A Literary History of Ireland, from Earliest Times to the Present Day

by Douglas Hyde

[CHAPTER IX]

DRUIDISM

Although Irish literature is full of allusions to the druids it is extremely difficult to know with any exactness what they were. They are mentioned from the earliest times. The pre-Milesian races, the Nemedians and Fomorians, had their druids, who worked mutual spells against each other. The Tuatha De Danann had innumerable druids amongst them, who used magic. The invading Milesians had three druids with them in their ships, Amergin the poet and two others. In fact, druids are mentioned in connection with all early Irish fiction and history, from the first colonising of Ireland down to the time of the saints. It seems very doubtful, however, whether there existed in Ireland as definitely established an order of druids as in Britain and on the Continent.[1] They are frequently mentioned in Irish literature as ambassadors, spokesmen, teachers, and tutors. Kings were sometimes druids, so were poets. It is a word which seems to me to have been, perhaps from the first, used with great laxity and great latitude. The druids, so far as we can ascertain, do not seem to be connected with any positive rites or worship; still less do they appear to have been a regular priesthood, and there is not a shadow of evidence to connect them with any special worship as that of the sun or of fire. In the oldest saga-cycle the druid appears as a man of the highest rank and related to kings. King Conor's father was according to some—probably the oldest—accounts a druid; so was Finn mac Cool's grandfather.

Before the coming of St. Patrick there certainly existed images, or, as they are called by the ancient authorities, "idols" in Ireland, at which or to which sacrifice used to be offered, probably with a view to propitiating the earth-gods, possibly the Tuatha De Danann, and securing good harvests and abundant kine. From sacrificial rites spring, almost of necessity, a sacrificial caste, and this caste—the druids—had arrived at a high state of organisation in Gaul and Britain when observed by Cæsar, and did not hesitate to sacrifice whole hecatombs of human beings. "They think," said Cæsar, "that unless a man's life is rendered up for a man's life, the will of the immortal God cannot be satisfied, and they have sacrifices of this kind as a national institution."

There appears nothing, however, that I am aware of, to connect the druids in Ireland with human sacrifice, although such sacrifice appears to have been offered. The druids, however, appear to have had private idols of their own. We find a very minute account in the tenth-century glossary of King Cormac as to how a poet performed incantations with his idols. The word "poet" is here apparently equivalent to druid, as the word "druid" like the Latin vates is frequently a synonym for "poet." Here is how the glossary explains the incantation called Imbas Forosnai:—

"This," says the ancient lexicographer, "describes to the poet whatsoever thing he wishes to discover,[2] and this is the manner in which it is performed. The poet chews a bit of the raw red flesh of a pig, a dog, or a cat, and then retires with it to his own bed behind the door,[3] where he pronounces an oration over it and offers it to his idol gods. He then invokes the idols, and if he has not received the illumination before the next day, he pronounces incantations upon his two palms and takes his idol gods unto him [into his bed] in order that he may not be interrupted in his sleep. He then places his two hands upon his two cheeks and falls asleep. He is then watched so that he be not stirred nor interrupted by any one until everything that he seeks be revealed to him at the end of a nomad,[4] or two or three, or as long as he continues at his offering, and hence it is that this ceremony is called Imbas, that is, the two hands upon him crosswise, that is, a hand over and a hand hither upon his cheeks. And St. Patrick prohibited this ceremony, because it is a species of Teinm Laeghdha,[5] that is, he declared that any one who performed it should have no place in heaven or on earth."

These were apparently the private images of the druid himself which are spoken of, but there certainly existed public idols in pagan Ireland before the evangelisation of the island. St. Patrick himself, in his "Confession," asserts that before his coming the Irish worshipped idols—idola et immunda—and we have preserved to us more than one account of the great gold-covered image which was set up in Moy Slaught[6] [i.e., the Plain of Adoration], believed to be in the present county of Cavan. It stood there surrounded by twelve lesser idols ornamented with brass, and may possibly have been regarded as a sun-god ruling over the twelve seasons. It was called the Crom Cruach or Cenn Cruach,[7] and certain Irish tribes considered it their special tutelary deity. The Dinnseanchas, or explanation of the name of Moy Slaught, calls it "the King Idol of Erin," "and around him were twelve idols made of stones, but he was of gold. Until Patrick's advent he was the god of every folk that colonised Ireland. To him they used to offer the firstlings of every issue and the chief scions of every clan;" and the ancient poem in the Book of Leinster declares that it was "a high idol with many fights, which was named the Cromm Cruaich."[8]

The poem tells us that "the brave Gaels used to worship it, and would never ask from it satisfaction as to their portion of the hard world without paying it tribute."