Irish Druids and old Irish religions / by James Bonwick.

  • James Bonwick
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Irish Druids and old Irish religions / by James Bonwick. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    with the Irish Garrick. Garrick Brauda of Dundalk, like Garig Bradyn of Mona, was renowned for astronomical observations. Owen Morgan, in the Light of Britaimia, has brought forward authorities to support his theory that the Welsh, at any rate, could claim for ancestors the Druids of classical writers. But Leflocq declares the language of the so-called Welsh Druids of the early Ghristian centuries is modern ; and that even Sharon Turner—“forthe mythological poems dare not assign them to the sixth century, nor attribute them to Taliesin.” He considers the mystery of the Bards of Britain consists of a number of Ghristian sentences, interpreted according to the arbitrary system of modern mysticism ; and concludes, “ Such are the narrow bases of the vast pre-conceived system of our days as to the true religion of the Gauls.” But Rhys in Celtic Britain asserts that “ the Goidelic Gelts appear to have accepted Druidism, but there is no evidence that it ever was the religion of any Brythonic people.” Again, “The north-west of Wales, and a great portion of the south of it, had always been in the possession of a Goidelic people, whose nearest kinsmen were the Goidels of Ireland.”—“The Brythonic Gelts, who were polytheists of the Aryan type; the non-Geltic natives were under the sway of Druidism ; and the Goidelic Gelts, devotees of a religion which combined polytheism with Druidism.” He says the word Cymry “ merely meant fellow-countrymen”; though, as he adds, “The Gymry people developed a literature of their own, differing from that of the other Brythonic communities.” He makes Garlisle the centre of their influence before coming down into Wales. The assumptions of Welsh advocates may not be very satisfactory to scholars, and all we know of Irish Druids