slaughter of them during the revolt of Boadicea, more particularly after the tide of fortune had turned against that heroine, so that they never after made any figure in Britain, though their superstition continued till the introduction of christianity into the island. They remained, however, untouched by the Roman power in Ireland. For of the Irish might be said what Justin did of their progenitors, they had heard of, but not felt the Roman arms.

67. The learned Celtic researcher observes, that into that sequestered scene (Mona) the druids, who detested warfare, had "gradually retired after the irruption of the Belgæ, and the further encroachment of the Romans. They had retired from the ancient magnificent seat at Abury, and from their circular uncovered temple on Salisbury plain, in which the* hyperborean sages had once chaunted the hymns to Apollo or Plenyz." This reverend antiquarian has admitted, "that the name of druid was local, but the religion had a very deep root. Indeed under this name the influence and authority of the order once extended over the whole of Gaul. It covered this extent of territory as one nation." Now it is too evident to argue, that the Belgæ made a part of Gaul; why therefore the irruption of the Belgæ, who believed in druidism, should expel the druids from their situations is not easily acounted for. Nor does any historian mention this retreat of the druids before the Roman arms; for although the defeat and captivity of Caractacus took place during the reign of Claudius, who died A. D. 54, and the destruction of the druidical groves and altars in Mona happened in the second year of his successor Nero's reign, there is not a vestige to be traced of this druidical retreat into Mona, in consequence of the Roman arms, and the Roman dread and persecution of the druidical influence and order.

68. Mr. Hume has faithfully and judiciously analyzed the substance of what the best of our own and foreign historians have said upon this subject. "Notwithstanding these misfortunes, the Britains were not subdued; and this island was regarded by the ambitious Romans as a field in which military honour might still be acquired under the reign of Nero. Suetonius Paulinus was invested with the command, and prepared to signalize his name by victories over these barba

* Having disclaimed all disquisition from etymology, I have studiously avoided the plurality of names under which Ireland, the Irish, and their progenitors have been recognized and described.

of Eng. Vol. i. c. 1.

rians. Finding that the isle of Mona, now Anglesey, was the chief seat of the druids, he resolved to attack it, and to subject a place, which was the centre of their superstition, and which afforded protection to all their baffled forces. The Britains endeavoured to obstruct his landing on this sacred island, both by the force of their arms and the terrors of their religion."

69. It is inconsistent with the ordinary turn of events (extraordinary we know none) that, in the short space of twelve years, the success of the Roman arms, such as it was,* should have occasioned this spot to become the chief seat and centre of druidical superstition, or given that island the appellation of sacred. The general nature of the political circumstances of those early times, the authority of the Irish annals, and the corroborative congruity of Cæsar's account of the Gallic druids, appear to lead to a very different conclusion from that which has been drawn from them by the respectable Celtic researcher. Seeing that the Irish annalists relate that the Milesian expedition was undertaken upon the prediction of Caicer, an archdruid, that Milesius and his posterity should possess the western island; that, upon their landing there 1300 years before the birth of Christ, they found druidst in the island, who attended the native princesses to meet them; that in the time of Heremon, the son of Milesius, a famous druid, named Trosdane, had then rés cently arrived from Scythia, and that Cæsar reports, ac

* Echard says, Hist. of Eng. vol. i. c. 1. Thus, for about 95 years,' under the reigus of four emperors, the Britons continued free from the Roman yoke.

+ Keat. 52. Ib. 61. This mention of the druid, like many other occurrences referred to by the phillids, may be tinctured with something of the fabulous, or at least marvellous. Allowing, however, for the workings of imagination, and the superstition of an idolatrous people in these early days, it may not be so incredible as some other of their fabulous coverings of historical facts. They inform us that a set of British adventurers landed in the south-eastern part of the island, and, in their assaults upon the Milesians, violated all the laws of war and nations, by poisoning their arrows and all their weapons: and that by the advice of this famous druid, Trosdane, they milked 150 white faced cows into a reservoir, and all those, who were wounded with the British poison, were, upon bathing in this milk, infallibly cured. We refer not to this piece of history to shew the medical or miraculous effect of bathing in bald cows' milk; but to prove, that the Irish then admitted the influx and subsequent intercourse of adventurers from Britain, whom they distinguished from the several anterior settlers in: the island; that the name, quality, and honourable functions of the druids, were then familiar to the natives; and not only there were dru

cording to druidical tradition, that the origin and perfection of their institutions had been imported into Gaul from the west, and the chief seat of the Gallic druids was as nearly as could be in the centre of Gaul (over the whole of which, according to Mr. Davies, druidism extended); it will not be deemed a very ill-founded or extravagant hypothesis, that the Hybernian druids first passed into Britain from the shore immediately opposite to Mona, and there first established their seat, either as the most central part of the two islands, considering them all in their religious view as subject to one influence, or as the most eligible spot for communication with the primeval seat in Ireland, from which they came. It appears from the Greek, Roman, middle age, and modern accounts of druidism, that it inculcated a primacy of dignity and jurisdiction of so much consequence, as to occasion frequent dissensions and sometimes bloody wars. For it never can, with any degree of probability, be inferred that druidism, which, in fact, was the very soul of Celtic society, should have passed from Gaul, and, in its western progress, have gradually traversed the island of Britain, and established, in its western extremity, the chief seat and centre of its superstition, so as to fix to this spot the pre-eminent diguity of the sacred island. Be it then once for all acknowledged, that the ancient Irish annals are substantially true, when they simply relate their original population from the Levant, their primeval institutions, and their preservation and transmission to a remote posterity, not only from the intrinsic evidence of their probability, but from the extrinsic proofs of the facts and circumstances which tend to corroborate and confirm the thesis.

70. The question, agitated more by modern than ancient

ids then settled in the island, but that others came over from Scythia, where, consequently, at that time druidism had existence. Many other instances occur in Keating, in which the druids were consulted by the kings as to wars, battles, marriages, building palaces, and future events. The Irish annalists report that some of the druids (like the Sibils) predicted the birth and death of our Lord, (p. 93). With reference to the bathing of poisonous wounds in milk, Pliny observes, that the Gaulish druids were not only bards, but the physicians of that nation. Dr. Warner, in alluding to some of the fabulous tales in the ancient history of Ireland, has most judiciously observed (p. 19), “that fables of this nature are so far from being a mark of forged or false history, as we in this country have always been apt to consider it with regard to Ireland, that they are, on the other hand, an irrefragable proof of its high antiquity, and of the very early use of letters in that pation."

writers, upon the priority of colonization between Ireland and Scotland, almost goes the whole length of deciding the controversy about the origin of druidism, which is allowed on all hands to have prevailed amidst the earliest inhabitants of these islands, consequently to have proceeded with coloni, zation from one to the other.

71. It would be useless to refer to the authority of the Irish annals themselves, although no other annals of any antiquity. or authority could be cited to contradict them. We shall rest contented in quoting authors, who pre-existed any con troversy upon the subject; they will be admitted free from partiality or bias. Orosius, a Spanish priest, who in the fifth century wrote a history of the Miseries of Mankind, in seven books, at the suggestion of St. Augustin, says, that Ireland was inhabited by the nations of the Scots.* Venerable Bede, in the eighth century, born and living his whole life on the borders of Scotland, says, that Ireland is properly the origi nal country of the Scots. Many intermediate authors speak the same language: but we shall close with Buchanan, who (being a Scot or Caladonian writer, possessed of much native partiality, he will be admitted on such a question above all exception) says, that all the inhabitants of Ireland were orinally called Scots, as Orosius testifies; and our annals give an account that the Scots of Ireland passed over more than once into Scotland. Independently then of Irish history, it appears evident from the authority of other credible historians, that colonization moved eastward from Ireland to Britain; and as druidism, which was the religion of these colonists, proceeded in the same direction into Gaul, must it not be naturally inferred that Mona, a romantic sequestered situation, peculiarly fitted to the mystic spirit of druidism,§ was the most likely spot for the first Irish druids to have settled and continued in, as their primeval and chief seat,

Oros. 1. i. c. 2. Hybernia Scotorum gentibus colitur.

+ Hist. Angl. 1. i. c. 1. Hibernia propria Scotorum patria est. + Scoti Hiberniæ omnes habitatores initio vocabantur, ut indicat Orosius, nec semel Scotorum ex Hibernia transitum in Albaniam actum nostri annales referunt. With this agree the Irish annals.

§ These and several other considerations upon the ancient traditions of Geoffry of Monmouth of the Stonehenge obelisks having been transported from Ireland, brought the ingenious Dr. Campbell to this conclusion: The moral of this fable, if it has any, seems to be, that druidism was introduced into Ireland from Scythia, and into Britain from Ireland.-Survey of the South of Ireland, 228.

and that it received from that circumstance the appellation of the sacred island.

72. Two powerful demonstrations of the general and substantial authenticity of the ancient Irish history are to be drawn from the still visible relicts of the early druidical institutions in this country; both of which have lately enriched the truly valuable Collectanea de rebus Hybernicis of the learned General Vallancey.* These are the druidical use of the Ogham character, and the Caberic rites. In confirmation of what he had before said, to prove that the Irish druids had a sacred or mystic character, in which they committed to writing those things which it was their system and policy to keep from the knowledge of the laity, he has given twenty-one prints of monumental and other stones, which have been lately discovered in Ireland, with ogham inscriptions in a still perfectly legible state.† Dr. Warner, after Dr. Blackwell and others, gives a very explicit account of the nature and use of these ogham characters.‡ "There is a passage in the inquiry into the life of Homer, which confirms this account of the Irish druids. The polite and ingenious author of that work, speaking of the ancient kingdoms of Assyria, Egypt, and Phoenicia, tells us, that a great part of the administration having been brought into the hands of the sacred order, they took all possible methods to keep up their authority, and aimed at nothing more than the raising their reputation for wisdom and knowledge. This rendered them at first envious of their discoveries, and then at pains to find out methods, how to transmit them to their descendants without imparting them to the vulgar. Here then was the origin of allegory and fable; nor did they stop at this, but as a second wrapper, and a remedy against the growing knowledge of the country, they invented or borrowed a new character for writing these allegories, which they called holy letters, because they must be known by none but the priests, nor used by them, but on divine matters. It is true, there was as yet no separation of wisdom: the philosopher and the divine, the legislator and the poet, were all united in the same person; and silence and

* Vol. vi. pas, ii.

+ Models of the ogham or bardic characters may be seen in Parson's remains of Japhet, Dr. Ledwich, Mr. Davis, and other books, which they refer to, in which may be seen much curious learning about these very ancient characters. ‡ Vol.i. p. 63.