Commenting upon this story Deane remarks—“This traditionary legend, preserved by Leunclavius, marks the stronghold which Ophiolatreia must have taken upon the minds of the people of Constantinople, so as to cause this story to be handed down to so late an era as the seventeenth century. Among the Greeks who resorted to Constantinople were many idolators of the old religion, who would wilfully transmit any legend favourable to their own superstition.” Hence, probably, the charm mentioned above, was attached by them to the Delphic serpent on the column in the Hippodrome, and revived (after the partial mutilation of the figure) by their descendants, the common people, who are always the last in every country to forego an ancient superstition. Among the common people of Constantinople, there were always many more Pagans than Christians at heart. With the Christian religion, therefore, which they professed, would be mingled many of the pagan traditions which were attached to the monuments of antiquity that adorned Byzantium, or were imported into Constantinople.
CHAPTER IX.
Ophiolatreia in Britain—The Druids—Adders—Poem of Taliessin—The Goddess Ceridwen—A Bardic Poem—Snake Stones—The Anguinum—Execution of a Roman Knight—Remains of the Serpent-temple at Abury—Serpent vestiges in Ireland of great rarity—St. Patrick.
It will probably be a matter of surprise to many, but it is a fact that even in Britain in ancient times Ophiolatreia largely prevailed. Deane says: “Our British ancestors, under the tuition of the venerable Druids, were not only worshippers of the solar deity, symbolized by the serpent, but held the serpent, independent of his relation to the sun, in peculiar veneration. Cut off from all intercourse with the civilized world, partly by their remoteness and partly by their national character, the Britons retained their primitive idolatry long after it had yielded in the neighbouring countries to the polytheistic corruptions of Greece and Egypt. In process of time, however, the gods of the Gaulish Druids penetrated into the sacred mythology of the British and furnished personifications for the different attributes of the dracontic god Hu. This deity was called “The Dragon Ruler of the World” and his car was drawn by serpents. His priests in accommodation with the general custom of the Ophite god, were called after him “Adders.”[18]
In a poem of Taliessin, translated by Davies, in his Appendix, No. 6, is the following enumeration of a Druid’s titles:—
“I am a Druid; I am an architect; I am a prophet; I am a serpent” (Gnadr).
From the word “Gnadr” is derived “adder,” the name of a species of snake. Gnadr was probably pronounced like “adder” with a nasal aspirate.
The mythology of the Druids contained also a goddess “Ceridwen,” whose car was drawn by serpents. It is conjectured that this was the Grecian “Ceres;” and not without reason, for the interesting intercourse between the British and Gaulish Druids introduced into the purer religion of the former many of the corruptions ingrafted upon that of the latter by the Greeks and Romans. The Druids of Gaul had among them many divinities corresponding with those of Greece and Rome. They worshipped Ogmius (a compound deity between Hercules and Mercury), and after him, Apollo, Mars, Jupiter, and Minerva, or deities resembling them. Of these they made images; whereas hitherto the only image in the British worship was the great wicker idol into which they thrust human victims designed to be burnt as an expiatory sacrifice for the sins of some chieftain.