Book Review

Brighteningthe Celtic twilight

Blood and Mistletoe: the history of the Druids in Britain

The Druids have a sort of sublim­­­­i­­nal­ presence in the British psyche. On occasions like the National Eisteddfod of Wales or the celebration of the summer solstice at Stonehenge they surface as figures that recall a dim antiquity. What kind of a relationship our modern Druids have with that dim antiquity is one of Professor Hutton's considerations in this monumental study.

As he says, what is known of the first Celtic Druids - the Celts had a prominent European presence from about 700 BC to about 400 AD - is found in representations of them by Greek and Latin authors in what amounts to about a dozen pages of print, though there is more if we include Classical reports about the religion of the Celts, and there may be some evidence about their religious beliefs in their art. Most of those representations are the product of hearsay, or are coloured for political or other purposes.

Two aspects of the Druids are presented, characterised by the "blood" and "mistletoe" of the title of this book. On the one hand, we have references to their human sacrifices and other gory practices: on the other, we have pres­entations of them as wise men, lawgivers, ­astronomers and priests.

These early Classical records are supplemented by references in early Irish literature, and in early Welsh literature, here quoted in English translations, and in contexts that reveal their priestly and magical powers. These ­powers gradually weakened and evolved into bardic offices and services. To the two sources of data about the Druids and the Celts that have been mentioned, we should add the evidence provided by archaeology.

In the British consciousness the dim presence of the Druids became even dimmer during the Middle Ages. They could well have become the concern only of dusty scholars, had it not been for a resurgence of interest in them in what became a quest for historic roots across north-western Europe during the Renaissance. Since Britain had no place in ­biblical antiquity, and not much to speak of in Classical antiquity, Hutton claims that the Druids were the only impressive figures in its remote past. And so began a period of ­magnificent pseudo-history, with the Druids rampant mainly as the wise men of our past or, alternatively, as bloody, pagan priests.

The works of several "engineers" of our Druidic past are examined in detail in this book. Three inventors who claim most attention are William Stukeley, who held that the Druids built prehistoric monuments like Stonehenge; Edward Williams, also known by his Bardic name of Iolo Morganwg, who invented the Gorsedd of Welsh bards which became a prominent feature of the modern Eisteddfod; and George Watson Reid who "made the name of Druid into a vehicle and metaphor for English cultural radicalism and founded a tradition ... which continues to this day".

Instead of treating these inventors, to use a colloquialism, as "nutters", as archaeologists and literary purists have done over the years, Hutton has looked at them sympathetically and sought to discover what exactly they were trying to do. He presents them, in a way, as neo-Druids, with very little in common with the Druids of antiquity, who attempted to set forth values that were dear to them, and many others, values that had their own validity. And it may be that their aspir­ations had more contact with what we can surmise about the beliefs of the ancient Druids than the self-contained rigidity of some archaeologists.

If we are willing to consider the utterances and ideas of such neo-Druids as having very little to do with the ancient Druids, and to accept that the ancients served only as inspir­ation or starting points for their ruminations, we need not have to rave about their wild imagin­ing, fatuous fantasies, or their "unrelieved lunatic darkness" (in the words of the eminent archaeologist Stuart Piggott). We should accept them in their own right, as this book recommends, as the work of people who might have something worthwhile for us to consider. This is exactly what happened in Wales. In the early twentieth century Iolo Morganwg (1747-1826) was revealed to be a notorious forger of medieval poetry and a scurrilous inventor of Druidic "nonsense" by two eminent Welsh scholars, Sir John Morris-Jones and Professor G.J. Williams: at one Eisteddfod a Ioloesque Archdruid, Hwfa Môn, had to be restrained from making a physical attack on the former for his views. But a canny Archdruid, Cynan, the architect of the present Eisteddfodic ceremonies, said, more or less, "Of course, we all realise that our Druidism is a fabrication, but it is an excellent fabrication, so let's make use of it." And he did, with very satisfactory consequences.  

Professor Hutton would, I am certain, have approved of this, for a reasonable understanding of people's Druidic views is one of the main recommendations of this truly excellent and readable study. 

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