2°d S. V. 128., Junk 12. '68.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



481 



of Gaul ; many of them reckoned 10,000 students, 

 some of whom remained voluntarily twenty years 

 "in disciplina." The remains of the Druidic theo- 

 sophy which have come down in the old British 

 language certainly embody a religion — whatever 

 the popular impressions to the contrary may be — 

 as pure in all moral respects as Christianity itself, 

 and as superior as light to darkness to the mytho- 

 logical Pantheism of Greece and Rome. It is of 

 course in one sense true that Christianity brought 

 the immortality of the soul to li^ht; but it is also 

 true that before the birth of Christianity, such im- 

 mortality was the cardinal tenet in the Druidic reli- 

 gion of our ancestors. " In primis (states Csesar) hoc 

 volunt persuadere ani,mas non interire, atque hoc 

 maxime ad virtutem excitari putant." — "Above 

 all things they inculcate the immortality of the 

 soul, affirming that this truth is the greatest of all 

 motives to virtue." I would also observe that the 

 principle of vicarious atonement, on which Chris- 

 tianity rests, was another fundamental of Druid- 

 ism, nor is it anywhere more clearly laid down in the 

 Scriptures than it is by Caesar himself eighty years 

 before it received its consummation, and conse- 

 quently its abolition, in the crucifixion on Cal- 

 vary — " Quod pro vita hominis, nisi hominis vita 

 reddatur nou posse aliter Deorura iiamortalium 

 numen placari arbitrantur Druidse" {Lih. vi. c. 

 xvi.). — "The Druids hold that by no other way 

 )Jban the ransoming of man's life by the life of 

 man is reconciliation with the Divine justice of 

 the immortal Gods possible." In this and other 

 important points Druidism may be said to have 

 taught Christianity before Christianity itself ijras 

 founded ; hence the ease with which Britain, the 

 central seat of Druidism, became, as early as the 

 second century, " prima Christiana gens," the first 

 Christian nation, Christianity elsewhere laeing con- 

 fined to families. 



7. In the primitive laws of Britain, as contained 

 in the code of Dyfnwal of Cornwall, we have the 

 basis of the common law of England, the bulwark 

 in all ages of our civil liberties against the Roman 

 and canon laws. It is the key to all our British 

 as opposed to Continental institutions, and the 

 most splendlii relic we possess of Prse-Roraan 

 Europe. Eastern civilisation has produced no- 

 thing resembling it in form, far less in its spirit of 

 freedom. 



8. The last proof I adduce is the language — the 

 -most important monument of a people's history, 



the least fallible index of the civilisation of the 

 past. The British language is homogeneous, and 

 self-contained with all its roots in itself; every 

 word is a picture to the eye, hence its extraordi- 

 nary oratorical and poetic power. As the poetry 

 of a language i^ that which imparts to it its 

 vitality, I content myself with transcribing the 

 opinion of the editor of the American Theologia 

 Sacra on the British Poetic System; "All other 



metrical systems compared to the British Bardic 

 are, in point of elaborate polish and regularity, 

 little better than loose prose or barbaric jingling." 

 Now this system also, to which ancient Nineveh, 

 Egypt, Assyria, India, can offer " nil simile aut 

 secundum," was in as active and general operation 

 throughout the Druidic colleges of Britain before 

 the Roman era as the classical examinations are 

 now at Cambridge and Oxford. The Druids 

 taught Divinity through the medium of metri- 

 cal language, regulated by the most stringent 

 rules. The Druidic alumni, states Caesar, "learn 

 a great number of verses by heart." The proso- 

 dial canons of Bardism were expressly framed to 

 prevent the possibility of depraving or corrupting 

 the metrical texts in which the Druidic religion 

 was conveyed. With the substitution of Chris- 

 tianity the original object disappeared, but the 

 canons still remain in force ; and the difficulties 

 to be surmounted by a Welsh bard before he can 

 produce a composition which will pass their ordeal 

 would astound an English versifier : yet there is 

 no land so full as Wales of native poets ; the lan- 

 guage breeds them. The system, as it preceded 

 Caesar's era, has never, not even during the mur- 

 derous persecutions of Druidism by the old Ro- 

 man government, been since extinct. It wag 

 witnessed in Gaul by Lucan, as any one may wit- 

 ness it now at a Welsh Eisteddfod — 



" Vos quoque qui fortes animas belloque peremptas 

 Laudibus in longutn vates diinittitis aevum, 

 Plurima securi fudistis carmina, Bardi." 



Whether, then, military organisation, engineer- 

 ing skill, material monuments, religion, philoso^ 

 phy, poetry, or social government be adopted as 

 the criterion of civilisation, there appears to have 

 existed a Prae-Roman civilisation in Britain which 

 loses little by comparison with the cotemporary 

 state of things in the peninsulas of Italy and 

 Greece. Of pithy and manly oratory the speech 

 of Caractacus at Rome remains yet a model, and 

 it is probably a fair specimen of the old Druidic 

 style of address. On especial distinction in cer? 

 tain of the " Fine Arts" the Briton has never 

 prided himself; Italy is still his mistress : but in 

 the solid desiderata of social polity, laws, liberty, 

 morality, I am inclined to believe the Old Island 

 ha4 then, .^ nosy, the best of it. R. W. Morgan. 



There is little hope of our getting any rational 

 account of the social and political state of the 

 ancient Britons so long as the fashion prevails of 

 excluding all other historical testimony respecting 

 them but that of their Roman conquerors. Since 

 the days of Julius Caesar the absurd and un- 

 generous notion has been stereotyped, that our 

 primitive race was sunk in the lowest depths of 

 ignorance and barbarism, until happily rescued 

 from thence by his f highly civilised " country- 



