I’m a Druid (Of a sort)
I have read every document written about Druids in their own time (Roughly 140 bce to 460 ce). I read it every time I give a talk about Druids. It doesn’t take long
Everything we have of what Druids knew, believed or did is a few pages of text written by Greek and Roman commentators who weren’t themselves Druids. Ronald Hutton says there are twelve pages. I can only count nine and a bit in Koch & Carey and the same in T D McKendrick. This of course is in English translation but in McKendrick’s appendix the original Latin and Greek is also nine + pages.
These nine pages contain a lot of repetition and clearly build upon each other. Those nine pages were written by 18 people: politicians, a soldier, orators, historians and poets so none of them wrote very much. Only two of them: Julius Caesar and Pliny set out to write about Druids, the rest, from Sotion to Ausonius, mentioned them while writing about more general topics.
I only wrote all that to demonstrate how much “history” can be created by generations passing on interpretations of interpretations of original text. I’m in no way criticising anyone. I learned a LOT about Druids that has no basis in history (which doesn’t mean that it is without merit). I learned it from school and many many well respected writers who believed other writers.
There is no Druidic archeology. Celtic - maybe, Druidic - no.
It is SO important to go back to source information as far as possible.
A lot of my fellows believe that we have lost knowledge and skills over time. I do not agree. I see knowledge as growing, changing and developing. With that increase comes division and specialism; no one can know it all any more. Just because it is no longer held in one brain doesn’t mean that it is lost. It’s still there.
I was interested to read that AI is to be used to learn extinct and dying languages. This might give us better and better views of history and avoid some interpretation bias.
By the way the only original reference that we have to the significance of mistletoe is of a Druidic (Celtic?) ritual described by Pliny. It wasn’t all mistletoe but only that growing on oak trees which is very rare.
Edited to add:
Like many Druids I am also a professional Story teller.
In stories a child/children can’t have adventures if their parents are around so many story writers get rid of them.
Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn were orphans. In swallows and amazons the children go to an island where they are safe but out of parental control. In The Giraffe The Pelly and Me; Dhal kills the parents of at the beginning by dropping a hippopotamus on them. The pantomime step parent can allow a situation that would never happen were a loving parent present. It’s a narrative technique but it’s given step parents an undeserved bad press.
Sorry Paul I’ve just realised that I’ve dragged this way off topic but now I’ve written it I’m not deleting it.
Perhaps the thread can be split at
@Minotaur above if he agrees.
