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facilitated Ms transmigration. It was their mode, their custom, 
and doubtless these spectacles were as gratifying to the ancient 
Britons as, to the modern English, the sight of male and female 
acrobats risking their lives and limbs in their service. 
We should bear in mind that the sermons” connected 
with the national religion of the ancient Britons were as 
interesting as modern bull-fights. All could hear the shrieks 
of the victims, if indeed these were not drowned by the 
clangour of musical instruments and the howlings of the 
animals sacrificed. 
“ An idol named Crom-cruach, consisting of a stone, capped with gold, 
about which stood twelve other rough stones, was universally worshipped in 
Ireland before the introduction of Christianity. St. Patrick has the credit 
of overthrowing this horrible idol, to which the Irish sacrificed the firstborn 
of every species.”* 
A plain in Leitrim still retains the appellation of The 
Place of Slaughter.” The stone which stands most to the east 
among the Maeni Mr ion } which I have depicted above, is 
reputed traditionally to have been the place of sacrifice of 
the babes, and there was connected with it a sort of altar 
pavement, the remains of which may be seen in the sketch I 
made. 
The Druids had far too keen an appreciation of the popular 
mind of the day to suppose the masses would be content with 
scientific lectures. “ Things lovely and of good report ” would 
perhaps have been as little able to fill the temple at Avesbury 
with worshippers as to meet the taste of the millions at the 
present day. The Druids kept to themselves their science 
and the best part of their creed. They left to the public their 
religion, or rather took it into their own hands, for no sacrifice 
could be offered without their help. By the way in which the 
blood flowed they read the mind of God, for was not the blood 
itself in part divine ? The channels for the blood to flow in 
are mentioned by Borlase and other writers, and still shown, 
if I remember right, in Brittany. This kind of religion seems 
to have prevailed wherever these so-called Druidical temples 
were reared, from the land of the Amorites, the Tyrrhene, 
and perhaps Iberian races, to the far-distant Mexico and 
Peru — distant in point of space, but perhaps of kindred origin. 
Mr. Fergusson may, I think, find evidence enough, if he looks 
for it, that the religion of the Druids was the true national 
religion, and that no sectarianism disturbed its peaceful course. 
The Island of Saints, by the Author (1855), p. 180. 
