O God! why wilt thou not drive from us This mist which envelopes our number? The host which has deprived us of our judgment, The host which proceeds round the cairn? He is a son of storm who betrays us. My _Drui_—he will not refuse me— Is the son of God and truth with purity.[237] We thus see that the paganism which characterised the Irish tribes and the nation of the northern Picts exhibits precisely the same features; and all the really ancient notices we possess of it are in entire harmony with each other in describing it as a sort of fetichism, which peopled all the objects of nature with malignant beings to whose agency its phenomena were attributed, while a class of persons termed _Magi_ and _Druadh_ exercised great influence among the people from a belief that they were able through their aid to practise a species of magic or witchcraft, which might either be used to benefit those who sought their assistance, or to injure those to whom they were opposed. How unlike this is in every respect to the popular conception of what is called the Druidical religion will be at once apparent. The process by which this monstrous system has been evoked was simply to invest these same _Druadh_ with all the attributes which Cæsar and the classical writers give to the Druids of Gaul, and to transfer to those northern regions all that they tell of Druidism in Gaul; to connect that with the stone monuments—those silent records of a remote age, and possibly of a different race, which have outlived all record of their time; and to assume that the stone circles and cromlechs, which are undoubtedly sepulchral monuments,[238] represent temples and altars. Add to this some false etymologies of terms which are supposed to contain the name of Bel or Baal,[239] and we have at once the popular conception of the Druidical religion, with its hierarchy of Archdruids, Druids, Vates, and Eubates, and all its paraphernalia of temples, altars, human sacrifices and the worship of Baal.[240] [Sidenote: Proceedings of St. Columba in converting the northern Picts.]