Druids and Stone Circles

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hotaire H
hotaire Oct 14, 2009 15:34:10
Replying to Branwen

Hello Branwen,

Druids are awkward because they left no writings of their own, and many later people had strange ideas about them - most of them probably very romantic.

With regard 'Druids's Temple' : People of all ages a.d. have stuck fanciful names onto pre-historic sites they didn't understand. In N. Yorks., we have a Danes' Dyke which predates the Danish invasion by at least 1,000 years. A lot of old henges - Studford Ring (N. Yorks) and Maiden's Grave (E. Yorks) for example - were called 'stud folds' in medieval cartularies, too, quite ignoring the fact that a crippled donkey could be out of them in seconds. You can't rely on any of them.

A brief commentary on recent thinking about Druids can be found in the Blog section - 'Druid, Druid, wherefore art thou'. Quite amusing - just shows how a serious debate lasting 180 years could all be started by a mis-classification! Ha, what a wonderful world.

S sam
sam Oct 15, 2009 00:50:35
Replying to hotaire

I've always thought that the only reason druids were mentioned by Tacitus and Cassius Dio is that the Roman legions had just had their asses whooped by a girl, while Suetonius was arsing about in Anglesey. I'd imagined his letter home to the boss - "well, yes, we were caught a little with our pants down while Boudicca burned Colchester, but we did invade Anglesey, and they had DRUIDS and everything, and were really scary. As soon as we'd finished killing all the scary people (who sacrifice children, they do, I saw them do it), we went straight back to save London".

So in my mind, druids were just a roman excuse for marching your army to the wrong end of the country while a mass revolt was happening.

sam