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The matter was decided, scientifically and categorically, and no appeal allowed. The Celts were a people from India. Europeans are all descended from Indians, driven from home by some powerful pressure, a political or religious revolution, or one of those fearful famines which periodically devastatethat immense and inexhaustible storehouse of nations.
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At first, we good people, artists, poets, or authors, who generally claim to possess some little knowledge, were rather surprised at such a decision. But the wise men had said so; Bengal and Bretagne had to fraternize; the Brahmins of Benares speak Breton and the Bretons of Bretagne speak Sanskrit. Bretagne is Indian and India is Breton.
Comparative Philology has taught the children of our day, that two syllables which are identicalin the idioms of two different races, prove the connection between two nations; hybridism means kinship.
What happy people scholars are! They can converse with people who have been dead these three thousand years, and the grave has no secrets for them! A single word bequeathed to us by an extinct people, enables them to reconstruct that whole race.
But I am bound to ask them another question, a question of much greater importance to myself. What were the religious convictions of these first inhabitants of Europe? I am answered by Mr. Simon Pelloutier, a minister of the Reformed Church in Berlin, of French descent, who has studied the primitive creed of the Celts most thoroughly and successfully. He tells us that these people, before they had Druids, worshipped, or rather held in honor the sun, the moon, and the stars, a kind of Sabaism, which, however, did not exclude the belief in a God, who was the creator, but not the ruler, of all things.
This god appears to me to have been very imperfect; he was heavy, sleepy, and shapeless, having neither eyes to see nor ears to hear; he was incapable of feeling pity or anger, and the prayers and vows of men were unable to reach him. Invisible, intangible, and incomprehensible, he was floating in space, which he filled, and which heanimated without bestowing a thought upon it; omnipotent and yet utterly inactive, creating islands and continents, and causing the sun and the stars to give light by his mere approach, this divine idler had created the world, but declined taking the trouble of governing his creation.
To whom had he confided the control over the stars in heaven? Mr. Pelloutier himself never could find out. As to the government of the earth, he had entrusted it to an infinite number of inferior deities, gods and sub-gods, of very small stature. They were as shapeless and as invisible as he was, but vastly more active, and endowed with all the energy which he had disdained to bestow upon himself. By their numbers and by their collective force they made up for their individual feebleness—and they must have been feeble indeed, since their extremely small size permitted a thousand of them to find a comfortable shelter under the leaf of a walnut tree!
Besides, they presided over the different departments which were assigned to them, not by hundreds, but by myriads, nay, by millions of myriads. Thus they rushed forth in vast hosts, stirring the air in lively currents, causing the rivers and brooks to flow onwards, watching over fields and forests, penetrating the soil to great depths, creeping in through every crack and crevice, and breaking outagain through the craters of volcanoes. They formed a belt from the Rhine to the Taunus mountains, dazzling the whole region for a moment by a shower of sparks, and falling back upon the plain in the form of columns of black smoke.
Science has, moreover, established this incontestable principle, that motion can only be produced in two ways here, below: either by the acts of living beings, or by the contact of these microscopic deities.
Whenever the waters rose or broke forth in cataracts, whenever the leaves trembled in the wind, or the flowers bent before a storm, it was these diminutive gods who, invisible and yet ever active, forced the waters to come down in torrents, drove the tempest through the branches, bent the flowers down to the ground, and chased the dust of the highroads in lofty columns up to the clouds. It was they who caused the golden hair of the maid to fall down upon her shoulders as she went to the well, who shook the earthenware pitcher she carried on her shoulder, who crackled in the fire on the hearth, and who roared in the storm, or the eruptions of fiery mountains.
When I think of this little world of tiny insect gods, who passed through the air in swarms, coming and going, turning to the left and to the right, struggling and striving above and beneath (I asktheir pardon for comparing these deities to humble insects, born in the mud and subject to infirmity and death like ourselves), I cannot help thinking of the beautiful lines by Lamartine, in which he so graphically describes life in Nature.
“Chaque fois que nos yeux, pénétrant dans ces ombres,De la nuit des rameaux éclairaient les dais sombres,Nous trouvions sous ces lits de feuille où dort l’été,Des mystères d’amour et de fécondité.Chaque fois que nos pieds tombaient dans la verdureLes herbes nous montaient jusques à la ceinture,Des flots d’air embaumé se répandaient sur nous,Des nuages ailés partaient de nos genoux;Insectes, papillons, essaims nageants de mouches,Oui d’un éther vivant semblaient former les couches,Ils’ montaient en colonne, en tourbillon flottant,Comblaient l’air, nous cachaient l’un à l’autre un instant,Comme dans les chemins la vague de poussièreSe lève sous les pas et retombe en arrière.Ils roulaient; et sur l’eau, sur les prés, sur le foin,Ces poussières de vie allaient tomber plus loin;Et chacune semblait, d’existence ravie,Epuiser le bonheur dans sa goutte de vie,Et l’air qu’ils animaient de leurs frémissementsN’était que mélodie et que bourdonnements.”
Such were the gods known to the first ingenuous dwellers on the banks of the Rhine—gods worthy of a society but just beginning. And still, I venture to make a suggestion, which Mr. Simon Pelloutier, my guide up to this point, has unfortunately neglected to make. It is this: I feel as ifthere was hidden beneath this primitive and apparently puerile mythology a hideous monster, writhing in fearful threatenings and bitter mockery. This god Chaos, so careless and reckless, gifted with the power of creation but not with love for his work, seems to me nothing else but Matter, organizing itself. I have called these countless inferior deities microscopic. I should have called them molecular, for they are atoms, the monads of our science. There is evidently here a germ, not of a religious creed so much as of a philosophic system, a shadow of the materialism of a former civilization that is now degraded and nearly lost.
At first I doubted the correctness of the opinions of our learned men; but I begin to believe in them; yes, these early Celts had come, to us from distant India, from that ancient, decayed country, and in their knapsacks they had brought with them, by an accident, this fragment of their symbolic cosmogony, the sad meaning of which was, no doubt, a mystery to them also.
After some years, perhaps after some centuries, —for time does not count for much in those questions,—the Celts became weary of this selfish Deity, which was lost in the contemplation of its own being and dwelt in the centre of a cold and empty heaven, and they desired to establish some relations between him and themselves. Unable to appeal tothe Creator, they appealed to Creation, and asked for a mediator, who should hear their complaints or accept their thank-offerings and transmit them to the Supreme Power.
We have already seen that they turned first to sun and moon; but they were ill rewarded for their efforts. These heavenly bodies were either too far removed from their clients to hear their complaints, or they were too busy with their own daily duties; at all events they shared with their common master in his indifference towards men.
Our pious friends were offended by this want of consideration, and thought of looking for other intercessors, who might be less busy; whom they might not only see with their eyes but touch with their hands, and who would remain as much as possible in the same place, so as to be always on hand when they were needed.
They appealed to rivers and mountains; but the rivers had nothing permanent but their banks, and went their way like the sun and moon; while the mountains, besides being the home of wolves, bears, and serpents, and thus enjoying an evil reputation, were continually hid by snow and rain from the eyes of the petitioners.
At last they turned to the trees, and as it always happens, they now found out that they ought to have commenced where they ended.A tree was an excellent mediator; standing between heaven and earth, it clung to the latter by its roots, while its trunk, shaped like an arrow, feathered with verdure, rose upwards as if to touch the sky.
The worship of trees was probably the first effect of sedentary life adopted by the Celts after their long, more or less forced wanderings; in a few years it prevailed on both sides of the river Rhine.
There was no lack of trees; every man had his own. As he could not carry it away with him, he became accustomed to live by its side.
Man could lean his hut against the trunk; the flock could sleep in its shade.
The birds came to it in numbers. If they were singing, it was a sign of joy to come; if they built their nests there, it was an invitation to marry.
The fruit-bearing tree suggested comfort, abundance, and enjoyment; it spoke of harvest feasts and cider-making, when friends gathered around it, holding in their hands large horns filled to overflowing with foaming drink.
Soon it became customary to plant at the birth of a child a tree which was to become a companion and a counsellor for life.
Thus in the course of time a copse represented a family.
The worship bestowed upon the tree consistedin pruning it, in making it grow straight, in freeing its bark from parasitical growth and in keeping the roots free from ants, rats, snakes and all dangerous enemies. Such continuous care naturally led in the course of time to an improvement in cultivation.
The tree worshippers, however, did more than this. On certain hallowed days they hung bouquets of herbs and of flowers on its branches, they brought food and drink, and thus fetichism crept in gradually. Alas! That men have never been able to keep from extremes!
When the wind whispered in the leaves, the devout owner listened attentively, trying anxiously to interpret the mystic language of his cedar or his pear tree, and often a regular conversation ensued.
It was a bad omen when a rising storm shook the tree fiercely; if the tempest was strong enough to break a branch, the event foretold a great calamity, and if it was struck by lightning, the owner was warned of his approaching death. The latter was resigned; he felt quite proud at having at last compelled his indolent god to reveal himself to his devout worshipper.
When a child died, it was buried under its own tree, a mere sapling.. But it was not so when a man died.
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The Celts used various and strange means for the purpose of disposing of the remains of theirdeceased friends. In some countries they were burnt, and their own tree furnished the fuel for the funeral pile; in other countries theTodtenbaum(Tree of the Dead), hollowed out with an axe, became the owner’s coffin. This coffin was interred, unless it was intrusted to the current of the river, to be carried God knows where! Finally, in certain localities there existed a custom—a horrible custom!—of exposing the body to the voracity of birds of prey, and the place of exposure was the top of the very tree which had been planted at the birth of the deceased, and which in this case, quite exceptionally, was not cut down.
Now, observe, that in these four distinct methods by which human remains were restored to the four elements of air and water, earth and fire, we meet again the four favorite ways of burial still practiced in India, as of old, by the followers of Brahma, Buddha, and Zoroaster. The fire-worshippers of Bombay are as familiar with them as the dervishes who drown children in the Ganges. Thus we have here four proofs, instead of one, of the Indian origin of our Celts. For my part at least, I confess I am convinced by this quadruple evidence.
It is to be presumed that the use of Dead Men’s Trees and of posthumous drownings continued for centuries in ancient Gaul as well as in ancient Germany. About 1560 some Dutch laborers found,in examining a part of the Zuyder Zee, at a great depth, several trunks of trees which were marvelously well preserved and nearly petrified. Each one of these trunks had been occupied by a man, and contained some half-petrified fragments. It was evident that they had been carried down, trunk and man, by the Rhine, the Ganges of Germany.
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As recently as 1837 suchTodtenbaumeor Dead Men’s Trees, well preserved by the peculiar nature of the soil, have been discovered in England, near Solby in Yorkshire, and still more recently, in 1848, on Mount Lupfen in the Grand Duchy of Baden.
In face of such well authenticated evidence of Dead Men’s Trees having been confided to the current of rivers or the bosom of the earth, it seems superfluous to ask for additional proof in support of the fact that cremation was practiced all over ancient Europe. Nor do I consider myself, as a collector of myths, bound to prove everything. Ido not mean to speak, therefore, any further of Birthday Trees, of Dead Men’s Trees, and of Fetich Trees,—which we shall moreover meet again presently,—and hasten on to other myths of far greater importance.
The Druids now appear for the first time in Gaul and in Germany.
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The Druids and their Creed.—Esus.—The Holy Oak.—The Pforzheim Lime Tree.—A Rival Plant.—The Mistletoe and the Ansfuinum.—The Oracle at Dodona.—Immaculate Horses.—The Druidesses.—A late Elector.—Philanthropic Institution of Human Sacrifices.—Second Druidical Epoch.
The Druids were the first to bring to the Gauls as well as to the Germans religious truths, but their creed can be appreciated from no dogma of theirs; it must be judged by their rites.
The first question is: Whence did the Druidscome? Were they disciples of the Magi, and did they come from Persia? Such an origin has been claimed for them: or had they been initiated by Isis in her ancient mysteries, and did they come from Egypt? This view also has its adherents. Or, finally, had they been driven towards Western Europe by one of the last waves of immigration, which left India under the pressure of some new calamity? Many think so.
As it seems to be difficult to decide between these three suggestions, it might be worth while to try and reconcile them with each other. It is a long way from India to Germany and to Gaul, and there might have been many stopping places between the country from which they started and their future home.
The Druids, like all other Celts, might very well have started from India, and choosing not the most direct way might have reached Europe only after making many a long halt in Persia and in Egypt.
'If that can be admitted, then there is no difficulty in assuming that the first Celts might very well have taken with them from the banks of the Indus and the Ganges only a few fragments of a sickly materialism taught by false teachers outside of the temple, while the Druids might have been initiated within the temple itself, thus learning to know the true nature of the Deity.
Their creed was founded upon a triple basis—oneGod; the immortality of the soul; and rewards and punishments in a future life.
These sound doctrines, which are as old as the world and form the foundation of all human morality, had ever been maintained by their wise men.
At a later period the Greeks, proud as they were of their Platonic philosophy, had not hesitated to acknowledge that they had obtained the first germ of it from the Celts, the Galati, and consequently from the Druids. One of the Fathers of the Church, Clement of Alexandria, openly admits that these same Celts had been orthodox in their religion, at least as far as their dogmas were concerned.
By what name was the Supreme Being known to the Druids? They called itEsus, which means the Lord, or they gave it the simple designation ofTeut(God). Through this Teut the German races became afterwards Teutons, the sons and followers of Teut, and even in our day they call themselves in their own language Teutsche orDeutsche.
Three marvelously brief maxims contain almost the whole catechism of the Druids: Serve God; Abstain from evil; Be brave!
The Druids, being warriors as well as priests, displayed in the performance of their warlike priesthood all the energy, the severity, and the authority which must needs accompany such a strange combination of powers.Holding all the power of the state in their hands, and speaking in the name of God, commanding the army, controlling the public treasury, and acting not only as judges but also as physicians, they punished heresy and rebellion, and ended lawsuits as well as diseases, by the death of the person most interested.
Their laws, liberal and philanthropic in spite of their apparent severity, allowed a jury consisting of notables, to judge grave crimes; this fact of a jury suggests naturally the idea of extenuating circumstances, and thus the criminal, escaping more readily than the patient, frequently got off with a fine, if he was rich, or with banishment if he was poor.
Nevertheless all the efforts of the Druids did not succeed in thoroughly eradicating Tree worship; they were thus led to adopt one tree, to the exclusion of all others, which should rally around it the scattered adoration of all the nations. This official tree, a kind of green altar, on which God manifested himself to his priests, was an oak, a strong, vigorous oak, the king of the forests.
Thus the holy oak became known and honored; pious worshippers came by night, with torches in their hands, in long processions to present their offerings.
This usage soon became general among all Celtic nations. Around these oaks the Druids formed sacred precincts within which they lived with their families, for they were married; but they could haveonly one wife, while the other chieftains were generally polygamists.
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But the oak, although thus enjoying preeminence over all other trees, was by no means exclusively worshipped everywhere. Perhaps from religious antagonism, or perhaps merely from local usage, some provinces of Gaul and of Italy preferred the beech and the elm. In Gaul especially, the elm prevailed over the oak, and even Christian France still continued for a long time to plant an elm tree before every newly built church, so as to draw God’s blessing the more surely upon it; and down to the end of the Middle Ages courts of justice were always held under an elm tree. Hence the curiousFrench proverb, which did not always have the mocking sense in which it is used nowadays, wait for me under the elm tree! (Attendez-moi sous forme) What was then a formal summons to appear before a judge has now come to mean: Wait till doomsday.
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The ash tree, also, had its worshippers among the dwellers in high northern latitudes, and it was under the dense branches of an enormous ash tree that terrible Odin and his following of deities appeared in a dark cloud.
Thus Tree worship appeared once more. It has ever since continued to flourish more or less in Germany, and even now exists to a certain extent. But it is not the oaks, nor the beech, nor the elm, nor the ash tree, which in our day receives the worship of the young especially—but the lime tree. The admirers of the lime tree carry their fervor to fanaticism and their fanaticism to murder. I hadbeen unwilling to believe this.
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But this morning I opened my newspaper and there I found an article, dated December 30, 1860, and stating that a young man from Pforzheim, in the Palatinate, attempted to murder the mayor of his town by means of a revolver, the four barrels of which were loaded with as many leaden balls. When he was arrested, he declared that he had personally nothing to say against the burgomaster, but that the latterhad recently ordered certain lime trees to be cut down, thatthe good people of Pforzheim idolized these trees, and that he had determined to punish him for such profanation.
The paper added: “This young man belongs to an honorable family, his antecedents are excellent, and he has never shown the slightest symptom of mental derangement.”
How, then does it come about that the lime tree should in our day, in the nineteenth century, call forth sentiments of such extreme violence? The reason is that Young Germany has proclaimed it to be the Tree of Love, becauseits leaves are shaped like hearts.
If I were not afraid of getting myself into trouble, having a natural horror of all firearms, and especially of four barrelled revolvers, I should mention here, that anatomists protest against this pretended resemblance of the leaf to the heart. In reality it looks much more like the ace of hearts, as it terminates below in a sharp point—but superstition prevails over anatomy, and teaches us once more that science ought not to meddle with things pertaining to love.
The Druids’ Oak, although less tempting to gallant comparisons, finally excited almost equal fanaticism. Processions and sacrifices became well nigh endless; young maidens adorned it with garlands of flowers,interspersed with bracelets and necklaces, while warriors suspended in its branches the most precious spoil they brought home from their battles. If a storm arose, the other trees of the forest seemed in good faith, humbly to bow down before their chief.
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And yet it had an enemy, a fierce, relentless enemy. An abject, little plant, unknown and miserable in appearance, came unceremoniously and made its home on its sacred branches and even on its august summit; there it lived on its life’s blood, feeding on its sap, absorbing its substance, threateningto impede its natural growth, and finally carrying the impudence so far as to conceal the glossy leaves of the noble godlike tree under its own lustreless and viscous foliage. This hostile and impious plant was the Mistletoe, the mistletoe of the oak (Guythil).
Other people, less intelligent and less sagacious than the Druids, would have freed the tree from this unwelcome and obnoxious visitor, by simply climbing up and cutting off the parasite by means of a pruning bill. This would have been irreverent as well as impolitic. What would the people have thought? The people would most assuredly have reasoned, that the sacred tree had been rendered powerless, being unable to rid itself of its vermin.
The Druids did much better. They treated the mistletoe very much as we, in our day, treat a formidable member of the opposition; they gave it a place in the sanctuary. The mistletoe was proclaimed to be an official and sacred plant, and became an essential part of their worship. When it was to be detached from the tree, this was not done stealthily and by a mean iron bill-hook, but in the presence of all, amid public rejoicings and accompanied by solemn chants. The instrument was a golden reaping hook, and with it theGuythilwas carefully cut off at the base and gathered inlinen veils. These veils became henceforth sacred, and were not allowed to be used for ordinary purposes.
The Teutons who lived on the Rhine, obtained from the mistletoe a kind of glue, which they looked upon as a panacea against the sterility of women, the ravages of diseases, the effects of witchcraft,—and also as a means to catch birds.
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The Gauls, on the other hand, dried it carefully and put the dust into pretty little scent-bags, which they presented to each other as New Year’s Gifts on the first day of the year. Hence, in t some provinces of France, the cry is still heard, “Aguilanneuf” (au gui l’an neuf), “Mistletoe for New Year!”
Modern science treats mistletoe simply as a purgative, and thus attempts to prove that our ancestors showed their affection to each other by exchanging presents of violent purgatives.
The introduction of this parasite plant into thesanctuary became, however, very soon a public benefit. For the oak-mistletoe obtained ere long considerable commercial value, and at once counterfeiters (for even under the Druids there existed such men) went to work and gathered it from other trees also, from apple trees and pear trees, from nut trees and lime trees, from beeches, elms, and even larches. The consequence was, that owners of orchards as well as owners of forests, rejoiced in the trick, at which the Druids discreetly winked; for they took advantage of the lesson.
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At one time venomous reptiles had become so numerous in the regions of the Rhine, that they caused continually serious accidents among thepeople, the majority of whom lived all day long in the open air, and did not always sleep under shelter. During their winter sleep, these reptiles rolled themselves up into vast balls, and became apparently glued to each other by a kind of viscous ooze. In this state they were called by the CeltsSerpents Eggs, or ratherSerpents’ Knots, while the Romans called themanguimim.
These strange balls were used medicinally by the Druids like the mistletoe; they employed them even in their religious ceremonies, and soon they became so rare, that only the wealthiest people could procure them, by paying their weight in gold. If the Druids had really at first been misled so as to adopt superstitious customs, which they repented of in their hearts, they soon found means to make these same superstitious rites beneficial to the people.
Unfortunately serpents’ knots, oaks, and their parasites, did not long satisfy a people ever desirous of new things. It is a well-known fact that innovations, however small may have been their first beginning, are sure to go on enlarging and increasing from day to day.
The old party of Tree worshippers, still numerous and very active as all old parties are, complained of the suppression of their companion-trees, the ancient family oracles, for the purpose of favoringone single oak tree,—a tree which yet was not able, in spite of all the privileges it enjoyed, to put them into communication withEstes, the god of heaven.
This complaint was certainly not unfounded;—it had to be answered.
The Druids consisted of three classes:—
The Druids proper (Eubages, they were called in Gaul) were philosophers as well as scholars, perhaps even magicians, for magic was at that time nothing more than the outward form of science. They were charged with the maintenance of the principles of morality, and had to study the secrets of nature. The Prophets, on the other hand, knew how to interpret in the slightest breath of wind, the language of the holy oak, which spoke to them in the rustling of its leaves, in the soughing of the branches, in the low cracking heard within the trunk, and even in the earlier or later appearance of the foliage. There were, finally, the Bards, poets bound to the altar.
While the bards were singing around the oak, the prophets caused it to render its oracles. These oracles soon increased largely not only in Europe, but also in Asia Minor, where a Celtic colony, according to Herodotus, established in the land they had conquered the oracle of Dodona. Early Greece worshipped an oak tree, which Strabo, however, assuresus was a beech. There is no disputing about trees any more than about colors; but Homer calls it an oak, and an oak it must remain for us.
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This new movement, grafted upon the simple worship of the Druids, did not stop here. After having for some time been accustomed to converse with Teut by means of a tree, the Celts were naturally surprised at seeing that, while trees could speak, living creatures remained silent, and were apparently deprived of the power of foretelling the future. Certain chieftains, especially, felt aggrieved,upon setting out on a great campaign, that they were not allowed to carry the holy oak along with them, and in their intense devotion, fell upon the idea of consulting the nervous trembling of their horses and their sudden neighing in moments of surprise or terror,—for in order to be of prophetic nature the movements of the animals had to be involuntary and spontaneous. As this creed began to spread gradually, every man who was setting out on a journey or a warlike expedition mounted his horse in the firm conviction that he would be able to consult his four-footed prophet at any time during his absence from home, provided he was able to submit the omens to the learned interpretations of a soothsayer.
The Druid priests were not long in becoming seriously alarmed at these travelling oracles, liable as they naturally were to contradict each other.
As they had before chosen a single tree to be the sacred tree, so they now accepted as genuine omens only the symptoms noticed in certain horses which were bred within the sacred precincts and under their own eyes.
These horses, of immaculate whiteness and raised at public expense, were not employed for any work, and never had to submit to saddle or bridle. Wild and untamed, they roamed with fluttering manes in perfect liberty through the lofty forests. The freedomof their movements gave naturally a safer character to their omens, and thus these prophetic horses, which formed almost a part of the druidical clergy, enjoyed for a long time the highest authority in all Celtic countries, when suddenly one fine day new rivals arose.
Other living creatures entered into competition with them, and these rivals of the horses were—shall I say it?—were women. These women discovered, all of a sudden, that they also were endowed, and in the very highest degree, with the gifts of second sight, of inspiration, intuition, and divination.
When public opinion appealed to the Druids to give their views on this claim, they admitted, according to the statement of Tacitus, that women had something more instinctive and more divine in them than men, nay, even than horses. Their sensitive organization predisposed them to receive the gift of prophecy, and hence “women indeed act more readily from natural impulse, without reflection, than from thought or reason.”
This last explanation, improper in the highest degree, does not come from Tacitus, nor from myself, God forbid! It is the exclusive property of the aforementioned Mr. Simon Pelloutier. Let every one be responsible for his own work!
The Druids treated the women just as they hadtreated the horses, the mistletoe, and the trees. They acknowledged as true prophetesses only those who were already under the direct influence of the holy place and the sacred oak; that is to say, their wives and their daughters.
The principle of centralization of power is evidently not of modern origin.
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Thus, there were now Druidesses, as there had been Druids before. The latter became the teachers of the young men; they taught their pupils the motions of the stars, the shape and extent of the earth, the divers products of nature, the history of their ancestors written in the form of poems which the bards recited; in fact, they taught them everything except reading and writing. Memory was as yet sufficient for all things. The priestesses, on the other hand, opened schools for the young girls; they taught them to sing and to sew, they initiated them into religious ceremonies and confided to them the knowledge of simples; nor was poetry neglected, as they had to learn by heart certain poems which were specially composed for their benefit. These verses, of somewhat doubtfullyrical character, probably taught them how to make bread, how to brew beer, and other small details of the kitchen and the house.
The Druidesses practiced also medicine. This threefold prerogative of being physicians, prophets, and preceptors, finally raised them so high in the estimation of the nation, that when the priests of Teut were compelled to abandon their sanctuaries, they did not hesitate to confide them to their guardianship. They even presided in their own right, at certain ceremonies.
If one of them excelled by the frequency, the lucidity, and the reliability of her inspirations, as was the case at different times with the illustrious Aurinia, Velleda, and Ganna, whom the Roman emperors even deigned to consult through their ambassadors, the proud Druids placed her with humble submission, at the head of their own college of priests. During this female dictatorship, she became the arbiter of the destiny of nations, decided on peace and war, and controlled all the movements of great armies.
Caesar tells us that he once asked one of his German captives, why Ariovistus, their chieftain, had never yet dared to meet him in battle, and was told in reply, that the Druidesses, after a careful examination of the eddies and whirlpools of the Rhine, had forbid his engaging in action till thetime of the new moon. As a matter of course, the shrewd general profited by this information, and when the new moon appeared, the Germans were in full flight.
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But the Rhine has not yet given its oracles, and the time has not yet come, when Ganna Velleda, and Aurinia condescend to grant audiences to Roman ambassadors.
We only wished to trace in a few outlines the future development of this institution of Druidesses, which we shall meet again in the days of its decline.In the mean time, however, their influence and their power were daily growing. Were the Teutons at last satisfied? By no means. In spite of all the skill displayed by their diviners and the Druid-esses, they came to the conclusion, that neither the trembling foliage of the holy oak, nor the sudden starts, the wild leaps, and the more or less prolonged, loud neighings of the horses, afforded them sufficient excitement and perfectly reliable revelations. It occurred to them next, to consult animals, not in their outward manifestations, but in their still quivering entrails. This new ceremony could not fail to give to their religious worship a more serious aspect, and a certain savor of murder, which no doubt had its charms for a warlike people.
The Druids yielded once more, but they felt discouraged. What had become of that grand philosophic religion, which was content with prayer and meditation, and which they once—too fondly, perhaps—had hoped to be able to adapt to the nature of these barbarians?
They first consented to slay at the foot of the sacred oak, so long kept free from blood, a number of noxious beasts, like wolves, lynxes, and bears; but the turn of domestic animals came ere long, and they began to sacrifice sheep, goats, and finally man’s best companion in war, the horse. Not even the spotless white horses, heretofore looked uponwith such profound and superstitious reverence, were spared any longer.
And at each step forward in this bloody career, the Druids, always resisting, and always compelled to yield, made their last and their very last concession, vainly hoping that they might thus retain for a little while longer the power, which they felt was fast slipping from their grasp.
Encouraged by success, the reformers finally came to the question, whether the most acceptable offering to be presented to God, was not the blood of man? Is not man, of all created beings, the most noble and the most perfect? Perhaps they were inclined to carry the argument still farther, and to reason that among all men the most worthy to be chosen and the most likely to be acceptable to God, were the Druids themselves? But they took care not to ask too much at once. They held this final consequence of a great principle in reserve, requiring for the present nothing more than a common victim, anything that might come in the way, provided it was a human being.
It might have been expected, that when this abominable demand was made to hallow murder by committing it in the name of Heaven, the descendants and heirs of the ancient sages would have remembered their noble ancestors who had put an end to the first and quite inoffensive superstitionsof the early Celts. They ought to have veiled their faces, drawn back with horror, and recovering for once their former energy, appealed by means of the holy oak, the spotless horses, the soothsayers and the Druidesses, nay of heaven and earth itself, to the whole nation, calling upon them to anathematize the infamous petitioners. But they did no such thing. On the contrary they hastened to legalize such savage bloodshed by their holy consent. One might almost be led to suspect that they had themselves, underhand, suggested the horrible idea.
O ye hypocritical priests, ye false philosophers, ye tigers disguised as shepherds of the people!.... But we must check our indignation. For who knows, but they may have been swayed not so much by an instinct of cruelty as by a lofty political, or even philanthropic principle? Philanthropic? Yes, indeed; we will explain.
Among the Celts human life counted for little; it was lavished in battles, it was cast away in duels. At the time when the Gauls held large national assemblies, they tried to secure punctual attendance by simply putting to death the man who was the last to come; he paid for all the tardy ones. I do not mean to propose such a plan at the present day; but after all it was an infallible and economical measure.The Teutons, on the other hand, bloodless in their national assemblies, after a battle in which they had been victorious, delighted in massacring all their prisoners.
These massacres ceased from the time when the Druids claimed for themselves the exclusive right of human sacrifices.
The good Esus, having become bloodthirsty, demanded all the captives to be slain in expiation at his altar, and woe to him who dared to anticipate him in his wrath. He was excluded from the sacred precincts; he was declared an impious, sacrilegious person, who could no longer take his place among the citizens; and he ran great risk of being forced to offer his own life in compensation for that which by his fault was wanting at the holocaust.
When this custom became once fully established, the prisoners of war were all delivered up to the high-priest, who chose from among them one or more to be slain as an offering. The victim was generally one of the captive chieftains, and he was slain together with his war horse, so as to add to the impressiveness of the ceremony and to reconcile the spectators by the abundance of blood that was shed to the small number of victims.
After having carefully examined the opened bodies of man and animal, the sacrificing priest, hisbeard and clothes saturated with blood, raised his bloody right hand to heaven and, reeking with murder and breathing carnage, he proclaimed that his god was satisfied. The remainder of the prisoners were kept for another day, but that other day never came.
Thus a new office had been created: that of a sacrificing priest. On both banks of the Rhine, in Germany as well as in Gaul, the Druids reserved this office for themselves; in other Celtic countries, in Scandinavia and among the Scythians, women performed the terrible duty; we all remember as a proof of it, Iphigenia of Tauris.
Whatever we may think of this bloody innovation, it certainly benefited the prisoners, but the Druids obtained from it, after all, the greatest advantage. Their power, which had been seriously undermined, step by step, was once more firmly established. The opposition, which had paid no attention to their remonstrances or their prayers, shrunk from their knives.
From this moment begins the Second Period of the Druids.
The bloody knife of the Druids remained long all powerful, but we need not follow its later fate. Cæsar had conquered and pacified Gaul, and the successors of Augustus fulminated their Imperialdecrees against the Druids, as slayers of men, while the same knife continued to shed the blood of the Germans.