"He was their God,[9]
The withered Cromm with many mists,
The people whom he shook over every harbour,
The everlasting kingdom they shall not have.
To him without glory
Would they kill their piteous wailing offspring,
With much wailing and peril
To pour their blood around Cromm Cruaich.
Milk and corn
They would ask from him speedily
In return for one-third of their healthy issue,
Great was the horror and scare of him.
To him
Noble Gaels would prostrate themselves,
From the worship of him, with many manslaughters
The Plain is called Moy Sleacht.
* * * * *
In their ranks (stood)
Four times three stone idols
To bitterly beguile the hosts,
The figure of Cromm was made of gold.
Since the rule
Of Heremon,[10] the noble man of grace,
There was worshipping of stones
Until the coming of good Patrick of Macha [Ardmagh]."
There is not the slightest reason to distrust this evidence as far as the existence of Crom Cruach goes.
"This particular tradition," says Mr. Nutt, "like the majority of those contained in it [the Dinnseanchas] must be of pre-Christian origin. It would have been quite impossible for a Christian monk to have invented such a story, and we may accept it as a perfectly genuine bit of information respecting the ritual side of insular Celtic religion."[11]
St. Patrick overthrew this idol, according both to the poem in the Book of Leinster and the early lives of the saint. The life says that when St. Patrick cursed Crom the ground opened and swallowed up the twelve lesser idols as far as their heads, which, as Rhys acutely observes, shows that when the early Irish lives of the saint were written the pagan sanctuary had so fallen into decay, that only the heads of the lesser idols remained above ground, while he thinks that it was at this time from its bent attitude and decayed appearance the idol was called Crom, "the Stooper."[12] There is, however, no apparent or recorded connection between this idol and the druids, nor do the druids appear to have fulfilled the functions of a public priesthood in Ireland, and the Introduction to the Seanchas Mór, or ancient Book of the Brehon Laws, distinctly says that, "until Patrick came only three classes of persons were permitted to speak in public in Erin, a chronicler to relate events and to tell stories, a poet to eulogise and to satirise, and a Brehon to pass sentence from precedents and commentaries," thus noticeably omitting all mention of the druids as a public body.
The idol Crom with his twelve subordinates may very well have represented the sun, upon whom both season and crops and consequently the life both of man and beast depend. The gods to whom the early Irish seem to have sacrificed, were no doubt, as I think Mr. Nutt has shown, agricultural powers, the lords of life and growth, and with these the sun, who is at the root of all growth, was intimately connected, "the object of that worship was to promote increase, the theory of worship was—life for life."[13] That the Irish swore by the sun and the moon and the elements is certain; the oath is quoted in many places,[14] and St. Patrick appears to allude to sun-worship in that passage of his "Confession," where he says, "that sun which we see rising daily at His bidding for our sake, it will never reign, and its splendour will not last for ever, but those who adore it will perish miserably for all eternity:" this is also borne out by the passage in Cormac's Glossary of the images the pagans used to adore, "as, for instance, the form or figure of the sun on the altar."[15]
Another phase of the druidic character seems to have been that he was looked upon as an intermediary between man and the invisible powers. In the story which tells us how Midir the De Danann, carries off the king's wife, we are informed that the druid's counsel is sought as to how to recover her, which he at last is enabled to do "through his keys of science and Ogam," after a year's searching.
The druids are represented as carrying wands of yew, but there is nothing in Irish literature, so far as I am aware of, about their connection with the oak, from the Greek for which, δρῦς,[16] they are popularly supposed to derive their name. They used to be consulted as soothsayers upon the probable success of expeditions, as by Cormac mac Art, when he was thinking about extorting a double tribute from Munster,[17] and by Dáthi, the last pagan king of Ireland, when setting out upon his expedition abroad; they took auguries by birds, they could cause magic showers and fires, they observed stars and clouds, they told lucky days,[18] they had ordeals of their own,[19] but, above all, they appear to have been tutors or teachers.
Another druidic practice which is mentioned in Cormac's Glossary is more fully treated of by Keating, in his account of the great pagan convention at Uisneach, a hill in Meath, "where the men of Ireland were wont to exchange their goods and their wares and other jewels." This convention was held in the month of May,
"And at it they were wont to make a sacrifice to the arch-god, whom they adored, whose name was Bél. It was likewise their usage to light two fires to Bél in every district in Ireland at this season, and to drive a pair of each herd of cattle that the district contained between these two fires, as a preservative, to guard them against all the diseases of that year. It is from that fire thus made that the day on which the noble feast of the apostles Peter and James is held has been called Bealtaine [in Scotch Beltane], i.e., Bél's fire."