586 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1910. 



they strictly prohibited reducing it to writing. The case was different 

 in Ireland. The author of the " Yellow Book of Lecan " relates that 

 St. Patrick burned 180 Druidic books, and, following his example, all 

 the Christians did the same, until all the Druidic books were annihi- 

 lated. The Druids were also soothsayers, and assisted at sacrifices. 



They assembled annually in the lands of the Carnutes, when law 

 cases were submitted to their decision. The utmost punishment that 

 they could inflict was excommunication. Those affected by it were 

 avoided by everybody and treated as outlaws. At the head of the 

 Gaulish Druids stood the chief Druid, who was created, after the 

 death of his predecessor, by election. 



Caesar seems to comprise under the name of " Druides " also the 

 bards and seers (vatis) who by later writers are treated separately. 



The similarity of the Druidic doctrine to that of Pythagoras gave 

 occasion for many fables. That the Druids did not live as monks 

 (a theory set up by Alexander Bertrand) appears from the fact that 

 the Druid Divitiacus, Caesar's friend, had wife and children, and 

 that the Irish Druids also were mostly married. 



Criminals ^^'ere sacrificed to the gods, but also innocents. Large 

 figures of wicker work were filled with living persons and set afire. 



The Romans soon prohibited Druidism, but it continued in secret, 

 and the most prominent Gaulish youth practiced the doctrines in 

 secreted woods, as Mela (45 A. D.) relates. 



Thirty-five years later Pliny the Elder draws an entirely different 

 picture of the Druids. He shows them as priests of the oak, as 

 physicians and sorcerers, as common charlatans. They prepare from 

 the poison of snakes the nwstic egg which guarantees the winning of 

 every laAvsuit. 



How is this change to be explained ? Was it a result of their sup- 

 pression that they laid aside their lofty doctrines in order to make a 

 living in a less dignified way? It will presently be shown that the 

 Druids had been ere that necromancers. But how is it to be ex- 

 plained that alongside of such serious knowledge they engaged in 

 low sorcery? For the present it will suffice to point out that often 

 the wisest men are the greatest charlatans, since they know that the 

 large majority is governed not so much by lofty wisdom as by cun- 

 ning trickery. 



As regards the belief of the Druids in immortality and the doctrine 

 of transmigration, d'Arbois quotes many examples for the belief 

 of the Celts in a continued existence in the other world, but declares 

 the assumption of the doctrine of reincarnation an error which 

 arose from the fact that the Greeks who heard of Druid myths in 

 which transformations occurred falsely interpreted them and thus 

 came to the belief that the Druids taught the transmigration of souls 

 after the belief of Pythagoras. 



