History of the Anglo-Saxons, from the Earliest Period to the Norman Conquest: Second Edition — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
History of the Anglo-Saxons, from the Earliest Period to the Norman Conquest: Second Edition
John Stuart Mill · en
To Julius Cæsar we are indebted for the clearest description of the
religious rites and ceremonies of the Druids; and as he beheld them
administered by these Priests to the ancient Britons, so they had no
doubt existed for several centuries before the Roman invasion, and
are therefore matters of history, prior to that period. There was a
wild poetry about their heathenish creed, something gloomy, and grand,
and supernatural in the dim, dreamy old forests where their altars
were raised: in the deep shadows which hung over their rude grey
cromlechs, on which the sacred fire burned. We catch glimpses between
the gnarled and twisted stems of those magnificent and aged oaks of
the solemn-looking druid, in his white robe of office, his flowing
beard blown for a moment aside, and breaking the dark green of the
underwood with the lower portion of his sweeping drapery, while he
stands like a grave enchanter, his deep sunk and terrible eyes fixed
upon the blue smoke as it curls upward amid the foliage--fixed, yet
only to appearance; for let but a light and wandering expression
pass over one single countenance in that assembled group, and those
deep grey piercing eyes would be seen glaring in anger upon the
culprit, and whether it were youth or maiden they would be banished
from the sacrifice, and all held accursed who dared to commune with
them--a curse more terrible than that which knelled the doom of
the excommunicated in a later day. There were none bold enough to
extinguish the baleful fire which was kindled around the wicker idol,
when its angry flames went crackling above the heads of the human
victims who were offered up to appease their brutal gods. In the centre
of their darksome forests were their rich treasures piled together,
the plunder of war; the wealth wrested from some neighbouring tribe;
rich ornaments brought by unknown voyagers from distant countries in
exchange for the tin which the island produced; or trophies won by
the British warriors who had fought in the ranks of the Gauls on the
opposite shore--all piled without order together, and guarded only
by the superstitious dread which they threw around everything they
possessed; for there ever hung the fear of a dreadful death over the
head of the plunderer who dared to touch the treasures which were
allotted to the awful druids. They kept no written record of their
innermost mysteries, but amid the drowsy rustling of the leaves and
the melancholy murmuring of the waters which ever flowed around their
wooded abodes, they taught the secrets of their cruel creed to those
who for long years had aided in the administration of their horrible
ceremonies, who without a blanched cheek or a quailing heart had grown
grey beneath the blaze of human sacrifices, and fired the wicker pile
with an unshaken hand--these alone were the truly initiated. They left
the younger disciples to mumble over matters of less import--written
doctrines which taught how the soul passed into other bodies in