522 Discovery of Horse-heads, By Dr. E. C. Robertson. 



" From world and cares your peaceful tribe removes. 



" You teach, that souls, eased of their mortal load, 



*' Nor with grim Pluto, make their dark abode, 



" Nor wander in pale troops, along the silent flood, 



" But on new regions cast, resume their reign, 



" Content to govern earthly frames again. 



" Thus death is nothing but the middle line, 



" Betwixt what lives, will come, and what has been. 



" Happy the people by your charms possesst ! 



" Nor fate, nor fears disturb their peaceful breast, 



" On certain dangers, unconcerned they run, 



"And meet with pleasure, what they would not shun ; 



" Defy death's slighted power and bravely scorn 



" To spare a life, that will so soon return." — (Pharsalia). 



Albion itself seems to have acquired, no doubt from its being the 

 higb seat of worship and learning, possessing its Bards or poets, 

 its Yates or sacrifice! s, and above all its Druids, priests versed in 

 all Eastern lore, whether in philosophy, moral or natural, or in 

 astronomy, a weird and almost awful reputation, "In Germany," 

 says Kuhn, ''it was of old an established belief, that Britain was 

 the island of souls, and such to this day it is believed to be, under 

 its new name of England." It is in Armorica a popular belief, 

 that the dead betake themselves, at the moment of their depar- 

 ture, to the parish-priest of Brasper, whose dog escorts them to 

 Britain.* 



From what has gone before, the inference I think cannot be 

 resisted, that in this island, more than anywhere else in Western 

 Europe, superstitious practices, connected with early Eastern 

 forms of worship, might be expected long to linger : for in Eng- 

 land pre-eminently did a priesthood, evidently eastern in origin, 

 hold sway so lately as the invasion of Britain by Julius Csesar ; 

 and if these Druids, with their Vates or sacrificers, came from 

 India with the earliest emigrants from the East, what is more 

 likely than that they should have brought along with them the 

 rites and venerations of their native country. And as chief among 

 the sacrificial rites of India was the Aswamheda, there is strong 

 reason for believing, that traditions of the wondrous grandeur 

 and solemnity which accompanied the sacrifice of the white horse, 

 emblem of the sun, in their fatherland, would long dwell in the 



*Here again we have an Indian superstition. Vedic accounts say, that 

 the wind in the shape of a dog, accompanies and protects the soul on its 

 journey. In German mythology, the dog is an embodiment of the wind, 

 and attendant on the dead. 



