What are druids? Druids were members of a priestly class in ancient Celtic cultures.
There is not a lot of evidence for druids because they don’t come from a people with a written culture. Most of the records about them were written down by the Roman invaders Gaul and Britain. The Romans suppressed the local people and their religions, so most of the records about the druids were written down by these biased invaders.
The Celtic cultures were a group of people who appeared in about 1200 BC and then spread throughout Western Europe: Britain, Ireland, France, and Spain. They were mostly wiped out by the Romans and their culture was heavily altered. Ireland is the only country that escaped the Romans and Celtic culture continued on there, and is still very strong. The Celtic religion was able to survive the longest in Ireland and was only wiped out in AD 432 when St. Patrick brought Christianity.
The word “druid” comes from the Latin word “druides”, which they took to be the Gaulish word for these religious people. They were probably right because many other Celtic languages use a form of the word. In Old Irish, “drui” was a magician or sorcerer. The original Gaulish word was probably “druides” and it came from “deru”, which meant oak tree, and “wid”, which meant to know or to see. It meant “those who know the oak”, or “oak knower”. The oak tree was very important in Celtic culture. It was known as the “King of the Forest” and was a sacred tree. It was thought to be the holder of the strength and power of the gods. It symbolized courage and wisdom. The druids were knowers of the oak and therefore wise and able to use the powers of the gods.
When the Romans conquered Spain, and France (Gaul), they came across these Druids. Julius Caesar was one of the first people to write about the Druids when he was in Gaul. The Druids had existed for a long time but the reason Caesar was the first person to write about them is because he wrote copiously about everything, especially himself and his victories. He had an overriding sense of his own importance and wanted to leave a lasting record. He said that the Druids were the second most important class in Celtic tribes, after the noble class. He also said that there was a distinction in rank between the druids and this was demonstrated by the color robes that they wore. The Arch-druid wore gold robes. This could possibly have meant gold adornments because I’m not sure how they would have made gold robes. Regular druids wore white, druids that did sacrifices wore red, artistic druids wore blue, and trainee druids wore brown.
The druids had several responsibilities in the tribe. Their first job was as a spiritual leader. They carried out and helped the tribes people observe the important religious occasions. These mostly revolved around the different times of the year and the farming that the tribespeople all relied so heavily upon. They followed lunar, solar, and seasonal calendars. They had 8 main holy days. The new year was celebrated on Samhain, the day we know as Halloween. It was the last day of the harvest and the end of the farming year. They celebrated the winter solstice at Yule, a word we still use at Christmas time. The 2nd of February was Imbolc, which celebrated motherhood. The 30th of April was Beltane and was a festival of fertility. Litha was the summer solstice. Lughnase was the first harvest on the 2nd of August and Mabon was the autumnal equinox.
The Roman writers also said that the druids practiced human sacrifice, but there is no definitive archaeological evidence for this. The Romans saw them as barbarian and may have projected barbarian traits upon them. Some bodies have been found that could have been sacrificed, but they could just have likely been people killed in battle. There is no way of knowing.
The druids had places of worship that they went to, but these were usually forest clearings and quiet places. Many people think of Stonehenge when they think of a druid symbol, but Stonehenge was built in about 2500 BC, a long time before the Druids ever came to Britain.
The druids were religious people, but they had far more to do than just that. In the tribes they were known as teachers, as doctors, as judges, and as wisemen. They could stop battles and they had the power to banish people from the tribe. They knew a lot about the forests they lived in and they had knowledge of which plants were medicinal and which plants were dangerous. They could cure or kill. They were a vital part of any Celtic tribe.
When the Romans invaded, they wiped out as much of the local culture and religion as they could because that made it easier for them to superimpose their own culture. What they couldn’t destroy was destroyed for them by the onslaught of Christianity a few centuries later. And this is what I learned today.
Image By Simon King – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=111021260
Sources
https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofWales/Druids/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Druid
https://www.etymonline.com/word/Druid
https://thepresenttree.com/blogs/tree-meanings/oak-tree-meaning
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak
https://www.history.com/topics/european-history/celts
https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/guide-identifying-celtic-regions
https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofWales/Druids/
https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/julius-caesars-empty-audience