There remained of them in Ealga, With many artificers and warriors; They would not leave Breaghmach— Six demon-like _Druadh_— Necromancy and idolatry, illusion, In a fair and well-walled house. Plundering in ships, bright poems, By them were taught; The honouring of _sreod_ and omens, Choice of weather, lucky times, The watching the voice of birds They practised without disguise.[227] In another legend, when Cruithnecan, who had settled in Pictland, demands wives for his people from the Irish, ‘he swore by heaven and by earth, and the sun and the moon, by the dew and the elements, by the sea and the land, that the legal succession among them for ever should be on the mother’s side.’[228] There is a poem, attributed to Columba, in which the same account is given of the pagan system opposed to him. He says— It is not with the _sreod_ our destiny is, Nor with the bird on the top of the twig, Nor with the trunk of a knotty tree, Nor with a _sordan_ hand in hand. And again— I adore not the voice of birds, Nor the _sreod_, nor a destiny on the earthly world, Nor a son, nor chance, nor woman; My _Drui_ is Christ the Son of God.[229] The indications afforded by Adamnan of the characteristics of the pagan system which Columba found opposed to him among the northern Picts, are quite in harmony with these notices. Thus, as we found King Laogaire with his Druid opposed to Patrick during his mission, so we find, in Adamnan’s account of Columba’s mission, Broichan the ‘Magus’ occupying an influential position at the court of King Brude, whose tutor he had been.[230] We have already seen that in the Book of Armagh the term ‘Magi’ is applied to those who in the Irish documents are termed _Druadh_; and that the one is the recognised equivalent in Latin for the other there can be no doubt, for in a tract contained in the Leabhar Breac, giving an account of the visit of the Magi to the infant Jesus, the title is, ‘Of the story of the “_Druad_” incipit;’ and in another tract in the same book, giving an account of the parentage and country of King Herod, and of the ‘Magi,’ or Wise Men of the East, the account of the latter begins, ‘It shall now be inquired what was the family of these _Druad_, and what country they came from.’[231] Adamnan too uses the name as one well known, when he tells of a robber who dwelt in the island of Colonsay and was in the habit of crossing to Mull and stealing the young seals which were bred for the use of the monastery of Iona, and whom he terms Erc Mocudruidi, or Erc the Druid’s son.[232]