THE RITUAL OF BARROWS AND CIRCLES. 23 1 



Strabo declares that the Gauls augur from human victims and 

 never sacrifice without the Druids. 



And Caesar says that the Druids offer human sacrifices because 

 of a belief that the immortal gods can be appeased only by the 

 life of man. But he adds that criminals are a more acceptable 

 oflfering than the innocent. 



In view of such statements as these, it is well to recall the 

 charges laid against the Jews by Roman and mediceval writers of 

 killing Christian children on every Easter Day. INIatthew Paris, 

 who lived at the time of the incident, relates that a Christian 

 child, eight years of age, was stolen and crucified by the Jews of 

 Lincoln in 1250, and that Semitic deputies came from all parts of 

 England to be present at the ceremony. And it appears that for 

 this asserted crime eighteen persons were hanged. Surely such 

 misconceptions must have been engendered by racial, religious, 

 and other antipathies. But, in addition, Suetonius and Caesar 

 were waging war against the Druids, and the extent to which evil 

 deeds can be provoked by armed hostility we know by the career 

 of Napoleon, who poisoned his own soldiers who lay wounded in 

 his own hospital rather than be burdened with their care. 



It must be considered, too, that the Gauls and Britons had no 

 gaols or penal settlements, and that the only punishment for the 

 worst offenders when fines were inadequate, and the only way of 

 dealing with prisoners of war, was by mutilation or death. And 

 it is not unlikely that in the fury of a nation unjustly invaded the 

 haruspices took advantage of such executions for the purposes of 

 augur}'. 



But even their traducers speak well of the Druids. Caesar 

 observes that the judicial institution of the Gauls, by which an 

 assembly met once a year in a consecrated spot to settle disputes, 

 was thought to have been introduced from Britain, and that those 

 who wished to become better acquainted with it generally repaired 

 thither for the purpose.* The Druids' knowledge of the motions 

 of the heavens and the stars is attested by both Caesar and 



* De Bel, Gal. vi. cc. 13 et seq. 



