ORIGIN OF DRUIDISM POKORNY. 587 



Another conjecture may be permitted here. May we not see in this 

 doctrine a remnant of the belief of the j^re-Celtic aborigines? The 

 belief in transmigration is mostly found among peoples of low cul- 

 ture, and the next step is reincarnation, of which, indeed, Irish 

 myths exhibit some instances. 



D'Arbois has shown that the Druids were originally the priests of 

 only one Celtic tribe, who first conquered a part of Britain. Now, 

 it is passing strange that between brother tribes, whose customs, 

 manners, and language did not vary much, there should have existed 

 such a fundamental difference. For nothing characterizes a people 

 better than its religious views. Druidism, as will be seen, is con- 

 trary to Indo-European religion. There is only one way to explain 

 such a peculiar, almost essefltial difference which should have existed 

 between the Gaels and the Gauls before the conquest of Gaul by 

 Caesar. 



It is true that the Gauls received Druidism from their brothers 

 in Britain, but these latter likewise did not have the institution when 

 they crossed the channel ; for the Druids w^ere the priests of the pre- 

 Celtic aborigines of the British Isles, and were adopted from them 

 by the Celts. 



The Gaels, a main branch of the Celts, when, in the fifth or sixth 

 century B. C, they conquered Ireland, and from there parts of 

 Wales and Scotland, had already attained to a higher gTade of 

 civilization. Their rulers were priest kings, whom at that time we 

 also find among the Greeks, Latins, and Germans, with whom the Celts 

 shared many other traits of Indo-European descent. We have no 

 reason to assume that at that early time the Celts differed much 

 in custom and religion from their surrounding Indo-European brother 

 tribes, which would have to be supposed if the institution of Druid- 

 ism existed with them from prehistoric times. Even in historic time 

 there are found with the Irish kings traces of the former priesthood, 

 which had developed in the remotest past from the divine veneration 

 of mighty sorcerers ; for the belief of the savage that his divine ^ ruler 

 is the center of the universe, who with a motion of the hand can upset 

 the course of nature, and therefore can protect him from the dangers 

 which, in his opinion, threaten every common mortal through in- 

 numerable taboos, was also once held by the Inclo-Europeans, though 

 long before they had left their common cradle. 



Such belief in the divinity of kings appears in Homer, when he 

 speaks of a king (Odyssey, XIX, 109) who honors the gods and 

 mightily reigns, and on account of the piety of the king- the earth 

 is fertile and the people prosperous, and traces of like belief appear 

 also in Ireland and Wales. Thus the Celts believed that crop failures 



1 See Frazer, The Golden Bough, London, 1900, vol. 1, pp. 233, 234. 



2 Frazer, The Golden Bough, vol. 1, pp. 156, 157. 



