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was the leading feature of the religion of the ancient Britons ; 

 just as it is, at this day, of that of the Indians ; the caste of the 

 Druids strongly resembling in position and privileges the caste 

 of the Brahmins. Infact, the very existence of a sacerdotal caste 

 invested with such powers, and regarded with such reverence 

 as the Druids were, betrays the oriental origin of the system. 

 Nothing like it existed in any other western nation ; not even 

 among the Germans, the close neighbours of the Gauls and Britons, 

 was there anything of the kind. Such a connection is by no 

 means improbable, when we recollect that there is also an un- 

 doubted connection between the languages of Britain and India, 

 the Celtic and the Sanscrit : when, moreover, it is remembered, 

 that ethnologists are agreed in the belief that extensive mi- 

 grations took place in pre-historic times from central Asia, the 

 great seat of the Aryan races, into western Europe. 



Such remarks are as interesting as they are suggestive, but 

 seeing that the subject of this paper is " Mistletoe" and not 

 " Draidism," with all due deference, the text has been allowed 

 to remain. If it has been shown, successfully, that Mistletoe has 

 been held in honour from the times of the Britons to our own ; 

 that it has always been connected with the celebration of the 

 New Tear, and supposed to have certain mysterious virtues ; that 

 even among races of other name and blood — such as the hardy 

 conquerors of Roman Britain and their Scandinavian kinsmen — 

 it held an honoured place ; — a history has been traced for it, more 

 ancient and more romantic, than almost any other native plant 

 can boast. Its other rivals of Christmas-tide, the holly and the 

 ivy, scarcely vie with it in ancient fame and wide-spread honour: 

 only the oak, on which it grows, has associations more venerable 

 and historic : only the yew carries back the thoughts to a more 

 remote antiquity, or into more poetic scenes : and none of these 

 has the same homely charm, or is so exclusively connected with 

 Christmas and the New Tear, with England and with Hereford- 

 shire. 



