Druids

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Speaker 2 Druids.

Speaker 1 When someone mentions the word, he might think of old men in white robes wearing mistletoe underneath an oak tree with a sickle.

Speaker 1 These forest-loving priests who are also closely connected today to prehistoric sites like Stonehenge and the Winter Solstice.

Speaker 1 And indeed, Druids, they have a long history, first mentioned more than 2,000 years ago by Roman statesmen and writers such as Cicero and Julius Caesar, when they were talking about what were, in their eyes, uncivilized barbarian societies that lived in northwest Europe.

Speaker 1 Think people like the Celts. So who were the ancient Druids? What do the sources say about them? Why is it so difficult to recognize Druids in surviving archaeology? Did they practice human sacrifice?

Speaker 1 And how have druids evolved and transformed over the centuries and millennia to remain so significant down to the present day?

Speaker 1 From winter solstices to the figure of panoramics in the brilliant comic series Asterix and Obelix.

Speaker 1 It's the ancients on history hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host.
And today, to align with the winter solstice of 2024, we're exploring the story of the Druids.

Speaker 1 both the mysterious druids of Britain and France mentioned by Roman writers, but also their legacy and evolution down to the present day.

Speaker 1 Now to talk through all of this, our guest is the wonderful Professor Ronald Hutton from the University of Bristol.

Speaker 1 Now, Ronald, he is a regular on the History Hits Network, having featured on not just the Tudors, Betwixt the Sheets, and After Dark. This is his first time on the Ancients, but boy was he brilliant.

Speaker 1 Sit back and relax as Ronald and I explore the story of the Druids.

Speaker 23 Ronald, it is a pleasure.

Speaker 22 It is great to have you on the podcast today.

Speaker 23 It's great to be here.

Speaker 22 Now, let's get straight into it. The Druids.

Speaker 23 First off, who were the Druids, Ronald?

Speaker 23 We can say with perfect confidence that the Druids were the main experts in religion, magic, and all modes of spirituality for the peoples of Northwestern Europe at the time they emerge into history a couple of thousand years ago.

Speaker 23 And that's all we can say about them with absolute confidence.

Speaker 22 Because this is quite a topic, isn't it, Ronald? It's one that enshrouded still in quite a lot of mystery.

Speaker 22 And the source material that we have for the Druids in ancient history some 2,000 years ago, I mean, what types do we have?

Speaker 23 We have quite a lot of comments by people who didn't have Druids.

Speaker 23 We have absolutely nothing from the Druids themselves. They never committed anything to writing, or if they did, none of it survived.
We actually have two different bodies of testimony instead.

Speaker 23 One is from Greek and Roman writers, some of whom lived at the time of Druids, but only one of whom might actually have met them.

Speaker 23 And we have stories about Druids from the medieval Christian Irish, but writing at a time long after Druids had ceased to exist.

Speaker 23 So the problem problem with the first lot is that most of them are hostile.

Speaker 23 They're serving the Roman Empire, and the Roman Empire depended on having an empire by pleading that they conquered people for their own good to civilize them.

Speaker 23 And they accused the Druids, most of them, of being the worst sort of barbaric priest, founded on fear, ignorance, tyranny, with a particularly tacky sideline and human sacrifice.

Speaker 23 And the problem with the Irish is, of course, that they were writing long after druids ceased to exist, even though they were in their own people, and again provided a range of views, some deeply Christian and hostile, others favourable.

Speaker 23 But we have no idea which of these are fantasies. They may all be.

Speaker 22 It's interesting you say that. I mean, if we focus first on those Greek and Roman sources, Ronald.
So

Speaker 22 as you say, so there's a clear bias in the writing, is there, to when they are talking about druids in an area that they're coming into contact with, they've already got in that mind this idea that they are civilized people, they are civilizations, and druids being so different to them, do they almost kind of become an epitome of barbarian life in their rise in the areas that they're going into?

Speaker 23 Yeah, that's absolutely right. They don't become an epitome of barbarian life in general, because the Romans have been epitomizing barbarians for centuries beforehand.

Speaker 23 And the Romans also epitomize as savages people within their own society whom they don't like.

Speaker 23 For example, they accuse the Jews and the Christians, who won't conform to their religion, of sexual malpractices and human sacrifice.

Speaker 23 This common theme that you pin human sacrifice on people you don't like is universally Roman.

Speaker 23 The double standard till recently is because there are plenty of Christians and Druids around in the modern world and they've preserved writings that prove the hostile Romans wrong.

Speaker 23 We don't believe the Romans who accuse them of these horrors, but the Druids have left nobody to speak for them.

Speaker 23 So a lot of people have accepted what the Romans say about them on face value, which is a bit dangerous considering the bigger picture.

Speaker 22 I think you're absolutely right.

Speaker 22 And you can absolutely look at that in other parts of the Mediterranean world too, where you only have the Greek and Roman sources in regards to the literature for that time.

Speaker 22 I mean, Ronald, I must also ask, you mentioned right of the site, so Northwestern Europe.

Speaker 22 So back 2,000 years ago, whereabouts geographically are we talking about with Northwestern Europe and where the Druids lived?

Speaker 23 Specifically, they're identified by ancient and medieval writers in what's now France and Belgium and what's now the British Isles.

Speaker 22 And it's interesting, yeah. So in those areas, if we have sources talking about them, literary sources, what about archaeology, Ronald? Because this is something we haven't even talked about yet.

Speaker 22 How difficult is archaeology? I mean, is it possible to use archaeology to try and identify druids?

Speaker 23 It's certainly possible to use archaeology to identify druids. And so far, it's got everywhere or nowhere, depending on how you view the evidence.

Speaker 23 Because we have enormous quantities of material evidence of the religious lives of the Iron Age peoples who had druids.

Speaker 23 What we've not got so far is one single scrap of it, which can be certainly identified with druids.

Speaker 23 In other words, the lack of writing means we don't have, you know, this belonged to Chidanax the Druid, written upon a piece of equipment.

Speaker 23 And we don't even have particular artifacts from places and exact sites that the Romans identified as Druidic, because the Romans were not that specific.

Speaker 23 So you have your choices on a spectrum on which a lot of different scholars sit of either saying

Speaker 23 everything you find that refers to Northwestern European IN Age religion must be Druidic, or to say that none of it can be associated.

Speaker 23 And since there's absolutely no agreement on this, I'm not sure how far we're ever going to get anywhere with it, unless we come across this all-important inscriptional evidence.

Speaker 22 If only one day.

Speaker 22 I mean, because I mean, just to bring up a couple of examples, I was at Colchester Castle Museum a year or so ago, Ronald, and saw the doctor's grave that also used to be had association with druids.

Speaker 22 And also items like the Cavernum Crown.

Speaker 22 So those items are out there, but as you've mentioned there, so it's very much, because there's no inscription saying this was owned by a druid, it's very much up for debate whether they were possessed by druids.

Speaker 23 That's exactly right. The equipment found in the grave at Colchester is definitely that of the doctor.
These are medical instruments.

Speaker 23 If druids were experts in medicine as well as spirituality, then it could be a druid's grave as well. But it might not be.

Speaker 23 There are various metal crowns, quite ornate, found in places like Deal and elsewhere, Deal and Kent, which have been claimed to be those of Druids. They could be.

Speaker 23 They could also be those of chieftains. So you see where I'm going here.
We're on thin ice wherever we tread.

Speaker 23 Absolutely indeed.

Speaker 22 Well, let's focus on the Roman sources first of all, and let's kind of go through them, Ronald, and how they talk about Druids. What's some of our earliest Roman sources that start mentioning druids?

Speaker 23 The earliest of all is the big one, the one that we rely on most, and it's Julius Caesar, who is not only one of the best-known Roman generals and politicians, but also one of the best-known Roman authors.

Speaker 23 A hundred years of English schoolchildren studying classics had to make their way through Caesar's prose as part of their education.

Speaker 23 So he's a familiar and beloved figure to modern Brits, or at least those who went through a traditional Victorian-style education.

Speaker 23 But here's the problem: that Caesar only mentions Druids once in his long and detailed account of his conquest of Gaul, which is now France and Belgium, which is definitely a place that had druids.

Speaker 23 And the passage concerned is a standalone. It isn't in Caesar's usual style, and it actually contradicts some of what he says in the rest of his book.

Speaker 23 Now, we know the book, which is his account of the Gallic War, was unfinished when Caesar died, and it was finished some years later by another author.

Speaker 23 And so we aren't sure whether this passage is Caesar's work or it was stuck in by the other author because he felt that the narrative needed breaking up.

Speaker 23 At that point, the reader needed a stock-taking rest in order to hear about the society of the Gauls in general.

Speaker 23 If it's Caesar giving the testimony, he was there, he'd have seen it, it's really important.

Speaker 23 If it's not Caesar giving the testimony, then it's lifted from a different source, which may be much less reliable. And actually, even if it's Caesar, he's not that reliable himself

Speaker 23 because he's a spin-doctor politician. And his contemporaries noted that you couldn't rely on a thing he said because it was all propaganda.
He was a master of PR, wasn't he, Ronald? Yes.

Speaker 23 He really was. He was a master of everything except ultimately survival.

Speaker 22 And so what does it say in the Gallic Wars, in that mention of the Druids, whether it's written by Caesar or this other writer, I believe it's Hertius, might have got the name wrong there, who continues the account after Caesar dies.

Speaker 22 What does it say about the Druids in Gaul?

Speaker 23 You're right about the writer.

Speaker 23 And the account is what you might call a balanced one, in that it depicts the Druids as both admirable and scary.

Speaker 23 It depicts them as admirable in being very learned, especially in the movements, the stars, and the nature of the earth, highly organized in that they meet from all over Gaul with a common agenda, a common assembly right in the center of the country.

Speaker 23 So they're international. in terms of the tribes and they exert enormous authority over the tribes, including deciding whether they should fight wars or not.

Speaker 23 But on the other hand, unlike decent Romans, they do commit human sacrifice, although Caesar says that they do so only in emergencies and they tend to sacrifice condemned criminals.

Speaker 23 Although he puts in a sting by saying if none of these are available, then they'll find anybody who's expendable.

Speaker 23 Again, we have no idea how reliable this is, because what he's doing is showing the Druids to be a formidable force, not a force for good, which justifies the Roman takeover of the area.

Speaker 22 I'd like to pick up on a couple of points there, Ronald.

Speaker 22 I mean, first of all, sometimes, you know, nowadays especially, we divide the religious world from the political world of today, and we see two separate spheres.

Speaker 22 But is the Druids, is that a great example, at least how they're described in this account?

Speaker 22 How the Druids, their power does not just center around that religious part of life, how the religious and the political, everyday running of a community in these areas, they were very much intermixed together.

Speaker 22 So they had huge importance in the whole running, in the deciding of war and peace and daily life and religious life.

Speaker 23 Well, that's what this passage says. But when you look at the rest of Caesar's really detailed account of the fighting, the Druids are not there.

Speaker 23 They're completely invisible, whereas they should be taking crucial military and political decisions, and they're not.

Speaker 23 There's a guy mentioned by Caesar who is a tribal chief, a secular leader, and he's also mentioned by another politician, very famous one of Caesar's time called Cicero.

Speaker 23 And Cicero mentions that this Gallic chieftain comes to Rome, and he has long chats with him and he's a druid. But in Caesar's account, he's not a druid.
He's a regular tribal chief.

Speaker 23 And according to this standalone account of druids, in Caesar's work, druids are not regular tribal chiefs. So we have a mess here.

Speaker 23 What should have been and looks like at first sight, really clear, helpful eyewitness testimony turns out maybe to be nothing of the kind.

Speaker 22 I say this is all theory now, Ronoff, but it's interesting you also brought up Cicero there, that great orator who you always think about being stationed in Rome or in Italy.

Speaker 22 Do you think the word druid kind of filters down into the centre of the Roman Empire almost as part of the propaganda for Gaul? But as you say, for people actually on there,

Speaker 22 you don't actually see them as much. on the front ranks in the political decision-making.
It's interesting that Cicero knows of the word druids back in Italy.

Speaker 23 Yes, and thereafter the druids become bogey men to the romans as each generation of roman writers comes in

Speaker 23 they uh make druids nastier so by the time you get to a hundred a hundred and fifty years after caesar's time by which time druids have disappeared from the roman provinces of the empire they are accused of all manner of worse things like cannibalism and now human sacrifice has not become a rare event like it was in the account in seasons.

Speaker 23 It's actually central to their type of religion. So they get demonized more and more as they disappear until by the time they're gone, they are at their worst.
And then there's another change.

Speaker 23 As you go later in the Roman Empire and the propaganda of the evil druid is no longer needed, druids reappear.

Speaker 23 but this time they're mostly female and they're prophetesses usually there to prophecy that some oik in a pub is going to become an emperor, and he always does later.

Speaker 23 So they're ladies with the second sight, like many a spay wife in Norse and in Highland Scots tradition later. Now, the solution to all this could be that druid is a word.
It's a term.

Speaker 23 And we wouldn't make a fuss about them if the Romans had simply used the Roman term for priest or magician or soothsayer for them. But they use this standalone, unique technical term.

Speaker 23 And it seems to be just the regular word in Celtic languages, those of the peoples who had druids, for anybody with an expertise in religion, magic or spirituality.

Speaker 23 So at one end of the spectrum, you have Caesar's college of super sages who get together and basically run the culture to these ale wives and wandering prophetesses who turn up in later Roman literature.

Speaker 23 And they're all druids because they all have a relationship with magic or with religion. When you look at the medieval Irish literature, overwhelmingly, a druid is anybody who works magic.

Speaker 23 not dealing with religion, it's magic. And indeed, the word for magic in medieval Irish, Driedacht or Dreidecht, there are two versions, just means druid craft.

Speaker 22 That's like another part of the whole story of the Druids, isn't it, Ronald? It's just the word druid and how it has evolved over the many centuries.

Speaker 22 It's almost, I guess, maybe like the word Celtic or elsewhere. And I'm sure this is what you've done as well.

Speaker 22 You can study the evolution of druids and who is associated with that word druid over centuries and millennia and be fascinated with how that changes too.

Speaker 23 You're spot on, Tristan. Europeans, later Europeans, don't always need druids.

Speaker 23 Medieval Europeans didn't need them at all, apart from the medieval Irish, who made them heroic national figures or demonic national figures.

Speaker 23 They suddenly come back into the frame in the 16th century, when Northern Europeans start forming nation-states with their particular histories. and traditions.

Speaker 23 And the whole thing about being Northern European is if you look back into the remote past, the very first charismatic figures you encounter are the Druids.

Speaker 23 And so they can do a lot of work for you if you're a Christian

Speaker 23 and emphasise the religious side. They're demonic figures.
But if you're a nationalist looking for your roots, they can be heroic figures. And there's a kind of domino effect.
The Germans start this.

Speaker 23 The French then follow. Scots follow.
And last of all, the English come come in, but a hundred years after the others.

Speaker 23 But once the English invent Britain, in other words, they conquer Ireland and they unite with Scotland and Wales, there is a need for a common past for the new British superstate.

Speaker 23 Most of the national heroes of the component peoples have become heroes by killing other component peoples of the new British state. So William Wallace, Robert the Bruce kill the English.

Speaker 23 King Arthur kills the English. Owen Glyndewar and Hlywellyn Griffith of Wales kill the English.
And the Irish heroes like Finn McCool kill everybody else.

Speaker 23 So you have a desperate need for bonding figures. The great common denominator is the Druids because they're...
behind everybody there and can be claimed by everybody.

Speaker 23 And they become cement holding together a new national history.

Speaker 22 Right. They become the cement.

Speaker 22 I mean, before I bring you back into ancient history and the Romans and their interactions with Druids, of course, in England, you have the figure of Boudicca, who's a massive figure, of course, at that time too, I presume.

Speaker 22 Is there also a sense maybe in England with the Druids? I mean, was there a sense of them being kind of these resistance symbols alongside figures like Boudica against the Romans 2,000 years ago?

Speaker 22 Or is that a bit too far to look at?

Speaker 23 You can look exactly like that, and you'd be right. If you airbrush away the nastier accusations of the Romans, then you have a whole bundle of charming characteristics.

Speaker 23 The Druids are resistance leaders to imperial oppression and conquest.

Speaker 23 And the other side of them is that they are great leaders. They're supposed to be wise.
They're supposed to be powerful. They're supposed to be green.

Speaker 23 Because some of the later Roman writers writers said they particularly hung out in wild natural places like woods and caves. They might actually have done that hiding from Roman persecution.

Speaker 23 They're associated with oak trees in particular, especially if they have mistletoe growing on them.

Speaker 23 So they can be made into the ideal Georgian, English, or British patriotic hero because they revere oak trees and the Royal Navy is made of oak.

Speaker 23 They can be even made the patrons and founders of the Royal Navy.

Speaker 22 Now, Now, the mistletoe link there is interesting because, yes, that is something you think of, isn't it? But does that have its origins in the original Roman literature when talking about druids?

Speaker 23 It absolutely has, but it has its origins in a few lines in one Roman writer.

Speaker 23 I mean, I say there's quite a lot of Greek and Roman testimony about druids, but you could watch the whole lot of it together, in fact, in about five to eight pages.

Speaker 23 And this guy is Pliny the elder, great naturalist. And he's discussing trees.
And he discusses mistletoe.

Speaker 23 and says that the tribes of southern France, well, he called it Gaul, were particularly excited about this when it appears on an oak tree.

Speaker 23 We assume that these tribes had druids because they're in a Celtic-speaking area. Pliny doesn't speak of druids here.

Speaker 23 But he says when they find a mistletoe in an oak tree, they go wild because as anybody who knows the countryside knows, mistletoe hardly ever grows on an oak tree. It's very rare.

Speaker 23 So when you find a mistle oak in ancient southern Gaul, you then cut the mistletoe on the sixth day after the next new moon. Nothing here about midwinter, nothing about Christmas that it is to be.

Speaker 23 And the priests, he doesn't call them druids, turn up with some white cattle for sacrifice, a golden sickle to cut the mistletoe, cut the mistletoe and it drops into a cloth to stop it hitting the ground.

Speaker 23 And the mistletoe can then be made into a very powerful medicine which heals anything.

Speaker 22 Well, I must admit, I think of panoramics in asterisks and obelisks.

Speaker 22 First of all, I've got to get that on the table, but the sickle is another object that has come to define these druids too, hasn't it, Ronald?

Speaker 23 Entirely because of Pliny. Pliny is the only person to describe what priests of the Celtic peoples would have looked like, although admittedly he's only describing their gear for one ceremony.

Speaker 23 And he doesn't call them druids. But if you ignore all that, then we have a person in a white robe with a golden sickle and a bunch of mistletoe.

Speaker 23 Hey, Presto, you've got your custom-made 18th to 20th century druid.

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Speaker 22 I hope you don't mind if we now go to Britain and Britain back in ancient history with the Roman invasion and conquest, first century AD. So Caesar's gone now.

Speaker 22 Ronald, what do the sources tell us about the Druids and their involvement, I guess in the resistance, when the Romans decide to take over Britain?

Speaker 23 It's a few sentences in one paragraph, in one book by one writer. I said we don't have much to go on.
He is the greatest single Roman historian, at least of the imperial era. He's Tacitus.

Speaker 23 And he's writing about something that happened in Britain, allegedly, when he was a boy, a generation before.

Speaker 23 But his father-in-law was the great Roman general Agricola, who ruled Britain, and might have been an eyewitness of what he's describing, or might not.

Speaker 23 He's talking about when a Roman army, conquering westwards across Britain, reaches the end of Wales and faces the island of Anglesey, Mon to Welsh, across a narrow but rather dangerous strait of water, the Menae.

Speaker 23 And what the Roman army sees is a native British army drawn up to fight them on the Anglesey shore, and among them things they've never seen before. That's the Roman soldiers.

Speaker 23 That is tall druids shouting curses and black-robed women with flaming torches like Furies. The fact that the Romans have never seen druids before doing this is kind of interesting.

Speaker 23 It seems to indicate they're not that ubiquitous. And of course, druid here might just be the handy term for a priest or a magician.
And the soldiers are terrified by this.

Speaker 23 But up steps their square-jawed, clean-cut hero, Suetonius Paulinus, the Roman general and governor. And he says, what are you?

Speaker 23 You're supposed to be Romans and you're scared of a bunch of silly women. So go for it, lads.
And the lads go for it. They cross the water.
They defeat the enemy army.

Speaker 23 And then they find that this is justified because they find that the native groves and shrines are full of evidence for horrific human sacrifice. So it was all worth it anyway.
So what's the problem?

Speaker 23 Well, the problem is that it's now accepted that Tacitus invented entire episodes in his histories and possibly entire characters.

Speaker 23 They're there to liven things up when the narrative's getting a bit dry and make points about the superiority of Roman civilization and eulogize certain heroes.

Speaker 23 And actually, the narrative has been getting a bit dry at this point, and suddenly this stunning image comes in. So you have three points on a spectrum again, and the choice is up to you.

Speaker 23 One is that Tacitus made the entire thing up because he knew his readership would love it. Second,

Speaker 23 that he got the story from a superannuated legionary in a wine bar in Rome,

Speaker 23 and we don't know how reliable it was.

Speaker 23 Third, that this is an eyewitness account from Agricola himself or somebody else, a mate of Agricola, who'd seen service with Suetonius Polinus, so every word is objectively true.

Speaker 23 That's an enormously wide spectrum, and we can't be sure of where we are on any of it.

Speaker 22 It's also interesting, isn't it? I'd say if that's in Tacitus, but I did not realize that that was the only mention in Roman literature of druids in Britain.

Speaker 22 Like they're not associated with Julius Caesar in Britain or the initial Roman invasion with Aulus Clautius. It's only on the island of Anglesey that that word is used.

Speaker 22 And you've also highlighted how that word druid, you know, kind of is used sometimes as a word for priest as well. So, yes, the evidence, as you say, it is extremely limited, isn't it?

Speaker 22 Or at least evidence we can say the word druid is mentioned.

Speaker 23 Yeah, welcome to a historical quagmire.

Speaker 23 And it might be said that Tacitus never says that Anglesey was a particularly druidic island or a holy island. Instead, because it's offshore, it's the ideal place for resistance base.

Speaker 23 because the Romans have to struggle across a dangerous bit of water to get at you. So you can kind of hit them when they're drenched and seasick on the beach.
Except, of course, it doesn't work.

Speaker 22 Absolutely.

Speaker 22 And how has this particular story involving Druids, and because we've already talked about in passing kind of the legacy of the Druids and how it evolves down, you know, into the last couple of centuries, how does this story affect, you know, kind of the development, the view of Anglesey over the centuries and millennia following?

Speaker 22 Does it become closely associated with druids or seen as a holy isle?

Speaker 23 No kidding, both. It becomes the druidic isle par excellence in modern British culture.

Speaker 22 And so how is that defined? I mean, that is a kind of a pilgrimage place, is it?

Speaker 23 It is, and it's a neat package because it's got absolutely terrific prehistoric monuments from every age of prehistory back to the Neolithic. It has indeed the finest prehistoric monuments in Wales.

Speaker 23 And so when you couple these with druids, it makes for a very charismatic package.

Speaker 23 It's also relatively accessible down the A55 and the Britannia Bridge, and it's on the way to the Irish Ferry, the main London to Dublin link. Oh, well, there you go.

Speaker 22 Well, you mentioned there how in Testis' accounts, once they take the island, they notice evidence of human sacrifice. And we talked about that a bit in passing already.

Speaker 22 But I want to ask, as we get later in the Roman period, do Roman writers, as the Druids become the bogeymen, do they elaborate on the,

Speaker 22 I guess, rather horrifically, the methods of human sacrifice that these druids supposedly undertook?

Speaker 23 They don't elaborate as they go on. They elaborate near the beginning.

Speaker 23 Because

Speaker 23 a couple of our earliest writers, later than Caesar, but before Tacitus and Pliny, called Diodorus Siculus and Strabo, have sentences about the Druids.

Speaker 23 Now, both both of these are working in the Mediterranean area, Strabo and the Near East. So they never go near Druids.
And both of them are also quite good at citing their sources.

Speaker 23 And unusually, neither of them cite the source material they use about Druids. So again, we have no idea where they got it from.

Speaker 23 Pliny is somebody who always footnotes his texts, but with the case of Druids, rather shiftily, he says, ut dicitur, it is said.

Speaker 23 But it's pretty lurid.

Speaker 23 The modes of human sacrifice detailed in Strabo and Diodorus Siculus between them, and indeed echoing something from Caesar or pseudo-Caesar. are that you burn people alive in big wicker work figures.

Speaker 23 This is where we get the wicker man from. That was it right.
Walk on Christopher Lee and Edward Woodward. But also, don't try this at home, folks.

Speaker 23 You divine the future by stabbing a human victim in the stomach so they die slowly, and then observing the movements their body makes, like a kind of semaphore, as they're writhing to death.

Speaker 22 Goodness. I mean, I don't really want to ask, is it true? Because it does feel like, you know, this is Roman labeling of the Bogeymen and these horrific kind of execution stories with them.

Speaker 22 But maybe I can sugarcoat it a little by asking: archaeologically, is there evidence, potential evidence of human sacrifice in Britain?

Speaker 22 But probably maybe not that refers to things like Wickerman and so on.

Speaker 23 No, you're not sugarcoating it.

Speaker 23 Things are still pretty grim. The answer is the same for any archaeological evidence connected to the Druids: that we have masses or we have none, depending on how you read it.

Speaker 23 We get huge quantities of human bones around pre-Roman French and British sites. But they could be the remains of human sacrifices kept as trophies.

Speaker 23 They could be the remains of enemies killed in war and kept as trophies.

Speaker 23 Or they could be the remains of your own revered ancestors who are kept near you so that their spirits will linger and bless you and their bones retain something of their personalities in life.

Speaker 23 In the north of France, there are enormous open-air sanctuaries of the kind you don't get in Britain, which have the bodies of large numbers of young men that were

Speaker 23 fixed up around the precincts or put into piles of bones.

Speaker 23 And again, it seems quite likely that these are enemy warriors and having slaughtered them, you then bring them back as trophies and you keep them around to reassure you've trashed the other side before and you can do it again.

Speaker 23 Or it's just possible that they are your heroic dead that are brought to the sanctuaries as to war graves or cenotaphs and displayed there to encourage their successors.

Speaker 23 We have no testimony that can take us to one side or the other.

Speaker 22 So once again, it's this idea that let's say in Britain, yes, there is seems to be evidence of human sacrifice from the archaeology,

Speaker 22 but whether that has to do with druids, that is another question entirely.

Speaker 23 Well, it's worse than that. It's that we may have no evidence of human sacrifice from archaeology, because it's also equivocal.

Speaker 23 And if it is human sacrifice, it could be connected to the druids or not. We're still waist deep in mud at this point, struggling to make a path through.

Speaker 2 Dashing through the store, Dave's looking for a gift. One you can't ignore.
Run out the socks he picks. I know, I'm putting them back.

Speaker 3 Hey, Dave, here's a tip.

Speaker 4 Put scratchers on your list.

Speaker 5 Oh, scratchers, good idea.

Speaker 6 It's an easy shopping trip.

Speaker 2 We're glad we could assist.

Speaker 7 Thanks, random singing people.

Speaker 9 So be like Dave this holiday and give the gift of play.

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Speaker 11 Please play responsibly, must be 18 years or older to purchase play or claim.

Speaker 15 This holiday season, millions of families will pack their bags, load up the car, and head off for a family vacation.

Speaker 13 But not every trip is going to be somewhere fun.

Speaker 19 The American Red Cross responds to about 7,000 emergencies during the holiday season alone, from home fires to natural disasters, providing families a safe place to go when the unthinkable happens.

Speaker 21 But they can't do it without your support.

Speaker 17 Please donate at redcross.org.

Speaker 22 Well, Ronald, I think we've covered all that we can with the ancient history and the Roman sources and archaeology.

Speaker 22 I guess the next question is when we go into the legacy and before we get to the association now with the winter solstice and so on, is you mentioned earlier how that other big source of literature, which is from medieval Ireland and Wales, this Christian literature.

Speaker 22 How easy a transition is it from the Roman literature highlighting the Druids as these great bogeymen into that early medieval literature that we then see about the Druids?

Speaker 23 There's no transition. The two are not connected.
The Irish, when they became Christian and

Speaker 23 to their huge delight, read the Roman pagan literature, which was to become an inheritance of Western civilization in general, thought, hey, we can match this, and began working up a tremendous native literature of their own, featuring heroes, in the same way as the Greek and the Roman mythology.

Speaker 23 And Druids are a big part of that. The Welsh may or may not have any references to druids in their medieval literature.

Speaker 23 There are no clear references to druids as such in in most of their medieval stories. There are a few passing references to a class of person called the Derewithong,

Speaker 23 who may be druids, or they may not. It may be a word for a kind of ecstatic prophet.
So we aren't sure. This is disputed.

Speaker 23 Whether there's any echo of ancient paganism in medieval Welsh literature is something that's now endlessly controversial. Once again, the truth is we can't be sure either way could be right.

Speaker 23 The Irish literature, nobody doubts. There's a lot of paganism in it.

Speaker 23 But here too, there's a big controversy over whether the paganism represented is a genuine memory or it's made up by medieval Christian writers.

Speaker 22 Is it interesting that with that Irish literature, you know, these heroes and associations with Druids at a time that Christianity is there, that the druids, dare I say, kind of brought in to Christianity in Ireland?

Speaker 23 Yes, like the Romans and Greeks, medieval Christian Irish writers found two different uses for druids.

Speaker 23 Most of the time, they are evil pagan priests, and their whole function in the stories is to get trashed by Christian saints.

Speaker 22 Oh, is it St. Patrick? Is St.
Patrick someone who who fights a druid? Or am I... I think I'm right in that, is it?

Speaker 23 You're absolutely spot on.

Speaker 23 There we we go he is chronologically the first of the saints to take on druids at least in the mythology hagiography yes uh he takes on the evil druids of king leary the king of ireland and of course he defeats them and destroys some of them this could be an actual memory of how Christianity came into Ireland, but it bears a suspicious resemblance to the account of the contest of Moses and Aaron and the wicked priests of Pharaoh in the Old Testament.

Speaker 22 It's so interesting once again.

Speaker 22 And as we've already covered in this chat, you know, how the druid, the name, the word, evolves over those centuries and millennia and going from ancient times to medieval Ireland and Georgian Britain and even now into the 20th and 21st centuries, Ronald.

Speaker 22 I mean, the word druid is so popular today, hence why we're doing an episode all about it. But what legacy do the druids have today?

Speaker 23 The druids have an immense legacy and have had since the 17th century, in that they're so good to think with because of these incredibly vivid and yet contrasting images provided by the ancient writers and the Irish.

Speaker 23 So if you want heroic ancestors, the Druids are tailor-made, being patriotic, brave, green, and wise.

Speaker 23 If you want to condemn the ancient world, or at least the non-civilized, non-Christian bits of it, as the kind of thing we grew out of, then they are the epitome of the nastiest kind of pagan priest.

Speaker 23 And so at the present day, they still do the same thing. I still read novels or even

Speaker 23 missionary work by evangelical Christians, holding up the druids as exemplars of what paganism does if you allow it to survive or revive.

Speaker 23 But also, we have a pagan revival in this nation, and Druidry plays a very important part in that, representing a nature-based, very green spirituality and a pacifist one, as well as one that celebrates the land on which we live.

Speaker 23 You can take the druids almost anywhere, but because they're such charismatic figures in the world and national imagination, They're wonderful figures with whom to work.

Speaker 22 You know, that celebration of the land brings me wonderfully on to my last question, which is, of course, about the winter solstice and famous stone circles and prehistoric sites, and the most famous obviously being Stonehenge.

Speaker 22 How do the Druids come to be associated with great monuments like that and the Winter Solstice?

Speaker 23 There are two different associations with different points.

Speaker 23 The association of the Druids with Stonehenge and prehistoric monuments begins in Scotland in the 16th century and becomes universal in the 18th century. And it's simply because

Speaker 23 in that period, the peoples of Europe realize they have this tremendous heritage of prehistoric monuments. They hadn't really considered them before.

Speaker 23 And now they start mapping and drawing and investigating them on a big scale. And the Druids are the priests that you encounter at the beginning of history.

Speaker 23 So it's a natural assumption that the Druids built these monuments. The guy who really nails this and makes Druids national stars for the next 200 years is the founder of field archaeology.

Speaker 23 He's William Stukely, an 18th century doctor who becomes a clergyman.

Speaker 23 And he makes us a very big service because by a mixture of superb field work and some excavation, he proves that monuments like Stonehenge were not built by the Romans, by the wizard Merlin, by the Vikings or the Anglo-Saxons, but by the prehistoric British.

Speaker 23 And he's spot on. Whether or not the Druids built them is forever wide open because we now realize that prehistory went on for thousands of years longer than Stukely and his contemporaries did.

Speaker 23 And there were a lot of big changes in the nature of monuments and religion in that time. So the Druids may simply have been the latest, the Iron Age version of that.

Speaker 23 On the other hand, they could have been around since the old stone age. We just don't know.
The link to the winter solstice is through Pliny. Right.

Speaker 23 The British don't start using mistletoe as a common decoration at Christmas until the 18th century. And we don't start kissing under it until the late 18th century.

Speaker 23 But once we start doing that and don't do any research, the impulse to think this must be an ancient fertility rite. It begins in London kitchens in the late 18th century.

Speaker 23 But once you get to the Victorian period, that's forgotten. And to look up your Pliny and Pinnet on the Druids is irresistible.
But the good news here...

Speaker 23 is there's absolutely no doubt that the Druids will have celebrated midwinter because the solstices, midwinter, midsummer, are enormous festivals all over Europe, especially northern Europe, as soon as you come to history.

Speaker 23 So since everybody else celebrated midwinter big time, the Druids would definitely have done it.

Speaker 22 Well, I also love the fact that we can also end with another association with Pliny the Elder, such a fascinating source. And this has been...
A brilliant chat, Ronald, all about the Druids.

Speaker 22 You've done books on the Druids Druids in the past and they are called?

Speaker 23 The Druids, unimaginatively. And more imaginatively, the bigger one is Blood and Mistletoe.
The

Speaker 23 Druids was a pop book for people who wanted a quick hit. And Blood and Mistletoe has the full story with all the source references.

Speaker 22 Well, fantastic. Ronald, it just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking the time out of your schedule to come on the podcast today.
It's been a huge pleasure, Tristan.

Speaker 1 Well, there you go. There was Professor Ronald Hutton talking all things the druids.
I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Thank you for listening to it.

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Speaker 22 That's enough from me.

Speaker 1 I will see you in the next episode, and I wish you a very Merry Christmas.

Speaker 2 Dashing through the store, Dave's looking for a gift. One you can't ignore.
Run out the socks he picks. I know, I'm putting them back.

Speaker 3 Hey, Dave, here's a tip.

Speaker 4 Put scratchers on your list.

Speaker 5 Oh, scratchers, good idea.

Speaker 6 It's an easy shopping trip.

Speaker 2 We're glad we could assist.

Speaker 7 Thanks, random singing people.

Speaker 8 So be like Dave this holiday and give the gift of play.

Speaker 10 Scratchers from the California lottery. A little play can make your day.

Speaker 11 Please play responsibly. Must be 18 years or older to purchase play or claim.

Speaker 14 This holiday season, millions of families will pack their bags, load up the car, and head off for a family vacation.

Speaker 13 But not every trip is going to be somewhere fun.

Speaker 19 The American Red Cross responds to about 7,000 emergencies during the holiday season alone, from home fires to natural disasters, providing families a safe place to go when the unthinkable happens.

Speaker 21 But they can't do it without your support.

Speaker 17 Please donate at redcross.org.