Old Gaelic ( sga, Goídelc, Ogham script: ᚌᚑᚔᚇᚓᚂᚉ; ga, Sean-Ghaeilge; gd, Seann-Ghàidhlig; gv, Shenn Yernish or ), is the oldest form of the Goidelic/Gaelic language for which there are extensive writte ...
''druí'' 'druid, sorcerer',
Old Cornish ''druw'',
Middle Welsh ''dryw'' '
seer;
wren'.
Based on all available forms, the hypothetical proto-Celtic word may be reconstructed as *''dru-wid-s'' (pl. *''druwides'') meaning "
oak-knower". The two elements go back to the
Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo ...
roots ''*deru-'' and ''*weid-'' "to see". The sense of "oak-knower" or "oak-seer" is supported by
Pliny the Elder,
who in his ''Natural History'' considered the word to contain the Greek noun ''drýs'' (δρύς), "oak-tree" and the Greek suffix ''-idēs'' (-ιδης). Both Old Irish ''druí'' and Middle Welsh ''dryw'' could refer to the
wren,
possibly connected with an association of that bird with
augury in Irish and Welsh tradition (see also
Wren Day).
Practices and doctrines
Sources by ancient and medieval writers provide an idea of the religious duties and social roles involved in being a druid.
Societal role and training
The Greco-Roman and the vernacular Irish sources agree that the druids played an important part in pagan Celtic society. In his description,
Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar (; ; 12 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC), was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in a civil war, an ...
wrote that they were one of the two most important social groups in the region (alongside the ''equites'', or nobles) and were responsible for organizing worship and sacrifices, divination, and judicial procedure in Gallic, British, and Irish societies.
[ Caesar, Julius. ''De bello gallico''. VI.13–18.] He wrote that they were exempt from military service and from paying taxes, and had the power to excommunicate people from religious festivals, making them social outcasts.
Two other classical writers,
Diodorus Siculus and
Strabo
Strabo''Strabo'' (meaning "squinty", as in strabismus) was a term employed by the Romans for anyone whose eyes were distorted or deformed. The father of Pompey was called " Pompeius Strabo". A native of Sicily so clear-sighted that he could s ...
, wrote about the role of druids in Gallic society, stating that the druids were held in such respect that if they intervened between two armies they could stop the battle.
Pomponius Mela was the first author to say that the druids' instruction was secret and took place in caves and forests.
Druidic lore consisted of a large number of verses learned by heart, and Caesar remarked that it could take up to twenty years to complete the course of study. What was taught to druid novices anywhere is conjecture: of the druids'
oral literature, not one certifiably ancient verse is known to have survived, even in translation. All instruction was communicated orally, but for ordinary purposes, Caesar reports, the Gauls had a written language in which they used Greek letters. In this he probably draws on earlier writers; by the time of Caesar,
Gaulish
Gaulish was an ancient Celtic language spoken in parts of Continental Europe before and during the period of the Roman Empire. In the narrow sense, Gaulish was the language of the Celts of Gaul (now France, Luxembourg, Belgium, most of Switze ...
inscriptions had moved from Greek script to Latin script.
Sacrifice
Greek and Roman writers frequently made reference to the druids as practitioners of
human sacrifice
Human sacrifice is the act of killing one or more humans as part of a ritual, which is usually intended to please or appease gods, a human ruler, an authoritative/priestly figure or spirits of dead ancestors or as a retainer sacrifice, wherei ...
. Caesar says those who had been found guilty of theft or other criminal offences were considered preferable for use as sacrificial victims, but when criminals were in short supply, innocents would be acceptable. A form of sacrifice recorded by Caesar was the burning alive of victims in a large wooden effigy, now often known as a
wicker man. A differing account came from the 10th-century ''
Commenta Bernensia'', which stated that sacrifices to the deities
Teutates,
Esus and
Taranis were by drowning, hanging and burning, respectively (see
threefold death).
Diodorus Siculus asserts that a sacrifice acceptable to the
Celtic gods had to be attended by a druid, for they were the intermediaries between the people and the divinities. He remarked upon the importance of prophets in druidic ritual:
Archaeological evidence from western Europe has been widely used to support the view that Iron Age Celts practiced human sacrifice. Mass graves found in a ritual context dating from this period have been unearthed in Gaul, at both
Gournay-sur-Aronde
Gournay-sur-Aronde () is a commune in the Oise department in northern France.
Gournay-sur-Aronde is best known for a Late Iron Age sanctuary that dates back to the 4th century BCE, and was burned and levelled at the end of the 1st century BCE. ...
and
Ribemont-sur-Ancre in the region of the Belgae chiefdom. The excavator of these sites, Jean-Louis Brunaux, interpreted them as areas of human sacrifice in devotion to a war god, although this view was criticized by another archaeologist, Martin Brown, who believed that the corpses might be those of honoured warriors buried in the sanctuary rather than sacrifices. Some historians have questioned whether the Greco-Roman writers were accurate in their claims. J. Rives remarked that it was "ambiguous" whether druids ever performed such sacrifices, for the Romans and Greeks were known to project what they saw as barbarian traits onto foreign peoples including not only druids but Jews and Christians as well, thereby confirming their own "cultural superiority" in their own minds.
Nora Chadwick, an expert in medieval Welsh and Irish literature who believed the druids to be great philosophers, has also supported the idea that they had not been involved in human sacrifice, and that such accusations were imperialist Roman propaganda.
Philosophy
Alexander Cornelius Polyhistor referred to the druids as philosophers and called their doctrine of the immortality of the soul and
reincarnation
Reincarnation, also known as rebirth or transmigration, is the philosophical or religious concept that the non-physical essence of a living being begins a new life in a different physical form or body after biological death. Resurrectio ...
or
metempsychosis, "
Pythagorean":
Caesar made similar observations:
Diodorus Siculus, writing in 36 BCE, described how the druids followed "the Pythagorean doctrine", that human souls "are immortal and after a prescribed number of years they commence a new life in a new body".
[ Diodorus Siculus. ''Bibliotheca historicae''. V.21–22.] In 1928, folklorist
Donald A. Mackenzie speculated that Buddhist missionaries had been sent by the Indian king
Ashoka. Caesar noted the druidic doctrine of the original ancestor of the tribe, whom he referred to as ''
Dispater'', or ''Father
Hades''.
Druids in mythology
Druids play a prominent role in
Irish folklore, generally serving lords and kings as high ranking priest-counselors with the gift of prophecy and other assorted mystical abilitiesthe best example of these possibly being
Cathbad
Cathbad () or Cathbhadh (modern spelling) is the chief druid in the court of King Conchobar mac Nessa in the Ulster Cycle of Irish Mythology.
He features in both accounts of Conchobar's birth, in one of which he is the king's father. In the first ...
. The chief druid in the court of King
Conchobar mac Nessa of
Ulster, Cathbad features in several tales, most of which detail his ability to foretell the future. In the tale of
Deirdre of the Sorrows
''Deirdre of the Sorrows'' is a three-act play written by Irish playwright John Millington Synge in 1909. The play, based on Irish mythology, in particular the myths concerning Deirdre, Naoise, and Conchobar, was unfinished at the author's death ...
the foremost
tragic heroine
A tragic hero is the protagonist of a tragedy. In his '' Poetics'', Aristotle records the descriptions of the tragic hero to the playwright and strictly defines the place that the tragic hero must play and the kind of man he must be. Aristotle ...
of the
Ulster Cyclethe druid prophesied before the court of Conchobar that Deirdre would grow up to be very beautiful, and that kings and lords would go to war over her, much blood would be shed because of her, and Ulster's three greatest warriors would be forced into exile for her sake. This prophecy, ignored by the king, came true.
The greatest of these mythological druids was
Amergin Glúingel, a
bard and judge for the
Milesians featured in the
Mythological Cycle. The Milesians were seeking to overrun the
Tuatha Dé Danann and win the land of Ireland but, as they approached, the druids of the Tuatha Dé Danann raised a magical storm to bar their ships from making landfall. Thus Amergin called upon the spirit of Ireland itself, chanting a powerful incantation that has come to be known as ''The Song of Amergin'' and, eventually (after successfully making landfall), aiding and dividing the land between his royal brothers in the conquest of Ireland, earning the title
Chief Ollam of Ireland.
Other such mythological druids were
Tadg mac Nuadat of the
Fenian Cycle, and
Mug Ruith, a powerful blind druid of
Munster.
Female druids
Irish mythology
Irish mythology
Irish mythology is the body of myths native to the island of Ireland. It was originally oral tradition, passed down orally in the Prehistoric Ireland, prehistoric era, being part of ancient Celtic religion. Many myths were later Early Irish ...
has a number of female druids, often sharing similar prominent cultural and religious roles with their male counterparts. The Irish have several words for female druids, such as ''bandruí'' ("woman-druid"), found in tales such as ''
Táin Bó Cúailnge'';
[ 1c: "dialt feminine declension, Auraic. 1830. bandruí druidess; female skilled in magic arts: tri ferdruid ┐ tri bandrúid, TBC 2402 = dī (leg. tri) drúid insin ┐ a teóra mná, TBC² 1767."] Bodhmall, featured in the
Fenian Cycle, and one of
Fionn mac Cumhaill's childhood caretakers;
[Parkes, "Fosterage, Kinship, & Legend", Cambridge University Press, Comparative Studies in Society and History (2004), 46: pp. 587–615.] and
Tlachtga,
[Jones, Mary]
"The Boyhood Deeds of Fionn mac Cumhaill"
. From maryjones.us. Retrieved July 22, 2008. daughter of the druid
Mug Ruith who, according to Irish tradition, is associated with the
Hill of Ward, site of prominent festivals held in Tlachtga's honour during the
Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...
.
[MacKillop, James (1998). ''Dictionary of Celtic Mythology''. London: Oxford. . *page numbers needed*]
Biróg, another ''bandruí'' of the
Tuatha Dé Danann, plays a key role in an
Irish folktale where the
Fomorian warrior
Balor
In Irish mythology, Balor or Balar was a leader of the Fomorians, a group of malevolent supernatural beings. He is often described as a giant with a large eye that wreaks destruction when opened. Balor takes part in the Battle of Mag Tuired, a ...
attempts to thwart a prophecy foretelling that he would be killed by his own grandson by imprisoning his only daughter
Eithne in the tower of