VOL. XVII. (2) PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS 145 



The Druids were not resorted to occasionally, but dominated 

 the Celts always, in all departments of Hfe." It has been 

 urged that many Druidic beliefs, that of shape-shifting, for 

 instance, practices like human sacrifice, functions Hke judging 

 or demarcating boundaries, are opposed to Aryan sentiment 

 and have their analogies among the non-Aryan tribes who 

 serve the village communities in India. But the Druids were 

 more than occasional officiants at Celtic rites, and the hostihty 

 shown to them by the Romans is inexphcable on the view that 

 they resembled the pariah priests of India. It is clearly im- 

 possible to define certain rites as non-Aryan, because the 

 Aryans, like other races, had a savage past, and inherited from 

 their barbarous ancestors many behefs and practices inconsis- 

 tent with the higher culture which they afterwards attained. 

 With the curious conservatism of backward races in matters 

 of behef and ritual, such behefs and rites would, even if they 

 were often misunderstood or misinterpreted, tend to survive 

 when the race had attained a higher culture. 



Here I may remark that in Gloucestershire we have the 

 distinction of possessing an unique Celtic God. Some years ago a 

 temple was excavated at Lydney, which provided several in- 

 scriptions with a record of his name, and a mosaic which stood 

 on the floor of his fane. One inscription has been supposed to 

 identify this god, whom the Romano-British people knew by the 

 name of Nodens, with the Latin god of war. Mars. A httle bronze 

 crescent found on the spot, representing the deity as a crowned, 

 beardless personage, driving a four-horse chariot, has been 

 compared with figures of the Sun god or of Neptune. Sir John 

 Rhys, who has investigated the question with his usual learning, 

 is inclined to think that Nodens was a god of water.' His 

 name, which survives in Lydney, the modern designation of 

 the place, seems to be identical with the Welsh Niid, and the 

 occurrence of the same root in the name of Ludgate, leads him 

 to suggest that he once possessed a fane which stood on or near 

 the spot now occupied by the Cathedral of St. Paul. Professor 

 Anwyl, another great Welsh scholar, thinks that his name 

 means the mist, as it survives with this signification in certain 

 dialects of southern Wales. At any rate, whatever his title 



I Hibbert Lectures on The Origin and Growth of Religion as illustrated in Celtic Heathendom 

 123 pp. : and see MacCuIlock, in Hastings, Encyclopa-dia 0/ Religion and Ethics, iii. 287. 



