ORIGIN OF DRUIDISM POKORNY. 586 



And, indeed, this conquest seems to liave taken place between 300 and 200 

 B. C. Tlie Gauls found the Druids in Britain and transplanted this institution 

 to the continent. Julius Caesar says explicitly : " It is assumed that the system 

 found in Britain was thence transplanted to Gaul, and at present those who 

 desire to know it more carefully mostly go thither to obtain information " 

 (Disciplina in Brittania reperta atque inde in Galliam translata esse existima- 

 tur, et nunc qui diligentius earn rem cognoscere volunt plerumque illo discendi 

 causa proficiscuntur). We conclude from this that the Druids were originally 

 a Gaelic institution, at first peculiar to the Gaels, not including the Gauls. 

 The Gaels are a Celtic tribe, whose language survives in Ireland and the High- 

 lands of Scotland. By this tribe, who for a long time dominated the British 

 isles, Druidism was introduced into the vast regious south of the Channel be- 

 tween the Atlantic Ocean and the Rhine ; but it was unknown in Gallia Cisal- 

 pina and in the ancient Celtic territories east of the Rhine, as also in the 

 Danube basin and Asia Minor, where the dru-nemeton (chief-sanctuary) is in 

 nowise connected with the Druids. 



So far d'Arbois de Jubainville, 



Before proceeding there may be given a brief summary of the 

 accounts of the Druids by the ancient writers. 



According to Caesar there were in Gaul two ruling classes, the 

 military nobles and the Druids, who were free from military service 

 and from j)aying tributes. On account of these advantages many 

 were attracted to this vocation, which was quite an easy matter, since 

 " Druidism was based not on birth but on the gaining and training 

 of novices." ^ 



The Druids were philosophers and teachers of the youths. They 

 taught not only theology and mythology, but also much of the course 

 of the stars, of the nature of all things, and the magnitude of the 

 universe. 



Of all the moral teachings of the Druids only a single sentence is 

 preserved (Diogenes Laertius, proemium, 5) : " To be pious toward 

 the gods, to do wrong to no man, and to practice fortitude." But 

 their chief doctrine was that the souls do not die, but pass after death 

 into another body. So strong was the popular belief in it that credit 

 relations were entered upon with the promise to settle them in the 

 other world. The novices had to learn a large number of verses by 

 heart, some of them spending as many as 20 years in study. Of the 

 tradition of the Gaulish Druids almost nothing survived, because 



Britian. And now I am firmly convinced that this theory is the only correct one. It 

 also agrees best with the hoary Irish traditiods which report of immigrations from 

 Spain (i. e., western France). The older theory, according to which the Gauls had 

 come to the British Islands already in the tenth century B. C, is not only entirely 

 unprovable but there is everything against the assumption that the Celts had already 

 at that early time penetrated so far westward, as I hope to prove at a later time. 

 The conquest of Ireland is certainly connected with the great movement of the Celtic 

 peoples of the sixth century. From Ireland the Gaels then conquered parts of Wales 

 and Scotland. Somewhere in the fourth century B. C. the Brythonic Celts of northern 

 France conquered Britain, where they met in the west with the Gaels, who had come over 

 from Ireland. A further immigration of Brythonic Celts (Belgae) followed there in the 

 course of the third century B. C. 



1 Schrader, Reallexikon dor Indog. Altertumskunde, ii. p. 643. 



