Druids

(droo'ids.) [L. Druides; W. Derwyddan.] (Hist.) The title under which were known the priests of the Celts, and chiefly of the Gauls and Britons. They consisted of 3 distinct cla es the bards, the vates or prophets, and the priests proper. The first-named were the poets who composed the war-songs as well as the religious hymns of their nation. The vates were the soothsayers or diviners, who also conducted the sacrifi cial and ceremonial rites, and interpreted the doctrines enunciated by the priests proper. The D., besides, instructed youth, decided controversies, presided over religious observances, chose their president by election, held an annual council, expounded philosophical and mythological traditions, and once a year offered up human beings as a holocaust to their gods. Cæsar is the first writer who has given us authentic intelligence of the D., and the younger Pliny has supplemented his accounts by informing us that the mistletoe was a sacred plant with them, and that, clad in white vestments, they cut it with a golden sickle, performing the while certain ceremonies. The oak was their sacred tree, and they took up their residence among groves of it:hence he derives the word Druid from the Gr.drus, oak. When Gaul was subdued by the Romans, the Druidical religion gradually retired before the cla ic heathenism, and, step by step, withdrew at first into Britt any (Fr. Bretagne), and then into Britain, where, in the time of Nero, it was gradually suppre ed. The island of Mona (now Angle sea) was the last refuge of the D. [s. 303]