85 



Druids, but it seems more consonant with mature inquiry, that how- 

 , ever the tenets of the Irish might have assimilated with those of the 

 Druids, as at least flowing from one source of primeval hierarchy, 

 however the two religions might from vicinity have blended together, 

 particularly when the dispersion from Mona had sent over so many 

 to Ireland, as Rowlands mentions,* yet the name of Druids was never 

 attributed to the ministers of Irish worship, by any writer prior to 

 . the total destruction of that order : all those who were contemporary 

 with them, call them Magi. It is true, the words draoi, druidh, 

 druth, druadh, frequently occur in Tigernach, and subsequent Irish 

 annalists, but the term, we insist, is only used as denoting the wis- 

 dom or learned caste of the individual to whom it is applied, and not 

 any such rank in heathen priesthood, as that of the Druids properly so 

 called. Thus, Tigernach records the death of Morrough O'Carty, 

 Ard-draoi, and chief professor of Connaught, at the year of Christ 

 1067, when of course Druids were long extinct as a religious frater- 

 nity ; and it is worthy of remark, that Hyde, in his Dissertation on the 

 ancient Religion of Pei'sia, says, Dara signifies a priest — a learned man. 

 It seems most probable, that the name of Druid recoiled on Ireland 

 from Britain, and that the adoption was the more freely counte- 

 nanced, as the Magism of Ireland was, according to the most received 

 authorities, the stock whence Druidism sprang; for, as Dr. Campbell 

 expresses it, " the conceptions of British writers afford a stronger 

 presumption than even the pretensions of the Irish, that Ireland was 

 not only the more ancient nation, but that Druidism » ♦ * was 

 more early in Ireland than in Britain, and that Britain imported it 

 from Ireland. "f That it did not come from Germany, the great "ofli- 

 cina gentium," appears from Caesar, who mentions the Germans as 



* Mona Antiqua, p. 107. -]- Campbell's Strictures, p. 67. 



