Flinders Petrie, “Egypt and Israel,” pp. 137, 899.
I quote from Mr. H.B. Cotterill's beautiful hexameter version.
Valerius Maximus (about A.D 30) and other classical writers mention this practice.
Book V.
De Jubainville, “Irish Mythological Cycle,” p.191 sqq.
The etymology of the word “Druid” is no longer an unsolved problem. It had been suggested that the latter part of the word might be connected with the Aryan root VID, which appears in “wisdom,” in the Latin videre, &c., Thurneysen has now shown that this root in combination with the intensive particle dru would yield the word dru-vids, represented in Gaelic by draoi, a Druid, just as another intensive, su, with vids yields the Gaelic saoi, a sage.
See Rice Holmes, “Cæsar's Conquest,” p. 15, and pp. 532-536. Rhys, it may be observed, believes that Druidism was the religion of the aboriginal inhabitants of Western Europe “from the Baltic to Gibraltar” (“Celtic Britain,” p. 73). But we only know of it where Celts and dolmen-builders combined. Cæsar remarks of the Germans that they had no Druids and cared little about sacrificial ceremonies.
“Rel. des Gaulois,” leçon xx.
Quoted by Bertrand, op. cit. p. 279.
“The Irish Mythological Cycle,” by d'Arbois de Jubainville, p. 6l. The “Dinnsenchus” in question is an early Christian document. No trace of a being like Crom Cruach has been found as yet in the pagan literature of Ireland, nor in the writings of St. Patrick, and I think it is quite probable that even in the time of St. Patrick human sacrifices had become only a memory.