DRUIDS

The priests of the Celtic inhabitants of ancient Gaul and Britain. Our cla ical information respecting them is chiefly derived from Jul i us Caesar; Strabo, Tacitus, Pliny, Lucan, and other authors, have also left us particulars respecting them. On those slender foundations very extensive superstructures have been raised l)y the imagination of English and French antiquaries. The cla ical name of Druid was derived by the Latins from Jguj, an oak; but is more probably of Celtic origin. The doctrine of the Druids was not committed to writing, but retained by memory in the form of verses; of which the Welsh Triads are supposed, with some probability, to retain the form and vestiges. There appears to have been much of fraud and vulgar delusion mixed up in the religious rites which they practised. The gods whom they worshipped, according to cla ical writers, were Jupiter (Taranis), Apollo (Belenus), Mars (Hesus), and several others, whom they believed to be the same with personages of the Grecian mythology. The sacrifice of human victims is uniformly represented as a part of their worship. Their places of worship were chiefly conse  [s. 378]