FOOTNOTES:
[22] Supplement to the translated preface to Jarvis's Don Quixote.
[23] That the Druids worshipped rocks, stones, and fountains, and imagined them inhabited, and actuated by divine intelligences of a lower rank, may plainly be inferred from their stone monuments. These inferior deities the Cornish call spriggian, or spirits, which answer to genii or fairies; and the vulgar in Cornwall still discourse of them, as of real beings.
[24] See Macpherson's Introduction to the history of great Britain and Ireland.
[25] This idol, which is called by the Septuagint, Baal, is mentioned in other parts of scripture by other names. To understand what this god was, we may observe, that the deities of the Greeks and Romans come from the East; and it is a tradition among the ancient and modern heathens that this idol was an obscure deity, which may plead excuse for not translating some passages concerning it; and this is agreeable to Hosea (ix. 10). They went out into Baal Pheor, and separated themselves to their shame. And it is the opinion of Jerome, who quotes it from an ancient tradition of the Jews, that Baal Pheor is the Priapus of the Greeks and Romans; and if you look into the vulgar latin (1 Kings xv. 13.) we shall find it thus rendered, and Asa, the King removed Maacha, his mother from being queen, that she might no longer be high Priestess in the sacrifices of Priapus. And he destroyed the grove she had consecrated, and broke the most filthy idol, and burnt it at the brook Kedron. Dr. Cumberland inserts, that the import of the word Peor, or Baal Pheor, is he that shews boastingly or publicly, his nakedness. Women to avoid barrenness, were to sit on this filthy image, as the source of fruitfulness; for which Lactantius and Augustine justly deride the heathens.
[26] There was an awful mysteriousness in the original Druid sacrifice. Descanting upon the human sacrifices of various countries, Mr. Bryant informs us, that among the nations of Canaan, the victims were chosen in a peculiar manner; their own children, and whatsoever was nearest and dearest to them, were thought the most worthy offerings to their gods! The Carthagenians, who were a colony from Tyre, carried with them the religion of their mother country and instituted the same worship in the parts where they were seated. Parents offered up their own children as dearest to themselves, and therefore the more acceptable to the deity: they sacrificed "the fruit of their body for the sin of their soul," The Druids, no doubt, were actuated with the same views.
[27] There is no sort of doubt that Baal and Fire were principal objects of the ceremonies and adoration of the Druids. The principal season of these, and of their feasts in honour of Baal, was new year's day, when the sun began visibly to return towards us; the custom is not yet at an end, the country people still burning out the old year and welcoming in the new by fires lighted on the top of hills, and other high places. The next season was the month of May, when the fruits of the earth began, in the Eastern countries, to be gathered, and the first fruits of them consecrated to Baal, or to the Sun, whose benign influence had ripened them; and one is almost persuaded that the dance round the May pole, in that month, is a faint image of the rites observed on such occasions. The next great festival was on the 21st of June, when the sun, being in Cancer, first appears to go backwards and leave us. On this occasion the Baalim used to call the people together, and to light fires on high places, and to cause their sons, and their daughters, and their cattle to pass through the fire, calling upon Baal to bless them, and not forsake them.
[28] In Devonshire and Cornwall it is still considered ominous if a hare crosses a person on the road.
[29] See Carew's Survey of Cornwall, p. 22. Mr. Carew had a stone-ring of this kind in his possession, and the person who gave it to him avowed, that "he himself saw a part of the stick sticking in it,"—but "Penes authorem sit fides," says Mr. Carew.
[30] The same superstition still exists in Devonshire.
[31] See account of Druidism in Polewhele's Historical Views of Devonshire, vol. 1.