Masaryk University

Faculty of Arts

Department of English
and American Studies
English Language and Literature

Alena Pohludkov

Druids as a Cultural Icon

Bachelors Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Michael Matthew Kaylor, Ph. D.

2010

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently,

using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.
..
Authors signature

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank my supervisor Michael Matthew Kaylor, Ph.D. for his advice
and helpful guidance.

Table of Contents
1. Introduction.........................................................................................................5
2. The Revival of the Druids..................................................................................8
3. The Heyday of the Druids Fame.....................................................................14
3.1. The Influence of the Romanticism..........................................................15
3.2.
The Druids Supporting the British Kingdom.........................................19
4. The Alienation of the 19th Century and the Reweaving of the Myth...........23
4.1. The Disillusion with the Druids..................................................................24
4.2. The Druids and Universal Mythology.........................................................29
5. Conclusion.........................................................................................................35
6. Bibliography......................................................................................................39
7. Resum...42
8. Resum v etin...43

1. Introduction
The Druids are a group of people from ancient history about whom we hear and
read a lot, but in reality we know hardly anything about. The problem of the Druids as
real historical people is that there is no tangible evidence of their existence: they left no

writings; they cannot be envisaged, as there are no ancient pictures of them; nor are
there any physical remains that could be positively linked to them. As regards the
etymology of the word Druid, Philip Shallcrass argues that the word Druid may
indeed derive from an Indo-European root dreo-vid, meaning one who knows the
truth. Alternatively, it may be that the dreo element is an intensive prefix giving
Druid the meaning of very wise one. In practice it was probably understood to mean
simply wise one, or philosopher-priest (Shallcrass). By contrast, Chris Witcombe
remarks that the Roman writer Pliny the Elder (Gaius Plinius Secundus, 23/24-79 A.D.)
believed it to be a cognate with the Greek word drus, meaning an oak. Dru-wid
combines the word roots oak and knowledge (wid means to know or to see as in the Sanskrit vid). The oak (together with the rowan and hazel) was an important
sacred tree to the Druids. In the Celtic social system, Druid was a title given to learned
men and women possessing oak knowledge (or oak wisdom) (Witcombe). On the
whole, we can say that the word Druid was one given to experts in magical and
religious practice by the peoples speaking Celtic languages who inhabited north-western
Europe around 2,000 years ago (Hutton, Under the Spell of the Druids). That is all
that we can unquestionably say about the Druids. Those who have tried to say more,
Ronald Hutton argues, have relied on two different groups of sources (Under the Spell
of the Druids): one group consists of the works of the ancient Greeks and Romans. The
advantage of these works is that they were written by people who lived in the time when
the Druids still existed. On the other hand, the sources of the Greek and Roman authors
were not their own experiences with the Druids, but second-hand information, of which
the plausibility is not known and which was already old at that time.
The second group of sources is medieval Irish literature. Not only are the
references to the Druids in these texts more frequent than those in Greek and Roman

works, but the Druids were once a part of Irish culture. The problem of these medieval
Irish texts is that they were written, perhaps even imaginatively created, centuries after
the Irish converted to Christianity. In that time, Druids by definition did not exist.
Moreover, before they were Christians the Irish depended only on an oral tradition
about which we cannot be sure of its accuracy. These are all reasons why it is very
difficult to talk about the Druids as real historical people.
By contrast, Ronald Hutton claims that we can know a great deal about the ways
in which the Druids have been regarded, and acted out, in modern times, counting the
latter as beginning in the years around 1500 (The Druids xi). That is to say that the
important place which belongs to the Druids in the history does not belong to a real
ancient people, but to legendary figures. The present thesis focuses on how the Druids
had been represented and described in British literature since the early 16th century to
the 19th century, particularly how the concept of the Druids developed in the
consciousness of British society. The objective of this paper is to examine whether the
Druids made familiar by literature reflect the real figures of ancient Druids or they are
fabrications that have little in common with their real models.
Various images and uses of the concept tell us a lot about the society of a certain
period, as they reflect its social, cultural and intellectual aspects. The image of the
Druid becomes, in short, an image of the society that projects it (Ackroyd). The revival
of the Druids as a subject in the 16th and 17th centuries was connected with the
Renaissance search for identity. They were brought back and taken as a common ground
on which a national identity could be created. As the British were alarmed by having
realized the destructive power of time on traditions, monuments and glory, the Druids
became as well figures that provided people with a sense that antiquities had been
preserved. The 18th-century zealous though immature historical research and Romantic

excitement about natural beauties altered the Druids into mystical and admirable cavedwellers with a wide knowledge of natural secrets. In addition, the establishment of
Great Britain in 1707 helped the Druids to consolidate their role as national ancestors,
since the identity of the English and Scots as one nation was based on them. After
experiencing this heyday of their fame, the Druids became less popular in the 19 th
century. The lack of evidence of the Druids as ancient priests living in harmony with
nature and the radicalism that seized Europe in the second half of the 18 th century
caused the Druids to be seen predominantly as bloodthirsty sacrificers who slay
innocent men in order to foretell the future from their entrails. Despite these negative
images, they found their place in universal mythology and became patriarchs who had
brought to the British Isles the original religion revealed by Jehovah.
The focus of the thesis is on the period from the 16 th through the 19th centuries,
as these are the most important centuries for the conception of the Druids: in this period,
the Druids are revived and actually created with all the images currently associated with
them. The Druids have been drawn upon by authors of books as well as film makers in
the 20th and 21st centuries; however, these have primarily re-used images that were
invented in the preceding centuries.

2. The Revival of the Druids

In the Middle Ages the Druids were neglected because they did not inspire
knights to great heroic deeds nor exalt Christianity. They neither functioned particularly
well as heathen figures that could be zealously hated. Hutton claims that there was

nothing particularly exotic or demonic about them. Therefore there was simply no point
in writing about them (Origins of Modern Druidry 5).
Nonetheless, this situation changed significantly in the 15th century when the
Druids came back to life. The awaken of the interest in the Druids was connected with
the arrival of the Renaissance, as one of its key concepts was the pursuit of national
identity grounded not only on common culture and language, but also on common
history. Thus scholars started to look eagerly into the ancient past in order to find
common ancestors whose bravery and glory would provide history great enough for a
nation to be based on it. Among them there were the Druids.
As full scholarly attention was turned to the ancient past in the quest for the
national history, a new approach of studying the history emerged: antiquarianism. The
focus of the antiquarianism was the distant past and detailed recordings of its material
evidence. Since the society of the late Elizabethan/ early Jacobean England became
preoccupied by the Renaissance feeling of the wreck and destruction accomplished by
Time upon beauty, and power, and noble visible monuments, and the glory of the
great... (Curran 498), the scholars started struggling to preserve the ancient British
history and its continuation to their own age. They desired for continuity. However, the
history needs to be documented in order to be considered that it really occurred. History
which has never been written is history that does not exist. That was what worried
British scholars: there was no documented history that could be provided.
In the 16th century two great works of history were written, both of them
mentioning the Druids. The first work is Raphael Holinsheds Chronicles of England,
Scotland and Ireland, which describes the history and geography of the British Isles
from the Flood to the Elizabethan age. Hugh Cahill calls this work a product of a
growing English nationalism at the end of the 16 th century (Cahill), as the work

responds to the quest for national identity. The other great work was also historical and
geographical study of the Isles, Britannia by William Camden. He provided the
Elizabethan readers with a picture of Roman Britain pointing out that its traces can still
be found in the landscape. Thanks to these two works that enabled contemporary people
to look inside the history of their country the Druids found their place in the
consciousness of the British by the beginning of the 17th century.
One of the most significant 17th-century literary works dealing with the Druids
was Michael Draytons Poly-Olbion, poem glorifying British landscape and history
written in 1612. Drayton was an idealistic patriot who was distinguished by being
devout to England and its traditions. He esteemed history for what it could offer to
people and to a nation. In his opinion, it was history that gives people in any century the
feeling of having common traditions and past of which they can be proud. That is why
he was intrigued by Englands past, but also by hope in a great future of the kingdom.
The aim of Poly-Olbion was to collect the memories and sagas of Great Britain and to
fight with Time and save Antiquity (Curran 498). The Druids have an important role in
the poem since Drayton perceives them as providers of British history. Curran claims
that it is they [the Druids] who comprise Draytons best evidence for continuity (507).
They represent for him sustentation of ancient British history from prehistory to his own
time. The fact that preoccupied the poet was that what his contemporaries knew about
the Druids was from Roman sources since there was no documentation left by the
Britons themselves or the priests, who kept their learning, lore and history only in an
oral tradition. The purpose of such practice was to improve the memory and guard the
access to their knowledge. Nevertheless, thus the sources of information on new British
national heroes were texts produced by a foreign culture, which is connected to the
question of how accurately the real ancient Druids were pictured in those texts.

Moreover, the Romans were those who destroyed the Druids. Draytons awareness of
this paradox is also noticeable in the poem:
That to the Roman trust (on his report that stay)
Our truth from him to learn, as ignorant of ours
As we were then of his; except twere of his powers:
Who our wise Druids here unmercifully slew (Drayton, Vol. 1 157).
How could dead Druids be supposed to communicate the history, unaltered,
through centuries by an oral tradition? As Drayton claims the Britons themselves were
silent about their ancestors. Gildas, the oldest British author accessible, remarks that if
any histories of Britain had been written, by his time it has long been destroyed or lost.
He confesses that what he knew about the ancient Britain and its inhabitants was from
foreign writers. Therefore the texts of ancient authors, such as Caesar or Pliny, were the
only sources of information about the ancient Druids until the Renaissance. Whether
Drayton and his contemporaries liked it or not, they had to rely on Roman texts to get
any information about their distant past. Then, paradoxically, druids also represented
the poets anguished sense that this [ancient British] culture had not been preserved at
all (Curran 499). Renaissance scholars attempted to build their national identity and the
future of their country on these reports, however accurate or close to reality they were.
Therefore we can agree with Currans observation that the Druids are creatures born
from the Renaissance discovery of Roman Britain (499).
When Drayton mentions the Druids in the poem for the first time he describes
them as people who lived in darksome groves communicating with sprites and took
peoples lives (Vol. 1 3). The tradition and hard-heartedness of human sacrifices
practised by the Druids is intensified when Drayton writes that instantly they take one
body they go and take another one. However, as the poem goes on, the image of the
Druids that is emphasized is of fearless native British priests and judges who cultivated
learning and practiced mysterious rites by which they learned secrets of nature. Drayton
10

cannot deny that the Druids sacrificed people either to win gods favour or to foretell the
future. Yet the purpose of mentioning them throughout the whole poem is not to portray
them as barbaric and bloodthirsty, but to put stress on their wisdom and secret skills. In
the ancient history of Britain there are no other figures who would so significantly stand
out for their importance and who scholars could draw upon than the Druids. For the
Romans they were barbarians who foretold the future from entrails of sacrificed
humans, but at the same time Roman authors writing about the Druids also mentioned
their wide knowledge of religious as well as profane matters. He uses the Druids
because they help him establish the monumental idea that things British are the oldest
and finest around. The very cultivation of learning in Britain seemed to make the idea of
continuity more believable (Curran 521). Drayton emphasizes the prominence of
cultivation of learning in Britain since ancient times and stresses the role of the Druids
as its purveyors. In various places of the poem Drayton writes that the Druids instructed
the people of Gaul in their skills and rituals. He lets his readers have the impression that
Britain is the cradle of ancient knowledge for countries that have origins in old Gaul. In
the sixth song we read:
And after conquests got, residing them among,
First planted in those parts our brave courageous brood,
Whose natures so adherd unto their ancient blood,
As from them sprang those Priests, whose praise so far did sound,
Through whom that spacious Gaul was after so renownd (Drayton, Vol. 1 154).
Drayton indicates that the British nation sprang from the same blood as the
Druids who were lauded for their wisdom not only in Britain, but in other parts of
Europe as well. And it was them who taught their wisdom to Gaul. British culture is the
culture of the people who gave knowledge to Gaul and countries that originated from
that area. Acroyd mentions in his review for Huttons book Blood and Mistletoe that in

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England the Druids were also praised as the original founders of the University of
Cambridge (Acroyd).
Nevertheless, the Druidic practice of sacrifice has also its place in Poly-Olbion.
Reading Draytons description of the sacrificing of people we can with no doubts
perceive the horror of the rituals. On the other hand, there is no aversion expressed.
What he creates is a sensation of mystery while describing procedures of stabbing
people and offering them to gods or foretelling the future either from their viscera or
convulsion of dying bodies. The poet understands human sacrificing as part of the secret
skills of the Druids. In the ninth song Drayton describes more thoroughly one of the
rituals: on the sixth day of the Moon when the beginning of their year was approaching,
they found an aged oak on which mistletoe grew, erected there an altar and brought two
white bulls. They placed them on the altar and sacrificed them praying to gods that they
make their medicines powerful against all poisons and charms.
The fearless British Priests, under an aged oak,
Taking a milk-white bull, unstrained with the yoke,
And with an axe of gold from that Jove-sacred tree
The Mistletoe cut down; then with a bended knee
On th unhewd altar laid, put to the hallowd fires:
And whilst in the sharp flame the trembling flesh expires,
As their strong fury movd (when all the rest adore)
Pronouncing their desires the sacrifice before,
Up to th eternal heavn their bloodied hands did rear:
And, whilst the murmuring woods evn shuddred as with fear,
Preachd to the beardless youth, the souls immortal state,
To the other bodies still how it should transmigrate,
That to contempt of death them strongly might excite (Drayton, Vol. 2 14).
Drayton does not portray the Druids as bloodthirsty neither does he disdain
them. He speaks highly of them and depicts the rite with great respect. The Druids were
great people upon whom Drayton draws in order to maintain the continuity of history.
Hiller writes in his essay that:
When Drayton draws a picture of a Druid sacrifice he elaborates on Plinys
description to emphasize the macabre horror of the ceremony; but his images of animal
12

flesh quivering in the fire and savages in inspired and frenzied prayer reveal not
repugnance but a certain fascinated horror at the spectacle (12).
The importance of history for Drayton was in the lesson it could give. In PolyOlbion he exhibits the greatness and uniqueness of the country and of the people who
lived there. This is where the British should see inspiration for the future. As the Druids
pronounce their prayers and they rear their bloodied hands to the heavens they are not
only wise and fearless, but they are also the provokers of fear. After all, it was the
Druids resistance against the Romans that made them deserve greater admiration, since
they opposed the intruders in the defence of England with their direful threats, and
execrable vows (Drayton 196). He wanted to give the British majestic history with
distinguished and dreaded heroes though they also present an impenetrable mystery by
keeping the secrets of the past to themselves for eternity (Curran 507).

3. The Heyday of the Druids Fame

After having been disregarded since Antiquity, in the 17th century owing to the
Renaissance rediscovery of Roman Britain and its inhabitants, the Druids started to be
13

considered central figures of European prehistory. Yet the heyday of their fame was
about to come in the following century. One of the reasons why the Druids fame
reached its peak in this period was new opinions and ideas that influenced not only
literary works, but also peoples life-style. It was a century of the Romanticism. People
believed in magic and astrology, and were interested in ancient myths, their origins and
signification. The Romanticists believed that wisdom and beauty were inherent part of
wild nature. People should seek natural places as they were the source of cosmic
knowledge (Hutton, The Druids 81) and inspiration. Thence the Druids succeeded to
seize definitely the minds of the British. They were not only ancient people with whom
the British had started to associate their origins, but they were also wise priests and
philosophers whose knowledge was considered to spring from their connection with
nature.
Another reason is that in 1707 England and Scotland were united under one
Government and Parliament. Suddenly it was necessary to support the new kingdom by
a common history as both of the countries used to be formed in conflict with each other.
The Druids appeared to be the heroes that could be considered mutual ancestors by all
parts of the islands and on whom common identity could be grounded. It was also
helpful that despite the fact that other countries such as France and Germany claimed
the Druids to be principal figures of their histories, it was not possible to prove
positively such assertions. Consequently, in the 18 th century the Druids have been built
into the identity of the new Britain (Hutton, The Druids 34) and were adopted by the
British as patriotic and wise ancestors (Hutton, The Druids 81).
The two following chapters deal individually with these two peculiarities of the
18th century in terms of how they influenced the development of the conception of the
Druids and affected the treatment of the topic in contemporary literature.

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3.1. The Influence of the Romanticism

With the arrival of the Romanticism the view of the Druids was further altered
and re-fabricated by imagination, excitement and creativity that exalted beauties of
nature. Hiller says in his essay that the Druids were artless, uncouth, even barbaric
beings (Hiller 11), but their fearful rituals in dark groves gave them knowledge of
natures secrets and mysteries that no one would ever know. They fascinated the
Romanticists, who wanted to identify with them, as they believed that there was an
inherent wisdom and virtue, as well as beauty, poetry and numinous divinity, in wild
nature (Hutton, The Druids 81).
The work that gives us evidence of the general interest in the Druids and
imaginative concern (Watson 89) with British culture is William Masons Caractacus.
In this epic poem, which is considered the most renowned piece of 18 th-century heroic
literature, Mason narrates the story of the British hero Caractacus that alongside the
Druids resisted the Romans who invaded Britain. Even though the work was based on
Tacituss account of the Roman conquest of the Isles, Mason mingles the assumed facts
beyond recognition. The influence of the Romanticism is perceived from the very
beginning. The poem starts with a scene in which the Romans pause in the secret centre
of the island in order to contemplate what is happening before them. Thus the author
throws the readers into dark oak groves surrounded by caverns and cliffs. During the
whole poem they do not leave the wild nature, in which they draw near to its secrets and
meet the learned Druids. When the Romans observe the groves with a great oak and an
altar, they associate the place with barbarous superstitions, which they disdain; but on
the other hand, the scene awes them. They are sure that there is a hidden power, that
reigns mid the lone majesty of untamd nature, controuling sober reason (Mason 1).

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Then they are explained that this is a place where the Druids practise their mysterious
and potent rituals. Thus the very first account of the priests we get is of people who live
in wild nature surrounded by a hidden power, which allows them to learn natures
secrets. Mason also mentions that the Druids were skilled in the numbers of the universe
alluding thus to suppositions that they were followers of Pythagorean principles.
As we read on, we can neither doubt their importance in view of other
characters. When Caractacus discusses ways of saving the Druids sacred groves against
the Roman attack, the chief Druid reminds him that:
Thou art a King, a sovreign oer frail man;
I am a Druid, servant of the Gods;
Such service is above such sovreignty,
As well thou knowst: if they should prompt these lips
To interdict the thing thou darst to do,
What would avail thy daring (Mason 26)?
The service for gods is much more important than to have power over frail mortal
people. The position of the Druids is superior to the Caractacuss one. Mason attempts
to offer the readers the best of both the Druidical and the Roman world. Although they
are so divers, they both gave origin to British culture. Ronald Hutton writes in The
Druids that in this case, the eventual joyous union of Briton and Roman adds the
blessings of civilisation and reason to the native British qualities of heroism and
nobility, and the resulting combination is (eventually) unbeatable (18). The poet
portrays the Druids as mysterious, wise and valiant. Yet Romans are also described as
brave and noble. Nevertheless, on the whole, the Druids are the most emphasised of all
the characters. They are called illustrious and sons of Heaven (Mason 49). They are
authority to whom the other characters explain what they have done or they are going to
do. When the Romans are approaching, Caractacus states that they cannot be defeated,
since the Druids and Britons are Truth and Virtue (Mason 58) opposed by an army of
villains. The Chorus, who is believed to represent the chief Druid, spur on the Romans
16

to come because he has no reason to fear their pride. The Druids are armed by virtue but
what can aid enraged robbers, the Romans?
Yet as wise and skilled as they are, Druids are also dreaded and unmerciful.
Since the beginning we see that their rites as well as they themselves inspire awe in
their enemies. After all the horror that their fury awakes is their weapon against the
Romans. The Bard that describes to the chief Druid and Caractacus how the Romans
fled says:
Near each a white-robd Druid, whose stern voice
Thunderd deep execrations on the foe.
Now wakd our horrid symphony, now all
Our harps terrific rang: Meanwhile the grove
Trembled, the altars shook, and thro our ranks
Our sacred sisters rushd in sable robes,
With hair dishelvd and funeral brands
Hurld round with menacing fury. On they rushd
In fierce and frantic mood, as is their wont
Amid the magic rites, they do to night
In our deep dens below. Motions like these
Were never dard before in open air (Mason 71)!
Here Mason draws upon Tacituss description of an event that really happened,
however some years after: the Roman attack on Mona and the Druids resistance. Their
act was so terrifying for the Romans and so significant in the British history that it could
never be forgotten. Tacitus describes the scene like this:
On the shore stood the enemy host, with its dense array of armed men, among
whom dashed women clad in black attire like Furies, with hair dishevelled, waving
flaming torches. All around were Druids, raising their hands towards the sky and
shouting dreadful curses, which terrified our soldiers who had never seen such a thing
before; so that, as if paralysed, they stood still and exposed their bodies to wounds
(Hutton, The Druids 3).
The Druids are commonly ascribed three main characteristics: wise priests
skilled in natures secrets, unmerciful guardians of their lore and justice, and people
who practised sacrifices. Mason dedicates long parts of his poem to the Druids as
illustrious priests and dreaded guardians of justice, yet he skilfully omits the sacrificing.
There is no mention that the priests would predict the future from blood or convulsions
17

of dying people. Mason alludes to sacrificing only a few times and he links that practice
to punishment of betrayal and of enemies. When Caractacus speaks to captured Roman
soldiers, he says:
True ye are captives, and our countrys safety
Forbids, we give you back to liberty:
We give ye therefore to the immortal gods,
To them we lift ye in the radiant cloud
Of sacrifice. They may in limbs of freedom
Replace your free-born souls, and their high mercy
Haply shall to some better world advance you;
Or else in this restore that golden gift,
Which lost, leaves life a burden (Mason 74).
In this passage Mason clarifies to the readers the Druidic belief in the
transmigration of souls. The sacrifice will enable the captives to be lifted up to the gods
that will advance their free souls to a better world. The priests do not find their conduct
cruel. On the other hand, they promote their enemies to some better place. According to
Mason it is mercy. Caractacus adds that if he was taken a prisoner he would like to get
similar fair treatment. Richard Hooper remarks that such a belief resembles Pythagorean
theory of immortality of the soul. He observes that Lipsius doubts whether Pythagoras
received it from Druids, or they from him, because in his travels he conversed as well
with Gaulish as Indian Philosophers (Notes to Drayton, Vol. 1 22).
Mason responds with this poem to the 18th-century enthusiasm for noble
barbarians unspoiled by civilized culture and who can enjoy free life in the nature.
Caractacus is considered to complete the process of making the Druids part of British
identity.

3.2. The Druids Supporting the British Kingdom

On the other hand, the 18th-century Englishmen could not disengage themselves
entirely from the past century and its preoccupations. They kept to be influenced by

18

antiquarian concern with the continuation of ancient traditions and the lack of its
material evidence; especially the want of tangible evidence about the existence of the
Druids. Nonetheless, then John Aubrey started to associate a stone circle of Avebury
with the ancient priests. He invented a myth that was accepted as true. Soon other
assertions which linked the Druids to British structures and institutions emerged. Peter
Ackroyd observes that Edward Coke discovered that they were the founders of English
common law. By this stage they could be enlisted in any cause whatsoever (Ackroyd).
The ancient priests became a subject of myth-creating and the myth-creating became an
obsession. Thanks to this obsession of ascribing the Druids creations which existence
could not be denied they ceased to be fictional and they became real. The only thing
needed was medieval texts that would mention the Druids learning and history. Shortly
several scholars declared that they had discovered written evidence of Druidic lore, the
most important of them being Iolo Morganwgs verses. However, those scholars were
forgers and the documents were fake. Yet nobody noticed as the 18 th century was
opportune for forgery due to the combination of an energetic historical scholarship,
making frequent genuine discoveries, with an as yet immature ability to distinguish true
from false documents (Hutton, The Druids 23).
The Druids definitely became an inextricable part of British history when
William Stuckley published in 1738 Palaeographia Sacra and Stonehenge, a Temple
restord to the British Druids in 1740. In these works he concludes that these great
people from ancient times must have been connected to Stonehenge, which is the most
famous stone structure of British landscape and which also dates back to far history.
Ronald Hutton observes that Stuckleys ideas became the norm for more than a century
and as a result of all this, for most of the 18th century Druids were celebrated as wise

19

and common ancestors by the English, Scots and Welsh alike (Under the Spell of the
Druids).
In Ode to Liberty William Collins presents the Druids as spiritual ancestors of
contemporary British sovereignty. In the poem he looks for the origins of liberty and its
historical demonstrations from Antiquity to his time. Starting in ancient Greece Collins
contemplates the progress of freedom and he traces it in Italy as well as in Holland and
he finishes his journey in current Britain. He calls Britain the last abode (Collins) of
freedom suggesting thus that the British kingdom is the last of the models of liberty and
therefore the best. Despite the historical progress of the poem, when Collins gets to
Britain as the modern model of independence, he goes back in history in order to allude
to idealized Druid past that gave birth to a British temple of Liberty (Levine 555).
Collins writes:
Then too, tis said, an hoary pile,
Midst the green navel of our Isle,
Thy shrine in some religious wood,
O soul-enforcing Goddess, stood!
There oft the painted natives feet,
Were wont thy form celestial meet (Collins).
This way the poet accentuates the Druids as purveyors and guardians of liberty.
After all, they played an important role in the resistance to the Romans. He associates
their natural freedom with the place where they lived and practiced their rituals. The
greatness of the Druids consisted in their immediacy to the nature. That was what
admitted them to reveal her profound secrets. Yet Collins remarks that the contemporary
British hardly knew anything about the Druids, neither what did happen to them.
However, he does not intend to ascertain who caused their end. In pursuit of unifying
the nation he has to find another way of restoring mythologized history of British
triumphs (Levine 570):
Yet still, if the truth those beams infuse,
20

Which guide at once, and charm the Muse,

Beyond yon braided clouds that lie,
Paving the light-embroiderd sky (Collins).
If we consider the truth as a symbolical truth of poetic imagination and its
creation, the poet illuminates to the 18th century Englishmen the way to the Druids,
which is shadowy and may be already lost by the centuries of disregarding them. Levine
claims that Collinss more legendary history recovers shadowy supernatural lore from
the mythological past to restore the place of inspired patriotic poetry in modern society
(557). By mingling fiction and reality, and giving thus the ancient priests their place in
the poem Collins revives them. What was before considered fiction now became
imaginative truth which could express a system of values or ultimate reality as the
particular poet might conceive it (Kuhn 1097). Nevertheless, the use of fiction in the
poem can be a metaphor for an imperfect world of hope, anticipation of new Liberty,
freedom, and peace (Levine 559). In conclusion, Collins uses his poetry to indicate
what deeds can contemporary patriotic poetry celebrate or seek.
The 18th-century authors aimed to reassert British national pride, which could be
done in various ways. One of them was extolling of the active resistance of ancient
Britons to the Romans. Richard Hingley and Christina Unwin claim that in this context
the most significant work was William Cowpers poem of 1782, Boadicea: An Ode
(150). As a Celtic queen that led a rebellion against the Romans, Boadicea became one
of the most important and popular figures of contemporary literature and she was often
drawn upon by scholars and artists. The poem is important as well by the fact that
Cowper connects the Boadiceas rebellion with the Druids, other protagonists of active
resistance against the Romans. Ronald Hutton says that no ancient source mentioned the
Druids in connection with it [rebellion led by Boadicea], but if they had been associated
with patriotic opposition to the Romans then they should have been involved (The

21

Druids 18). Boadicea comes to the Druids in search of counsel of her countrys gods
(Cowper). The Druid is terrified and grieves what is happening. Nevertheless, he
despises Rome and foretells indignantly its downfall that will be deep in ruins as in
guilt (Cowper). He disapproves Rome feverishly and as a prophet of empire (Owen
152) he predicts subsequent fame of Britain:
Then the progeny that springs
From the forests of our land,
Armed with thunder, clad with wings,
Shall a wider world command (Cowper).
The eagerness and feverishness with which the Druid speaks reflects Cowpers belief
in uniqueness that can shine through a line of poetry or prose with the immediate effect
of delight or terror (Hartley 52).
The poem was written in the time when Britain was expanding its territory and
its political ambition was growing. Hingley and Unwin argue that Boadicea was adapted
to fit this context by suggesting that her actions had assisted with the development of
British imperialism (150). The Druid foresees the progeny as invincible as the forests of
Britain that are considered their origins. There is no such powerful place as the place
where the Druids live in harmony with nature serving the gods. Such origins will arm
them with thunders and give them wings. By the poem Cowper responds to significant
changes that were happening in 18th-century England and he reflects British thought and
character of that period.

4. The Alienation of the 19th Century and the Reweaving of the Myth
After the Druids had become an inseparable part of British identity in the 18th
century, in the 19th century the British were less inclined to refer to them. Their image of
respectable and wise ancestors was corrupted. Despite all efforts to make the British see
22

them as ancient people of deep knowledge of nature and heaven, their image as savage
and bloodthirsty was widely revived. Ronald Hutton claims that one of the reasons why
Druids became less regarded was that the Victorians started to doubt whether, admirable
or not, they had actually been that important in British prehistory (Hutton, The Druids
34). One of the most important sources about the Druids, the texts left by Caesar, was
only to support the distrust of the British in the historical significance of the ancient
priests. What discomforted the scholars was the fact that the Druids featured only in one
section of Caesars work which concerned native tradition. Nevertheless, according to
the importance which he attributed them, they should have appeared remarkably in the
full description of his conquest of Gaul. Neither the faked texts about Druidic lore by
Iolo Morganwg were very useful in supporting the existence of the Druids with
evidence. The discovery of that the texts were false further undermined the image of the
Druids as significant ancestors.
Looking for better evidence of the position of the Druids in the ancient society
of the island, the scholars had to seek in other Roman or Greek sources, because there
were no other texts documenting their existence. Nonetheless, the accounts of the
priests they found in the documents were largely those of barbarous people who
practised sacrifices. In addition, the revolutionary events as well as British wars with
France and American war of Independence, which took place in the second half of the
18th century, affected very negatively the Druidic image of the 19 th century. The Druids
started to represent barbarity and cruelty of a war conflict or revolution. People did not
want to refer to such figures with love and admiration.
Yet, of course, the 19th century continued in tendencies and opinions of the
preceding one. Thus although the new century turned to be less fortunate for the Druids,
there still existed authors that continued the revival of the antiquities. The Druids kept

23

being their heroes who enabled them to draw a connection between the ancient times
and contemporaneity, preserving this way the ancient traditions.
In the following two chapters we will have a closer look at both of the
tendencies, which influenced the contemporary development of the conception of the
Druids.

4.1. The Disillusion with the Druids

William Wordsworth was one of many poets who admired the Druids and their
lore. In his poems he celebrated the grandeur of nature and the power of human
minds (Wordsworth). For him the Druids were an ideal combination of both the nature
and the human spirit. He even called himself a Druid. However, his visit to France and
experiencing the French Revolution influenced crucially his intellectual development
and the life of his imagination (Stelzig 415). The poet believed in inherit goodness of
man and nature, and that liberty is a certain cure for every ill, that man is made to be
happy (Stelzig 416). Nevertheless, having witnessed the revolution in France, he
started to realize the danger of mans absolute liberty. The French radicalism began to
trouble him. Furthermore, killing of innocent people reminded him of the guilty secret
that clings to the Druid-haunted landscape (Schneider) and made the probable
radicalism of the Druids more present for him. Although before the Revolution
Wordsworth was quite fascinated by druidical sacrificing, then he was rather alarmed by
the idea of blood-shedding in Britain. The occurrences of the French Revolution
changed Wordsworths mind and also had impact on his vision of the Druids. Stelzig
argues that Paris became a place of sacrifice because of the slaughter of innocents and
he relates the city to the Druidical altar fed with living men (427). However, such a
fundamental change of opinion certainly requires a good substantiation. A. L. Owen

24

argues that the reason why started to view the Druids as radical and bloody, even though
he had admired them at first, is that Wordsworth thought that Druids religion had
degenerated (164).
In the poem Guilt and Sorrow he reevaluates the ancient British history. A
vagrant wanders in the country when he realizes that where he got there is no cottage,
no farm or anyone. It is getting dark and he is surrounded by vast nature. He becomes
haunted by his minds phantoms and the dark history of Stonehenge is recalled:
Pile of Stone-henge! so proud to hint yet keep
Thy secrets, thou that lov'st to stand and hear
The Plain resounding to the whirlwind's sweep,
Inmate of lonesome Nature's endless year;
Even if thou saw'st the giant wicker rear
For sacrifice its throngs of living men,
Before thy face did ever wretch appear,
Who in his heart had groaned with deadlier pain
Than he who, tempest-driven, thy shelter now would gain (Wordsworth).
The poet addresses Stonehenge as a stone structure that witnessed the sacrificing rituals
of the Druids. However, it is a silent witness that keeps the secret of the Druids
sacrifices. Part of the rituals was also a gigantic structure in human shape inside which
living people were placed. Then, the wicker man was set on fire. Shallcrass comments
on the Druid human sacrificial rituals this way:
Some Roman writers accused Druids of overseeing human sacrifice on a huge
scale. Among such accounts are descriptions of huge wickerwork figures in
which humans and animals were said to have been burned. No evidence of such
mass burnings has ever been found (Shallcrass).
Shallcrass than continues saying that the best proof for Celtic sacrificing of humans is
bodies dating back to the iron Age that were put in peat bogs, as it seems, according to
the religious practice of that time. He adds that it is very probable that the victims of
this practice underwent the rituals deliberately as they believed in an afterlife of great
joy, abundance and beauty (Shallcrass). The Druidic sacrifices were a mystery that no
one could resolve with certainty. The problem was that the only documents of Druidic

25

lore were from Greek and Roman sources. Thus, it is arguable whether the Druids were
seen so negatively because the Greeks and Romans perceived practices of sacrifices as
demonstration of savagery, or, in case of Roman texts, it was because the Druids posed
resistance. On the whole, there is no reliable evidence in the ancient sources to confirm
the place of human sacrifice in druidic tradition. What has really mattered has been
their cultural impact, for they provide a damning portrait of Druids in texts which have
long been among the most widely read to survive from the ancient world and the most
commonly translated (Ronald Hutton, The Druids 98).
In the lines of Guilt and Sorrow there is no admire nor fascination. On the
contrary, Wordsworth describes the suffering and wretchedness of the victims. The poet
himself says that the monuments and traces of antiquity, scattered in abundance over the
region, led him unavoidably to compare what we know or guess of those remote times
with certain aspects of modern society, and with calamities, principally those
consequent upon war (Wordsworth 120).
His preoccupation with Druidical radicalism sheds bad light on the nature, which
surrounded the Druids and which is inseparably connected with them. As Wordsworth
realizes that man is not inherently good nor made to be happy, he also stops perceiving
nature as good. It is not beautiful nor mysterious, but large, empty and savage:
Winds met in conflict, each by turns supreme;
And, from the perilous ground dislodged, through storm
And rain he wildered on, no moon to stream
From gulf of parting clouds one friendly beam,
Nor any friendly sound his footsteps led;
Once did the lightning's faint disastrous gleam
Disclose a naked guide-post's double head,
Sight which tho' lost at once a gleam of pleasure shed (Wordsworth).
In other words, in the 19th century the image of the Druids as barbarous and

26

bloody increased by multiplication and during the century became to predominate.

Ronald Hutton adds that those of patriotic, wise or nature-loving holy men and women
waned (The Druids 107).
The poem Boadicea by Alfred Tennyson is another example of imagining Druids
in a negative way. Tennyson draws upon the Celtic queen as well as William Cowper
did before. However, in Tennysons poem Boadicea does not seek for consolation in oak
groves, but she herself is portrayed as a Druid priestess. She speaks to British tribes
challenging them to fight against the Roman legionaries that are destroying the grove
and altar of the Druid and Druidess (Tennyson). Boadicea calls the gods asking them to
hear what is happening. They answer her, as she says:
These have told us all their anger in miraculous utterances,
Thunder, a flying fire in heaven, a murmur heard aerially,
Phantom sound of blows descending, moan of an enemy massacred,
...
There was one who watchd and told medown their statue of Victory fell
(Tennyson).
She speaks fiercely and foments Britons to cruel vengeance. All the thunder and the
moaning of the enemy serve to inspire the people to more brutal revenge and to
massacring of the Romans. Of course, Boadicea assures them of victory. She supports
her prophesy by what she heard in the darkness, at the mystical ceremony (Tennyson).
There she heard a terrible Druid to say:
Tho the Roman eagle shadow thee, tho the gathering enemy narrow thee,
Thou shalt wax and he shall dwindle, thou shalt be the mighty one yet!
Thine the liberty, thine the glory, thine the deeds to be celebrated,
Thine the myriad-rolling ocean, light and shadow illimitable,
Thine the lands of lasting summer, many-blossoming Paradises,
Thine the North and thine the South and thine the battle-thunder of God
(Tennyson).
Tennysons as well as Cowpers Druids foretell the magnitude of the British empire,
also recalling the Roman eagle, which Britain should surpass; and enormous territory
that would spread all over the world. Nevertheless, it is noticeable that Tennyson calls
27

the Druid prophetess terrible. This negative view of the Druids as well as of Boadicea,
who belongs to them, may be explained in the context of barbarism that could be seen in
contemporaneous Europe as well as in the context of the already mentioned expansion
of the British Empire. Although before the British extolled the Druids for their
opposition to the Roman colonizers, now their position was changing. They were not
the descendants of the native people, who resisted and defended their country. They
were new colonizers trying to get new territories. Therefore, they became more aware of
the role of a colonizing nation versus the native people, who are colonized. Such
political and social frame surely made the role of the Druids in contemporary society
less advantageous and subsequently affected their image. Thus, Tennysons Boadicea is
bloodthirsty and she challenges the Britons to:
Take the hoary Roman head and shatter it, hold it abominable,
Cut the Roman boy to pieces in his lust and voluptuousness,
........
Chop the breasts from off the mother, dash the brains of the little one out
(Tennyson).
Definitely, this is not an image with which any British would like to identify or refer in
order to exalt their heroic ancestors. Boadicea also insults the Romans nastily calling
them liars [who] worship a gluttonous emperor-idiot (Tennyson). Undoubtedly, such
outrageous insults should not defame the Romans, but, on the contrary, the poet aims to
damage the reputation of Boadicea, Celtic queen and Druid priestess. Thence,
Tennysons Boadicea gives evidence of that in the 19th century the Druids obviously
became victims of their success (Hutton, The Druids 86). Although in the preceding
centuries the ancient Britain represented majestic history that was worth of being refer
to, now it symbolized contemptible beginnings of later democratic and powerful state.
On the other hand, the Romans were considered the nation that passed on the native
British the sacred duty of advancing humanity further (Hutton, the Druids 34).

28

4.2. The Druids and Universal Mythology

As it was said earlier, there were authors in the early 19th century who continued
the effort of reviving Celtic antiquities. It was universal mythology where the Druids
could still find a place. Albert Kuhn in his essay English Deism and the Development
of Romantic Mythological Syncretism argues that the mythology of the Druids with
those of the Greeks, Egyptians, and other ancients, was bound together by truths which
had issued from the fountainhead of patriarchal history and religion (1112). Yet it was
necessary to adjust the Druids to the Bible in order that they were accepted by all
Christians. Thus, they had been made followers of the original religion of the Hebrew
patriarchs. In this view they had been the best of all ancient European pagans, the least
corrupted by idolatry and superstition. This made them natural converts to Christianity,
creators of an ancient British church (Hutton, Under the Spell of Druids). One of the
most important supporters of such a conception was William Stukeley. To him the
Druids were missionaries who brought the religious belief of Abraham to the British
islands. He also argued that the arrangement of the stone structures, which he
considered Druidic ritual places, gave evidence of that the ancient priests were
practitioners of the religion of Noah and Abraham. This way Stukeleys celtic studies, as
well as those of Toland, which also included speculations on Druidic heritage, not only
encouraged interest in British mythology, but played an important role in forming it a
notable part of the universal one. Men of various opinions and designs became very
interested in the myth as it was new, flexible and incorrupted. Through the myth they
could freely interpret historical tradition as well as religious doctrine. The Druids found
a significant place in the universal myth because they were believed, as Albert Kuhn
says, to be the priests of Oriental colonies who emigrated from India and were the

29

introducers of the first or cadmean system of letters, and the builders of Stonehenge, of
Cranac, and of other Cyclopean works in Asia and Europe (1115). In spite of the fact
that the Druids started to be perceived negatively in the 19 th century, as prophetic figures
they were still popular with the writers.
The conception of the Druids as British patriarchs reached its peak in William
Blakes prophetic poem Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion. In the poem
Blake deals with the history of man re-construing Christian doctrine. A. L. Owen
explains in his book The Famous Druids Jerusalems theme as the predicament of
Fallen Man, whose archetype, in this cosmogony, is not Adam but Albion, our
Ancestor, the eponymous first inhabitant of this island (226). Blake considers British
Isles, and not Palestine, to be the place where sacred history began. As he gives Britain
a crucial role in the world religious history, he stresses antiquities, which originated in
this land. In Blakes interpretation the Druids are descendants of Albion and originators
of universal religion, since all religions are one religion. They are ancestors of Abraham
and those who passed on the Jews some of their beliefs. Blake expresses most explicitly
all key ideas of his conception of the universal myth and the Druids principal
connection to it in the second chapter of Jerusalem, in passage To the Jews:
Ye are united O ye Inhabitants of Earth in One Religion: The Religion of Jesus:
the most Ancient, the Eternal and the Everlasting Gospel. The Wicked will turn
it to Wickedness, the Righteous to Righteousness. Amen! Huzza! Selah! "All
things Begin & End in Albions Ancient Druid Rocky Shore.
Your ancestors derived their origins from Abraham, Heber, Shem, and
Noah, who were Druids, as the Druid Temples (which are the Patriarchal Pillars
and Oak Groves) over the whole Earth witness to this day.
You have a tradition, that Man anciently containd in his mighty limbs all things
in Heaven and Earth: this you received from the Druids. (Blake, Jr. 31).
The Druids were at the beginning of everything. Not only that Blake calls Abraham and
his offspring Druids, but he considers them their descendants. However, they are not
only the beginning, but also the end of everything and with them also Britain. All myths

30

are basically one myth. Thus, to comprehend the Druidic lore is to explicate the
universal myth. It is not an unsubstantiated statement since, as Blake claims, there is
evidence over the whole Earth preserved to that day.
The Druid temples and oak groves are omnipresent. Nevertheless, not in all cases
Blake refers to the Druids positively. Although they symbolize the original wisdom,
their practice of sacrificing represents degeneration of the primordial. A.L. Owen claims
that without moving from the background, they are, like figures in a striking tapestry,
intrusive. The desolate surface of Britain after the Fall is covered with Druid stones;
its horizons are lit by their holocausts, and they build Stonehenge from the rocks of
Eden (Owen 227):
This is no warbling brook, nor shadow of a mirtle tree:
But blood and wounds and dismal cries, and shadows of the oak:
And hearts laid open to the light, by the broad grizly sword:
And bowels hid in hammerd steel ripd quivering on the ground.
Call forth thy smiles of soft deceit: call forth thy cloudy tears (Blake, Jr. 71).
Blake does not try to describe the sacrificing gently, but on the contrary, he does his best
to express barbarity and coldness of the Druids and suffering of the victims. He gives
fascinating details of swords which serve to take out the heart from a human body, or
entrails shuddering just having been ripped out. Blake aptly creates the atmosphere of
the scene by destroying any possible connotations of nature, which surround the Druids,
as of mysterious or wise. There is no brook or mirtle tree, but blood and cries in the
shadows of the oaks. Peter Acroyd cites one chronicler saying that in the Druids belief
there was a mixture of simplicity, drollery, absurdity, ingenuity, superstition and
antiquarianism ... a compound of things never meant to meet together. But they did
meet, never more so than in the work of William Blake (Acroyd).
Blake neither does forget to mention the wicker man. Owen argues that Blake
points out that the colossus of osiers comes from a Vegetation Root [which represents

31

mans physical being], and the burning of the Wicker Man thus demonstrates the
ineptitude of the Druids sacrifice, for by destroying the human body they achieve
nothing (229).
Blake was also influenced by the events of the 18 th century. Jerusalem reflects his
being disturbed by the American war of Independence as well as Mexican war of
Independence. There is no doubt that the most preoccupying was Napoleonic wars,
which were immediate threat for Britain:
They saw America clos'd out by the Oaks of the western shore;
And Tharmas dash'd on the Rocks of the Altars of Victims in Mexico.
If we are wrathful Albion will destroy Jerusalem with rooty Groves
If we are merciful, ourselves must suffer destruction on his Oaks!
Why should we enter into our Spectres, to behold our own corruptions
O God of Albion descend! deliver Jerusalem from the Oaken Groves (Blake, Jr.
48)!
Neither here do the Druids disappear from the background. Although Blake does not
mention them directly by their name, their presence is evident. The poet uses oak, altars
and groves in connection with the political events of the second half of the 18 th and the
first half of the 19th centuries in order to describe what happened or was happening. The
oaks that closed western shore on America symbolize the isolation of Britain and her
colonies that fought to be independent. The oak trees as well as groves are associated
also with almost certain destruction of Jerusalem without which the original Holy Land
cannot be saved. At the same time both the oaks and the groves bear remembrance of
sacrificing rituals, which were practiced in them. Nevertheless, the oaken groves are
still a symbol of the primordial and Jerusalem, and the salvation can be delivered only
from there. Thus, during the poem we get two oppositional images of the Druids: one
as of the purveyors of the earliest knowledge and the other of bloodthirsty practitioners
of sacrifice. Nevertheless, Blake has an explanation for such a development of the

32

perception of the priests. After the fall of Albion they got under the influence of Urizen,
who represents pure physical nature of man.
Another poet who continued the reweaving of the myth with the Druids in its
centre was William Tennyson. In his epic poem Idylls of the King he concentrates the
Druidic mythology into a prophetic Druid/ bard figure, Merlin. Merlin is a magician,
prophet and right-hand man of King Arthur. In the poem he is seen as the creator of
kings haven (Tennyson). He is a Druid/ bard, who later became a Christian prophet.
In the poem we can read:
And after that, she set herself to gain
Him, the most famous man of all those times,
Merlin, who knew the range of all their arts,
Had built the King his havens, ships, and halls,
Was also Bard, and knew the starry heavens;
The people called him Wizard (Tennyson).
Although he is perceived as a Christian figure, who built Arthurs palace and ships, he
did not give up his Druidic wisdom or knowledge. He is also a bard. Catherine Barnes
Stevenson observes in her essay Druids, Bards, and Tennysons Merlin that one of
Tennysons sources of Druidic mythology and rites was The Mythology and Rites of the
British Druids by Edward Davies. Davies reconstructs the social and religious history
of the Druids, argues that bards were one particular branch of Druids (Barnes
Stevenson 364). Bards, in his opinion, were prominent men who were also priests.
Nevertheless, both of the denominations Druid and bard were very often used
interchangeably. Barnes Stevenson argues that by interchanging the two terms, the
scholars could describe the Druid/bard as the the poet-priest of Nature, a member of
a select body of sages equipped with learning far above the reach of the common man,
though ultimately beneficial to him (364). Thus, Tennyson combines in the figure of
Merlin, the most famous man of those times (Tennyson), the arts of the Druids and

33

their knowledge of heavens together with a Christian prophet, who loyally serves the
Christian king.
Important is the moral vision of the Idylls. Tennyson wants to give his readers a
spiritual ideal. In the form of an allegorical statue created by Merlin on Camelot, the
readers are presented the spiritual development of man till he reaches perfection. The
statue is dived into four zones that symbolize four levels of mans progress on the way
to the ideal. The first zone, which is the furthest from the ideal state, depicts beasts
slaying men, whereas the fourth one represents the target at which the society should
aim. The statue supports the hope that a common man can reach the spiritual ideal that
would give him wings. Barnes Stevenson remarks that Merlin, as a Christian bard,
creates art that affirms the reality of it (371):
And four great zones of sculpture, set betwixt
With many a mystic symbol, gird the hall:
And in the lowest beasts are slaying men,
And in the second men are slaying beasts,
And on the third are warriors, perfect men,
And on the fourth are men with growing wings (Tennyson).

5. Conclusion
There is no doubt that Druids really existed in ancient times. However, we cannot

34

say with certainty who they actually were, what their wisdom or rites were, or what
status they enjoyed in the society in which they existed. In spite of this fact they cannot
be denied their place in history. Yet they did not gain this place as real historical people,
but as fictional figures that were created in Renaissance. Since then their image together
with their glory, wisdom and rites have been fabricated and reworked in various ways
and for various reasons.
Druids were revived by Renaissance scholars who were looking for heroes from
early British history that could be considered common ancestors by everyone. Druids
seemed to be figures great and admirable enough to give all inhabitants sense of
common national identity. This way ancient British priests started to appear in major
literary works of that time. They were appropriated by Raphael Holinshed and William
Camden in their historical works by which they reintroduced Druids into British minds
as the purveyors of national history. Michael Drayton then continued cultivating the
image of Druids as wise priests with wide knowledge of natures secrets, whose
uniqueness and fearlessness should be inspiration for modern Britain. Their historical
importance was further reinforced by the antiquarian preoccupation that the power and
glory of the kingdom had been destructed by time. This worry is also reflected in
Draytons Poly-Olbion. He used Druids to persuade his readers, and himself too, that
the ancient is not lost and that the antiquities had been preserved.
In the 18th century the image of Druids was altered by the Romantic fascination
and the dominance of imagination as well as by the need to support newly established
kingdom of Great Britain. Now Druids were seen as a symbol of an ideal connection of
man and nature which is source of great wisdom and inspiration. Ronald Hutton
explains the 18th-century treatment of the concept of Druids saying that the Georgian
poets had been celebrating a lost world of innocence and freedom, which taught the

35

lesson that close personal communion with nature could reveal profound truths (Hutton
87). An example of the celebration of freedom and nature is William Masons poem
Caractacus. In this work, which is believed to finish the process of appropriating Druids
by the British, Druids are noble savages who dwell in caves in immediate proximity of
dark oaken groves where they can enjoy free life in the nature. In comparison with
Drayton, Mason does not avoid referring to Druidic sacrificing rituals. He interprets
sacrificing as Druidic belief in existence of a better place where the soul goes after
being relieved from the human body. Furthermore, the practices are not connected with
slaying of innocent people, but enemies and traitors. It is not demonstration of Druids
cruelty, but their mercy and fair treating of the enemies.
Nonetheless, in the 18th century the concept of Druids was also used for political
reasons. Now, when they were considered central figures of European prehistory, their
role was to unite the English and Scots in one nation and to facilitate the political
unification of the two countries.
Although Druids had been implanted zealously into British history, literature as
well as landscape, in the 19th century people started to doubt them as remarkable
ancestors. Their image of cruel and bloodthirsty sacrificers was too powerful to be put
aside or even to be seen in an idealized way. Neither the want of original documents nor
the endeavour to provide them by falsification helped Druids to be seen more positively.
War and revolutionary conflicts of the second half of the 18 th century subverted the
concept of Druids as admirable predecessors completely. Their image was influenced
most negatively by the French Revolution, which make many scholars, William
Wordsworth among them, to connect their radicalism with the radicalism of the French.
Viewing Druids through what occurred in France lead to their gradual rejection. The
following radical development of the 19th-century politics only reinforced the negative

36

view of Druids as can be seen in William Tennysons Boadicea. Although he draws

upon the same figure as William Cowper did before him, he does not portray the Celtic
queen as a patriot who looks for consolation in Druidic oaken groves. She is a Druidic
priestess who foments British tribes to bloody revenge on the Romans. She is radical,
frantic and hungers for blood.
Even though Druids became to be resented with almost same passion as they were
made part of British identity, the antiquarian effort for preserving the antiquities was not
forgotten. One of the reasons was, as Ronald Hutton claims, that they preserved and
communicated a sense of all that past, the deities and the land itself had provided to
make up an inheritance worth defending to the death (The Druids 1). Thus Druids were
transformed into ancient patriarchs who came from Holy Land bringing with them the
original religion of the Hebrews. They became interwoven in a myth that was,
furthermore, supported by studies of Stuckley and Toland. Albert Kuhn argues that:
The myths of the pagans and those of the Old Testament represented an original
religion which was at once more reasonable and more catholic than Christianity.
Christianity was not the one religion; it was among many which at basis were united in
a core of simple, natural, and universal truths (1115).
Therefore, Druids were not heathens that should be hated by the Christians, but
religious people that were at the beginning of all religions. In William Blakes
Jerusalem Britain is seen as the original Holy Land. Bloodthirsty or not, Druids still had
their place in British culture and literature.
Having been once built into the British culture, they did not cease to be its part
in the 20th or 21st centuries. Although they do not serve yet to save the antiquities;
sustain union of two countries that had developed in conflict; or to make a myth, they
are still popular topic of books and films. As the authors and film makers have
continued the images that were created in the centuries before, Druids are holy men

37

living in oaken groves that know its profound secrets and practise sacrifices. For
example, Druids feature in Terry Prachetts Discoworld inhabiting country of Llamedos.
In 1970s a group of three British comedians, Bill Oddie, Tim Brooke-Taylor and
Graeme Garden, drew upon Druids in an episode of their series, which is called Wacky
Wales. Neither the structures of wicker men have been forgotten. In 1973 Robin Hardy
made a film The Wicker Man in which a police officer looking for a missing woman
travels to an isolated island of Summerisle where the community of the island lives in
harmony with nature and practise pagan rituals. In the end the protagonist is caught in a
trap and burnt in a gigantic wicker man. The film was remade in 2006 by Neil LaBute.
There is no doubt that the Druids who we are familiar with have most probably
very little in common with the ancient people who they reflect and who lived thousands
of years ago. Nevertheless, these legendary figures, given the length of time over
which those images [of admirable ancestor and British patriarchs] have been dispersed,
and the sheer number of works embodying them (Hutton 123); became an inextricable
part of Britains culture and folklore. Considering all the images Druids were ascribed
from the 16th to the 19th centuries and all political and cultural uses they served for, there
can be no doubt that they became iconic for Britain.

6. Bibliography
Acroyd, Peter. Blood and Mistletoe: The History of the Druids in Britain by Ronald
Hutton. Times online. 29 April 2009. Web. 8 May 2010.

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<http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/nonfiction/article6193051.ece>
Barnes Stevenson, Catherine. Druids, Bards, and Tennysons Merlin. Merlin: a
casebook. Ed. Peter H. Goodrich, and Raymond H. Thompson. New York:
Routledge, 2003. Print. 361-378.
Blake, William, Jr. The Prophetic Books of William Blake; Jerusalem. Memphis:
General Books LLC, 2009. Print.
Cahill, Hugh. Holinsheds Chronicles February 2005. ISS: Information Services and
Systems. 10 November 2006. Web. 15 July 2010.
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/iss/library/speccoll/bomarch/bomfeb05.html>
Collins, William. Ode to Liberty. Representative Poetry Online. 30 January 2002. Web.
15 May 2010.
<http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/537.html>
Cowper, William. Boadicea. Harvard Classics, Vol. 41: English Poetry II: From
Collins to Fitzgerald. New York: Bartleby.com, 2001. Web. 8 April 2010.
<http://www.bartleby.com/41/320.html>
Curran, John E., Jr. The History Never Written: Bards, Druids, and the Problem of
Antiquarianism in Poly Olbion. Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 51, No. 2. 498-525.
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998. Print.
Drayton, Michael. The Complete Works of Michael Drayton. Poly-Olbion. With notes
by Richard Hooper. Vol. 1-3.
London: John Russell Smith, 1876. Print.
Hartley, Lodwick. Willam Cowper: The Continuing Revaluation (an essay and a
bibliography of Cowperian studies from 1895 to 1960). Cape Hill: The
University of Northon Carolina Press, 1960. Print.

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Hiller, Geofrrey G. Sacred Bards and Wise Druides: Drayton and His Archetype of
the Poet. ELH, Vol. 51, No. 1. 1-15. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University
Press, 1984. Print.
Hingley, Richard and Unwin, Christina. Boudica: Iron Age Warrior Queen. London:
Hambledon Continuum, 2006. Print.
Hutton, Ronald. The Druids. London: Continuum Books, 2007. Print.
Hutton, Ronald. The Origins of Modern Druidry. Lewes: The Order of Bards, Ovates
and Druids, 2005. Print.
Hutton, Ronald. Under the Spell of the Druids. History Today. May 2009. Web. 15
May 2010.
<http://historytoday.com/MainArticle.aspx?m=33354&amid=30283349>
Kuhn, Albert J. English Deism and the Development of Romantic Mythological
Syncretism. PMLA, Vol. 71, No. 5. 1094-1116. New York: Modern Language
Association, 1956. Print.
Levine, W. Collins, Thomson, and the Whig Progress of Liberty. Studies in English
Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 34, No. 3. 553-557. Houston: Rice University, 1984. Print.
Mason, William. Caractacus: written on the model of the ancient Greek Tragedy.
Literature online. Web. 28 April 2010.
<http://lion.chadwyck.co.uk/searchFulltext.do?
id=Z000101252&divLevel=0&queryId=../session/1272456118_16149&trailId=
127A9CCB9C5&area=Drama&forward=textsFT&warn=Yes&size=158Kb>
Owen, A. L. The Famous Druids: A Survey of Three Centuries of English Literature on
the Druids. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962. Print.
Shallcrass, Philip. A Little History of Druidry. The Druid Network. Web. 15 May
2010.

40

<http://druidnetwork.org/articles/philipshallcrass.html>
Schneider, Matthew. Wrung by sweet enforcement: Druid Stones and the Problem of
Sacrifice in British Romanticism. Anthropetics The Electronic Journal of
Generative Anthropology, Vol. 2, No. 2., n.d. Web. 20 July 2010.
<http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/ap0202/keats.htm>
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Revolution in France. Nineteenth-Century Literature, Vol. 45, No. 4. 415-431.
Berkley: University of California Press, 1991. Print.
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<http://www.online-literature.com/tennyson/4097/>
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romanticism and the Celtic world. Ed. Gerard Carruthers, and Alan Rawes. 85103. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Print.
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William Knight. 119-150. Cirencester: The Echo Library, 2005. Print.

7. Resum
This paper deals with the concept of the Druids and its social, cultural and
political uses it has had in Britain in modern times. The paper does not focus on the real
ancient people, but the legendary figures, which were created in the 16 th century. The
41

revival of the subject of the Druids in the Renaissance was connected with the
contemporary search for identity. Since then, the subject of the Druids was reworked in
various ways and for various reasons. In the Renaissance they became national
ancestors. In addition, they consolidated their role as respectable ancestors in the 18 th
century, since they were used to support the newly established kingdom of Great
Britain. As the 18th century was the period of the Romanticism, the image of the Druids
was further altered and they became to be seen as a mystical people who lived in
harmony with the nature, which permitted them to reveal its deepest secrets. However,
the lack of evidence of the Druids existence, which permitted that many images of
them be created, and the radicalism of that time caused the Druids to be seen mainly as
bloody sacrificers who foretold the future from the entrails of slain men. The Druids
became victims if their former success. Nevertheless, there were still scholars who
continued tendencies of antiquarianism and made the Druids be patriarchs who had
brought to Britain the original religion revealed by Jehovah. Having been built once into
British consciousness, they have never lost their place in it.

8. Resum v etin
Tato bakalsk prce se zabv konceptem Druid a jeho spoleenskm,
kulturnm a politickm pouitm v novovk Britnii. Prce nen zamena na skuten
osoby, kter ily ve starovku, nbr na legendrn postavy, kter byly vytvoeny v 16.

42

stolet. Znovuobjeven tmatiky Druid v tomto obdob souviselo s tehdejm hlednm

nrodn identity. Od 16. stolet pak byla tmatika Druid rzn a z rznch dvod
pepracovna. V Renesanci se Druidov stali nrodnmi hrdiny. Nsledn v 18. stolet
jejich pozice ctyhodnch pedk byla upevnna, jeliko to byli Druidov, kdo ml
Anglianm a Skotm poskytnout spolenou historii a tm podpoit nov vznikl
krlovstv Velk Britnie. Vlivem romantizmu, kter byl pro 18. stolet pznan, byli
Druidov nov chpni jako postavy, kter ily v harmonii s prodou, dky emu
mohly odhalit i jej nejskrytj tajemstv. Nicmn nedostatek dkaz, kter umonil,
aby Druidov byli vnmni tolika jinmi zpsoby, ale takt radikalismus on doby
zpsobil, e Druidov byli pevn vnmni jako duchovn, kte praktikovali
obtovn lid, aby pak z jejich vnitnost pedpovdali budoucnost. Druidov se takto
stali obmi svho dvjho spchu. Ovem i pesto se nali spisovatel a odbornci,
kte pokraovali v tendencch antikvarianismu a tak se Druidov stali praotci, kte
pinesli do Britnie pvodn nboenstv vyjeven Hospodinem. Druidov se v prbhu
t stalet stali neoddlitelnou soust Britsk identity a jako takov u z n nikdy
nevymizeli.

43