| In our vitrified forts, too, it is possible
that we behold a relic of the times and observances of Druidism. This is the likeliest
solution of a problem which, after many attempts, still remains unsolved. We know that on
a certain night of the year immense bonfires were kindled on the more conspicuous of our
hill tops, and the whole country from one end to the other, was lit up with the blaze of
these pyres. The intense heat of such immense masses of wood as were consumed on these
sites year by year through a series of centuries, must, in process of time have converted
the stones and rocks on which they were kindled into a vitrified mass. The idea that
theses vitrifications were forts is barely admissible. They occur, with a few exceptions,
on mountains which possess no strategical quality, and which were not likely to have been
selected in any great plan of national fortification, supporting the natives capable of
forming such a scheme of military defence. The undoubted hill-fortresses of Scotland may
be traced by hundreds in their still existing remains, but these are of a character wholly
different from the antiques of which we are now speaking. The site selected for their
erection was some hill of moderate height, standing forward from the chain of mountains
that swept along behind it and which overlooked the wide plains and far-extending straths
which lay spread out in front. The builders of these strengths, whoever they were, did not
seek to fuse the materials with which they worked into a solid mass, they were content to
draw around the mountain-tops, which they fortified, a series of concentric walls, broad
and strong, constructed of loose stones, with ample space betwixt each circular rampart
for the troops to maneuver. The vitrifications, on the other hand, are scattered over our
mountainous districts, with no strategical line binding them together, and in the absence
of any conceivable use to be served by them, which would compensate for the toil of
dragging up their materials to the elevated sites where they are found, the annual
occurrence of a religious observance which, year by year, during a very lengthened period,
rekindled on the same spot immense bonfires, presents us with by much the likeliest
solution of their origin. Other
vestiges of this early and now fallen superstition are scattered over the face of the
country, and a glance at these may help to bring back the image of the time, and
strengthen the proof, if it needs further strengthening, that Druidism once dominated in
Scotland. Among the more prominent of these are the rocking stones, so termed because the
slightest application of force sufficed to set them a vibrating. They were huge unhewn
rocks, weighing from thirty to fifty tons, hoisted up and placed on the top of another
rock, equal to the burden, and so nicely poised as to move at the touch of the finger.
The rocking-stone is not a megalithic
curiosity known only to Scotland. It is met with in England and Ireland, and in countries
lying far beyond the British seas. When we travel back in time we find mention made of it
by writers who flourished twenty centuries ago. Camden speaks of one in Pembrokeshire,
Wales, on a sea-cliff, within half a mile of St. David’s. It is so large, that, says
Owen, his informant, "I presume it may exceed the draught of an hundred oxen."
It is "mounted upon divers other stones, about a yard in height; it is so equally
poised that a man may shake it with one finger."1 Perhaps the most
remarkable is that in Cornwall, called "the Logan Stone," at Treryn Castle, in
the parish of St. Levan. It is supposed to weigh ninety tons, yet is so balanced on an
immense pile of rocks that "one individual, by placing his back to it, can move it to
and fro easily."2 Rocking-stones are found in Ireland as well as in
Cornwall and Wales. Toland regards them as part of the mechanism of Druidism, and so do
almost all who have occasion to speak of them whether in ancient or in modern times.
"It was usual," says Byrant,
"among the Egyptians to place one vast stone above another for a religious memorial,
so equally poised, that the least external force, nay, a breath of wind, would sometimes
make them vibrate."3 Nor did these stones escape the notice of Pliny.
"Near Harpasa, a town of Asia," says he, "there stands a dreadful rock,
moveable with one finger, the same immovable with the whole body." The motion of so
large a body on the application of so slight a force, Photius in his life of Isidore,
tells us, formed the subject of some curious discussions. Some attributed the vibrations
of the stone to divine power, but others saw in them only the working of a demon.4
It does not surprise us to find a class of men so astute as the priests of Druidism quick
to perceive the use to which these stones might be turned in the way of supporting their
system. The man conscious of guilt when he saw the ponderous mass begin to quiver and
tremble the moment he laid his finger upon it, mistaking the mechanical principle, of
which he was ignorant, for the presence of the deity to whom his crime was known, would
feel constrained to confess his sin.
These stones were termed also Judgment
Stones. They were, in fact, the Urim and Thummin of the Druid. They could not be worn on
the breast like the oracle of the Jewish priesthood, they were set up in the glen or on
the moor and were had recourse to for a divine decision in matters too hard for the
determination of a human judge. If one was suspected of treason, or other crime, and there
were neither witnesses nor proof to convict him, he was let into the presence of this
dumb, awful judge, in whose breast of adamant was locked up the secret of his innocence or
his guilt, and according to the response of the oracle, so was the award of doom. If the
stone moved when the suspect touched it, he was declared innocent; if it remained
obdurately fixed and motionless, alas! For the unhappy man, his guilt was held to be
indubitably established. A judge with neither eyes to see, nor ears to hear, but in who
dwelt a divinity from which no secrets were hidden, had condemned him. From that verdict
there was no appeal; as was wont to be said of another judge, who decisions were received
as the emanations of divine and infallible knowledge, so was it said of the Druidic
Infallibility.
"Peter has spoken, the cause is
decided."
"Behold you huge
And unhewn sphere of living adamant
Which, poised by magic, rests its central
weight
On yonder pointed rock; firm as it seems,
Such is its strange and virtuous property,
It moves obsequious to the gentlest touch
Of him whose breast is pure; but to a
traitor,
Tho’ even a giant’s prowess nerved
his arm,
It stands as fixed as Snowdon."
A rocking-stone was a quarry in itself, and
such stones were dealt with as such in process of time; that is, they were broken up, and
dwelling-houses and farm-steadings were build out of the materials which they so
abundantly supplied, and hence, though anciently these rocking-stones were common they are
now rare. There was a "rocking" or "judgment" stone at Ardiffery near
Boddam. Half a century ago it still existed, and called up images of unhappy persons
standing before it, awaiting, trembling and terror their doom. It has now vanished,
doubtless under the fore-hammer of the builder. It lives only in the pages of a local
antiquary, who describes it as he saw it sixty years ago. "In walking up this
solitary glen (Boddam) you come in contact with a very large stone of unhewn granite, and
whose dimensions are (as measured in May l1819,) 37 feet in circumference and 27 feet over
it. . . . .It is placed upon several small blocks of granite, so as to free it entirely
from the ground, which must evidently have been done by the hands of men. As there are
evident marks of fire close by it, I have every reason to believe it to have been
accounted sacred, and a place of worship of the ancient Druids."5
By what means these great stones were placed
in the position in which we find them is a problem which remains to this day a mystery.
The combined strength of a whole parish would hardly have sufficed, one should think, it
accomplish such a feat. It is plain that the Druids knew the art of the engineer as well
as the science of the astronomer, and possessed appliances for combining, accumulating,
and applying force in the transportation of heavy bodies far beyond what we commonly
credit them with. They knew the uses before they knew the principles of the mechanical
powers, and hence such machines as pulleys, cranes, and inclined planes have been in
practice from time immemorial. They could yoke hundreds of oxen, or thousands of men to
the car on which these immense masses were conveyed from the spot where they were dug up
to the spot where they were to stand; but having dragged them thither, how were these
enormous blocks to be lifted into the air" huge, as it were, on a needle’s
point, and so evenly balanced as to vibrate at the gentlest touch? This would have taxed
the resources, and it might be baffled the skill of the mechanist of the present day. And
yet, the natives of Scotland could accomplish this feat three thousand years ago! When one
thinks of this one is tempted to half believe that the builders of these mighty
structures, which war, tempest, and time have not been able even yet utterly to demolish,
did indeed process the magical powers to which they laid claim. The only magic with which
they wrought was knowledge; but is it wonderful that the untaught multitude mistook a
skill and craft that were so far above their comprehension, and which they saw performing
prodigies, for a knowledge wholly supernatural, and, in the awe and terror thus inspired,
were willing to accept the manipulations of the Druid for the intimations of the Deity?
The Druid’s favourite figure was the
circle—another link between Scottish Druidism and the world-wide system of Sun
worship. Two things have come down to us from the earliest ages as the most perfect of
their kind, seven amongst numbers, and the circle amongst figures. A certain
mystic potency was supposed to reside in both. When we turn to the all-prevalent system of
sun worship we see at once how this belief arose. Bunsen tells us that the circle was the
symbol of the sun.6 It came thus to be the canonical and orthodox form of all
buildings reared for his worship. Wherever we come on the remains of these structures,
whether in Asia or Europe, they are seen to be circular. As the Magus performed his
incantations within his circle, traced, it might be, on the ground with his staff, so the
Druid, when he performed his worship, stood within his ring of cyclopean stones. The spell
of the magician was more potent, and the worship of the Druid was more acceptable when
done within this charmed enclosure. Nor was it their religious edifices only that were so
constructed; almost all their erections were regulated as to shape by their belief that
there was in the circle a sacred efficacy. From their barrows on the moor to their
dwelling-houses, all were circular. The well-known Pict’s house was a circle. And
when these huts formed a brough or hamlet, they were so arranged as to form a series of
circles. Of this a curious specimen is still to be seen in the north of England. On the
slope of a hill in Northumberland, about six miles south of the Tweed, in a district
abounding in stone remains of a Druidic character, is a little city in which no man has
dwelt these long centuries. As it has been described to us by eye-witnesses, it is a
congeries of circular huts, arranged in streets, all of which form circles have a common
centre.
We have already spoke of the great days of
the Druid, which even so late as the seventeenth century were observed with the old pagan
honours by a large portion of the Scottish peasantry; nor has their observance wholly
ceased even in our day. Fires were extinguished and rekindled, arts of divination were
practised, and other ceremonies of Druidic times were performed, though in many cases all
knowledge of the origin and design of these observances had been lost. "In many parts
of the Scottish highlands." Says Dr. Maclachlan, "there are spots round which
the dead are borne sunwise in their progress toward the place of sepulture; all these
being relics not of a Christian but of a pagan age, and an age in which the sun was an
object of worship." "There are places in Scotland where within the memory of
living man the teine eigin, or ‘forced fire,’ was lighted once every year
by the rubbing of two pieces of wood together, while every fire in the neighbourhood was
extinguished in order that they might be lighted anew from this sacred source."7
It was accounted unlawful to yoke the plow or
to engage in any of the duties of ordinary labour on these festival days; such seasons
were passed in idleness, or were devoted to the practice of magical arts. There were,
moreover, in various parts of the country, plots of land consecrated to the gods of
Druidism, and sacredly guarded from all pollution of spade or plough. Such fields were
termed, "the good man’s land and the guid man’s fauld." No one dared
cultivate them for fear of incurring the wrath of the powerful and terrible vengeful imps
of Druidism. They lay untilled from century to century, and were viewed with mysterious
awe as the trysting-place of familiar spirits, who were supposed to be willing and able to
disclose the secrets of futurity to anyone who had the courage to meet them on their own
proper territory. So prevalent were these things that we find the General Assembly of the
Church of Scotland of 1649 appointing a large Commission of their number to take steps for
discouraging and suppressing these superstitious practices. We trace the action of the
Commission in the consequent procedure of several of the Kirk Sessions. These courts
summoned delinquents before them and enjoined on them the cultivation of fields which had
not been turned by the plow from immemorial time, and they required of farmers that they
should yoke their carts on the sacred festival of Yule, and of housewives that they should
keep their hearth-fire burning on Beltane as on other days.
Arrogance is an unfailing characteristic of
all false priesthoods. To be able to open the human breast and read what is passing
therein has not contented such pretenders; they have claimed to open the portals of the
future and foretell evens yet to come. Every idolatry has its Vatican or mount of
divination. There is an instinctive and ineradicable belief in the race that he to whom
the events of tomorrow and the events of a thousand years hence are alike clearly known,
can when great ends are to be served, make known to man what is to come to pass hereafter.
It is a shallow philosophy that rejects the doctrine of prophecy in its predictive form.
The second great Father of the world, before he died, gathered his children, then an
undivided and unbroken family around him, and showed them what should befall them in the
latter days. The race started on their path with this prophecy burning like a light, and
carried it with them in their several dispersions. Their belief in it grew stronger as age
by age, they saw it fulfilling itself in their various fortunes; and though the divine
gift after the dispersion, remained only the family of Seth—the worshippers of the
true God—all nations laid claim to prophecy, and all priesthoods professed to
exercise it. The Druids of Britain challenged this gift not less than the wise men of
Chaldea, the Magi of Persia, and the priests of Greece. The earliest of our writings,
which are the archaeological one, attest the former prevalence in Scotland of this, as
well as of all the other forms of divination and soothsaying.
By the help of these archaeological lights we
can still identify many of those "high places" to which the Druid went up, that
there be might have the future unveiled to himself, and be able to unveil it to others.
The "Laws" and "Gallow-hills" scattered here and there all over our
country attest by the name they bear that here were the divining places of the priests of
the Scottish Baal. The name comes from a Gaelic word, gea-lia, which signifies
"The Sorcery Stone,"8 now corrupted into gallow. The Gaelic
words gea (sorcery), and lia (a stone) enter into a variety of
combinations, and appear in many altered forms, but wherever we light upon them as the
names of places we there behold the Druidic brand still uneffaced, though affixed so long
ago, and most surely indicating that we are treading on what was once holy ground, and in
times remote witnessed the vigils of the astrologer and the incantations of the
soothsayer. It must be noted as confirmatory of this etymological interpretation, that
theses laws and gallow-hills have the common accompaniment of a
neighbourhood abounding in Druidic remains—pillar-stone or remains of circles.
The popular belief regarding these laws
and gallow-hills is that in other days they were places of judgment and of
execution,—in short, that here stood the gallows. But this is to mistake the
etymological meaning of the name. The term is not gallows-hill and gallows-gate, but
gallow-hill and gallow-gate. It is the Celtic gea-lia, and not the English
vernacular, gallows, which is but of yesterday, compared with the olden and
venerable word which has been corrupted into a sound so like that it has been mistaken for
it. The name was affixed to these places long before the gallows had come into use as an
instrument of capital punishment, and sentence of death was carried out on the criminal by
the stone weapon, or by the yet more dreadful agency of fire.
In no land, if ancient writers are to be
believed, did divination more flourish than in the Britain of the Druid. No, not in
Chaldea, where this unholy art arose; nor in Egypt, where it had a second youth; nor in
Greece, where stood the world-renowned oracle of Delphi, nor even at Rome where flourished
the college of augurs. The sooth-sayers of Britain were had in not less honour, their oaks
were deemed not less sacred, and their oracles were listened to with not less reverence
than were the utterances of the same powerful fraternity in classic countries. Nay, it
would seem that nowhere did their credit stand so high as in Britain. The testimony of
Pliny is very explicit. Speaking of Magism, by which the ancients meant a knowledge of the
future, he says, "In Britain at this day it is highly honoured, where the people are
so wholly devoted to it, with all reverence and religious observance of ceremonies, that
one would think the Persians first learned all their magic from them."9 So
great was the fame of the British diviners that the Roman emperors sometimes consulted
them. They rivalled, if they did not eclipse the Greek Pythoness, and the Roman Augur, at
least in the homage that waited on them in their own country, and the respect and
submission which they extorted from all who visited the island.
The rites which they practised to compel the
future to disclose itself to their eye, were similar to those which their brethren
abroad—partners in the same dark craft—employed for the same end. They watched
the sacrifices, and from the appearance of the entrails divined the good or ill fortune of
the offerer. They drew auguries from the flight of birds, from the cry of fowls, from the
appearance of plants, as also from the drawing of lots, and the observation of omens, such
as tempests and comets. To these comparatively harmless methods they are said to have
added one horrible rite. They took a man, most commonly a criminal, and dealing him a blow
above the diaphragm, they slew him at a single stroke, and drew their vaticinations from
the posture in which he fell, and the convulsions he underwent in dying. So does Diodorus
Siculus relate.10 To these arts they added, it is probable, a little sleight of
hand; and, moreover, possessing considerable skill in medicine, in mechanics, and in
astronomy, it is reasonable to suppose that they made us of their superior knowledge to do
things, which to the uninstructed and credulous would appear possible only by the aid of
supernatural power. His unbounded pretensions being met by the unbounded credence of his
votaries, the Druid foretold the issue of battles, the defeat or triumph of heroes, the
calamities or blessings that awaited nations—in short, the good or ill success of
whatever enterprise of a private or of a public kind, might happen to be on hand.
A truly formidable power it was with which
the art of divination armed the Druid. The people among whom he practised his auguries,
and who accorded him the most unbounded faith as the possessor of the terrible attributes
to which he laid claim, could never very clearly distinguish, we may well believe, between
the power to foretell the future, and the power to fix the complexion and character of the
future. The prediction of flood, or tempest, or earthquake, or other dire elemental
convulsion, and the power to evoke and direct these terrible chastisements, were
doubtless, in their imagination, very much mixed up together. They had no clear
conceptions of the limits of this mysterious power; or whether indeed, it had boundaries
at all. He who could read the stars, for aught they knew, might be able to stay them in
their courses, and compel them to do his pleasure. If he should command the ocean to leave
its bed and drown their dwellings, would not its waters obey him? If he should summon the
tempest, would it not awake at his call? Or if he should life up his voice to the clouds,
would they not straightway rain their hailstones and hurl their thunderbolts upon the
disobedient? They saw the Druid, with all the forces, visible and invisible, of nature
ready to be marshalled at his biding against all who should dare to disobey or offend him.
What a miserable vassalage! And from that vassalage there was no escape. The earth was but
a wide prison, peopled throughout with invisible agents, countless in number, and malign
in spirit, whose only employment and delight were to torment the race of man. Nature
itself groaned "travailing in pain" under the bondage of this corruption, and
waited in "earnest expectation," for the coming of Christianity that it might be
brought into the liberty of a purer system. And when at length the Gospel came, and broke
the divining rod of the Druid, and the purged out the gross defilement of those vengeful
deities with which he had peopled earth and air, sea and sky, and tumbled their dark
empire—to believer in Druidism no imaginary one— into ruin, what a glorious and
blessed emancipation!—not to man only, but also to the earth on which he dwelt. If as
some historians say, wailings were heard to issue from the shrines and oracles of
paganism, when the cry went forth and resounded along the shores of every island and
continent, "great Pan is dead," well might songs and shoutings arise from the
Britons when they felt their ancient yoke falling from off their neck, and the thick gloom
in which they had so long sat, giving place to the morning light of a better day.
FOOTNOTES
1. Camden’s Britannia, vol.
ii. p. 520, Lond. 1789.
2. Stockdale’s Excursions in
Cornwall, p. 69.
3. Bryant, Anal. Mythol., vol. iii.,
apud Moore, Hist. of Ireland, p. 39, Lond. 1835.
4. Vita Isidori, apud Photium, in
Moore’s Ireland, p. 39.
5. Buchan, Annals of Peterhead, p. 42.
6. Bunsen’s Egypt, vol. i., pp.
535, 537.
7. Rev. Dr. Maclachlan, Early Scottish
Church, pp. 33, 34, Edin. 1866.
8. Rust, Druidism Exhumed, p. 63.
9. Plin. Nat. His., lib. xxx. c. i.
10. Dio. Siculus, lib. v. c. 35. |
