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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    are found all over Europe, Asia, and northern Africa, why were Druids without association with these, from Japan to Gibraltar, and confined to the monuments of Britain ? Why, also, in Ossian, are the Stones of Pozver referred to the Norsemen only ? In the Irish Epic, The Carrying off of the Bull of Cudlnge, the Druid Cathbad is given a certain honourable precedence before the sovereign. That the Druids exer- cised the healing art is certain. Jubamville refers to a MS. in the Library of St. Gall, dating from the end of the fourteenth century, which has on the back of it some incantations written by Irish seers of the eighth or ninth century. In one of them are these words—“ I admire the remedy which Dian-Cecht left.” Though a mysterious halo hangs about the Irish Druids, though they may have been long after the Serpent-wor- shippers, and even later than the Round Tower builders, tradition confidently asserts their existence in the Island, but, doubtless, credits them with powers beyond those ever exercised. The love for a romantic Past is not, however, confined to Ireland, and a lively imagination will often close the ear to reason in a cultured and philosophical age. ST. PATRICK AND THE DRUIDS. Let us see what the biographers of St. Patrick have to relate about the Druids. A work published at St. Omer, in 1625, by John Heigham, has this story :—“One day as the Saint sayd masse in the sayd church, a sacrilegious magitian, the child of perdition, stood without, and with a rodd put in at the window, cast down the chalice, and shed the holy sacrament, but God without delay severely punished so wicked a sacrilege, for
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