The following translation of a Bardic poem, descriptive of one of their religious rites, identifies the superstition of the British Druids with the aboriginal Ophiolatreia, as expressed in the mysteries of Isis in Egypt. The poem is entitled “The Elegy of Uther Pendragon;” that is, of Uther, “The Dragon’s Head;” and it is not a little remarkable that the word “Draig” in the British language signifies, at the same time, “a fiery serpent, a dragon, and the Supreme God.”[19]
In the second part of this poem is the following sacrificial rites of Uther Pendragon:—
“With solemn festivity round the two lakes:
With the lake next my side;
With my side moving round the sanctuary;
While the sanctuary is earnestly invoking
The Gliding King, before whom the Fair One
Retreats upon the veil that covers the huge stones;
Whilst the Dragon moves round over
The places which contain vessels
Of drink offering:
Whilst the drink offering is in the Golden Horns;
Whilst the golden horns are in the hand;
Whilst the knife is upon the chief victim;
Sincerely I implore thee, O victorious Bell, etc., etc.”
This is a most minute and interesting account of the religious rites of the Druids, proving in clear terms their addiction to Ophiolatreia: for we have not only the history of the “Gliding King,” who pursues “The Fair One,” depicted upon “the veil which covers the huge stones”—a history which reminds us most forcibly of the events in Paradise, under a poetic garb; but we have, likewise, beneath that veil, within the sacred circle of “the huge stones,” the “Great Dragon, a Living Serpent,” moving round the places which contain the vessels of drink-offering; or in other words, moving round the altar stone in the same manner as the serpent in the Isiac mysteries passed about the sacred vessels containing the offerings.
The Golden Horns which contained the drink offerings were very probably of the same kind as that found in Tundera, in Denmark.
The sanctity of the serpent showed itself in another very curious part of the superstition of the British Druids, namely, in that which related to the formation and virtues of the celebrated anguinum, as it is called by Pliny, or gleinen nadroeth, that is, “snake-stones,” as they were called by the Britons. Sir R. C. Hoare in his Modern Wiltshire, Hundred of Amesbury, gives an engraving of one, and says: “This is a head of imperfect vitrification representing two circular lines of opaque skylight and white, which seem to represent a snake twined round a centre which is perforated.” Mr. Lhwyd, the Welsh antiquary, writing to Ralph Thornley says:—“I am fully satisfied that they were amulets of the Druids. I have seen one of them that had nine small snakes upon it. There are others that have one or two or more snakes.”
A story comes to us, on Roman authority (that of Pliny), that a knight entering a court of justice wearing an anguinum about his neck was ordered by Claudius to be put to death, it being believed that the influence would improperly wrest judgment in his favour.
Of this anguinum (a word derived from anguis, a snake,) Pliny says: “An infinite number of snakes, entwined together in the heat of summer, roll themselves into a mass, and from the saliva of their jaws and the froth of their bodies is engendered an egg, which is called ‘anguinum.’ By the violent hissing of the serpents the egg is forced into the air, and the Druid destined to secure it, must catch it in his sacred vest before it reaches the ground.”
Information relative to the prevalence of this superstition in England will be found in Davies’ Myths of the Druids, Camden’s Britannia, and Borlase’s Cornwall.
Perhaps the most remarkable of all British relics of this worship are to be found on the hills overlooking the village of Abury, in the county of Wiltshire. There, twenty-six miles from the celebrated ruins of Stonehenge, are to be found the remains of a great Serpentine Temple—one of the most imposing, as it certainly is one the most interesting, monuments of the British Islands. It was first accurately described by Dr. Stukeley in 1793 in his celebrated work entitled Abury, a Temple of the British Druids. It was afterwards carefully examined by Sir R. C. Hoare and an account published in his elaborate work Ancient Wiltshire. Dr. Stukeley was the first to detect the design of the structure and his conclusions have been sustained by the observations of every antiquary who has succeeded him.