"Druid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thought that was forward and re-create for it all the matter he had missed. But he could not often make these sleepy sallies; his master was too experienced a teacher to allow any such bright-faced, eager-eyed abstractions, and as the druid women had switched his legs around a tree, so Finegas chased his mind, demanding sense in his questions and understanding ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... a terrible hankerin' for bawkins,[1] Hamish. I whiles think ye will be some old Druid priest come back that's forgotten the word o' power, but kens dimly in his mind that the white glistening berries o' the oak and the old standing stanes are freens. Ye're no feart o' bawkins, and ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... Evelyn mentions as "sweet and delectable", nowadays there is but little to be seen. There still remains, however, a beech grove called the "Druid's Temple", a "Lover's Walk" for sentimental youth, and a wood of acacias and cedars, yews and tulip trees—once known as the "Wilderness", but since the eighteenth century called the "Menagerie", because of a Duchess of Norfolk who kept an aviary within its precincts. Mrs. Delany, in 1756, thus ...
— The Dukeries • R. Murray Gilchrist
... Sarum's treeless plain, The waste that careless Nature owns; Lone tenants of her bleak domain, Loomed huge and gray the Druid stones. ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... and equal, till Fergus, to my grief, resigned the sovereignty, and caused me, a boy, to be made king of Ulla and captain of the Red Branch. But now I say, ere we consider what province or territory shall first see the embattled Red Branch cross her borders, let us enquire of Cathvah the Ard-Druid, whether the omens be propitious, and whether through his art he is able to reveal to us some rite to be performed ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... true prophet, Miss Boone. You gave utterance to some Druid-like remarks as we crossed the Stygian pool. The worst your fancy painted couldn't equal what we've ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... which modern science has achieved some of its greatest triumphs, were then dealt with by relics; and to this hour the ex votos hanging at such shrines as those of St. Genevieve at Paris, of St. Antony at Padua, of the Druid image at Chartres, of the Virgin at Einsiedeln and Lourdes, of the fountain at La Salette, are survivals of this same conception of ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... a horrible test. They laid two great fires, one of dry faggots and the other of wet, green wood. On the dry wood they laid the boy Benignus, dressed in a Druid's white robe. On the green they put a Druid, clad in St. Patrick's cloak. Then they said they would set fire to both piles. St. Patrick accepted the challenge. (If you had been the boy, would you have "got the wind up," do you think, or would you ...
— Stories of the Saints by Candle-Light • Vera C. Barclay
... gray friar in yonder green bush, Clothed in sackcloth—a little gray friar, Like the druid of old in his temple—but hush! He's at vespers; ...
— Humour of the North • Lawrence J. Burpee
... music ceased the king beckoned Enda to him, and was about to place his hand in Mave's when a Druid, whose white beard almost touched the ground, and who had been a favourite of the dead stepmother, and hated Mave for her ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... north-west, to Poitiers, to found Liguge (said to be the most ancient monastery in France), to become Bishop of Tours, and to overthrow throughout his diocese, often at the risk of his life, the sacred oaks and Druid stones of the Gauls, and the temples and idols of the Romans. But he—like many more—longed for the peace of the hermit's cell; and near Tours, between the river Loire and lofty cliffs, he hid himself in ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... Heaven! who is he?" said Morton, in a whisper to Poundtext, surprised, shocked, and even startled, at this ghastly apparition, which looked more like the resurrection of some cannibal priest, or druid red from his human sacrifice, than like ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... stood embosomed in a happy valley, Crowned by high woodlands, where the Druid oak[669] Stood like Caractacus, in act to rally His host, with broad arms 'gainst the thunder-stroke; And from beneath his boughs were seen to sally The dappled foresters; as Day awoke, The branching stag swept ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... natives and the state of their civilization, and not into the structure of their language. The brown-haired Celtic nations were certainly different from the race of the light-haired Germanic nations; and though the Druid caste recalls to our minds one of the institutions of the Ganges, this does not demonstrate that the idiom of the Celts belongs, like that of the nations of Odin, to a branch of the Indo-Pelasgic languages. From ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... fancifulness; "I have used his materials," says Gibbon, "and rejected most of his fanciful conjectures"; his credulous works on the supposed Druidical remains at Stonehenge and elsewhere gained him the title of the "Arch-Druid" (1687-1765). ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... everywhere of things remote and strange, it may have been easier to attempt to realise the ancient religion there than in a busier or more prosaic place. Yet at every point I have felt how much would have been gained could an old Celt or Druid have revisited his former haunts, and permitted me to question him on a hundred matters which must remain obscure. But ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... nice scruple does not appear; it was, however, for a long time a great obstacle to the felicity of our author. There is an incident which shows the purity of this married virgin, who was fearful the liberties she allowed Celadon might be ill construed. Phillis tells the druid Adamas that Astrea was seen sleeping by the fountain of the Truth of Love, and that the unicorns which guarded those waters were observed to approach her, and lay their heads on her lap. According to fable, it is one of the properties of these animals never to approach any female but a maiden: ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... on its axis, are always replaced by those very ones which they have set aside. He then described to us the dresses, both of the men and women, in the various ages of our monarchy: and, to go still further back, added he, the {038} statue of a female Druid has been found, whose head-dress measured half a yard to height; I have been myself to see it, and ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... beyond the testimonies of English antiquaries, from Bede to Camden, that these schools were regarded as the first in Europe. Ireland was equally remarkable for piety. In the Pagan times it was regarded as a sanctuary of the Magian or Druid creed. From the fifth century it became equally illustrious in Christendom. Without going into the disputed question of whether the Irish church was or was not independent of Rome, it is certain that Italy did not send out more apostles from the fifth to the ninth centuries than Ireland, ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... a scenic prologue. The scene is the village of Dom Remi; on the left is the Druid oak—on the right, the image of the Virgin in a small chapel. Thibaut d'Arc enters with his three daughters, Margaret, Louison, and Johanna, together with their three suitors, Etienne, Claude Marie, and Raimond. Thibaut deplores the state of his fatherland. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... communicating to the Multitude the enjoyments and advantages of the Few, had we shrunk from the good, because the good is a parent of the change and its partial ills, what now would be society? Is there no difference in collective happiness and virtue between the painted Picts and the Druid worship, and the glorious harmony, light, and order of ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... to my soul, as scarcely any other piece of music ever has done; and I really should be glad to hear it played on the organ every Sunday morning. Why? Because I recognize in it the spirit of prayer from a tortured erring human soul invoking celestial aid, and to me it is no longer a pagan Druid song, trilled by the popular Prima-Donna at the Academy of Music, but a hymn to the Heavenly powers, as consecrated as an Ave Maria, or as Rossini's 'Inflammatus.' Are we lower than the bees, who wisely discriminate between ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... the spreading oak Sat the Druid, hoary chief; Every burning word he spoke Full of rage, and ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... collected in the vicinity of some huge rocks, one of which, pre-eminent above its fellows, and having a broad flat head, on which some twenty persons might easily stand at the same time, was called the Druid's Altar. The ground about was strewn with stony fragments, covered tonight with human beings, who found a convenient resting-place amid these ruins of some ancient temple or relics of some ancient world. The shadowy concourse increased, the dim ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... the Druid stone That broods in the garden white and lone, And I stopped and looked at the shifting shadows That at some moments fall thereon From the tree hard by with a rhythmic swing, And they shaped in my imagining To the ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... a change the hearth hath known; The Druid fire, the curfew's tone, The log that bright at yule-tide shone, The merry sports of Hallow-e'en; Yet still where'er a home is found, Gather the warm affections round, And there the notes of mirth resound, The voice of wisdom heard between: ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... from Cambridge was puzzled. He could not repeat the story of Cadmus to this druid of the forest or make a learned talk on arbitrary signs. He answered happily, however, "Wise ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... somewhat coldly received in the morning. Without explaining to herself the reason of the taste and accumulated fallacies of this picture, she sought, in turning over the pages, something which could fix her attention; she saw the word "Druid." ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... mists of Penmanmaur, Taught by Plinlimmon's Druid power, England's genius filled all measure Of heart and soul, of strength and pleasure, Gave to the mind its emperor, And life was larger than before: Nor sequent centuries could hit Orbit and sum of SHAKSPEARE'S wit. The men who lived with him ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... of Hastings, father of the present Marquis, was one of the best and keenest fox-hunters of his day; he died young, and here is Dick's account of his "first fence," for which all fox-hunters are under deep obligations to the Druid. ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... held in the "Druid's Grove," a place of mingled shade and sunshine, where a little tumbling creek was the only accompaniment to the hymns, and the birds trilled an obligato. An old tree-stump served as pulpit, and here Dr. Judson talked rather than preached to ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... on and climbed Cader Idris, and found the ancient grave of rocks in a mystic circle, whose meaning lies buried with the last Druid, who would perhaps have told ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... whether of native origin, or derived from the custom of the Romans, prevailed to some extent among the Britons of the fifth and sixth century, and seems to have denoted a certain degree of power on the part of the owners. Taliesin the Druid boasts that he had received "a host of slaves," (torof keith) from his royal patron Cunedda Wledig. (Myv. ...
— Y Gododin - A Poem on the Battle of Cattraeth • Aneurin
... nine. Dr Johnson was curious to see one of those structures which northern antiquarians call a Druid's temple. I had a recollection of one at Strichen; which I had seen fifteen years ago: so we went four miles out of our road, after passing Old Deer, and went thither. Mr Fraser, the proprietor, was at home, and shewed it to us. But I had augmented it in my mind; ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... our manhood bend the skies; Against our fallen and traitor lives The great winds utter prophecies; With our faint hearts the mountain strives; Its arms outstretched, the druid wood Waits with its benedicite; And to our age's drowsy blood ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... measure, of the instructions of the Latin writers. Still the prevailing characteristic of the scenery was pasture land,—immense tracts of common supported flocks of sheep; the fragrance of new-mown hay breathed sweet from many a sunny field. In the rear stretched woods of Druid growth; and in the narrow lanes, that led to unfrequent farms and homesteads, built almost entirely either of wood or (more primitive still) of mud and clay, profuse weeds, brambles, and wild-flowers almost concealed the narrow pathway, never intended for cart or wagon, and arrested the ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... seen no physical, perhaps no moral lesson, though a Druid should not be a rogue—but it is not so set down in the bond. Is this the characterisation which we have been used to see there? To end an unpleasant letter, I must leave to your friendship for the author ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... of German theology. The entire extirpation, thus brought about, of any conceivable system of religion, prepared the way for a true revelation. Within that little river territory, amid those obscure morasses of the Rhine and Scheld, three great forms of religion—the sanguinary superstition of the Druid, the sensuous polytheism of the Roman, the elevated but dimly groping creed of the German, stood for centuries, face to face, until, having mutually debased and destroyed each other, they all faded away in the pure light ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... anklet as the Kabaros drummed; and hard by, in the brake, brown nymphs, their little breasts pointing to the zenith, moved in languorous rhythms, droning hoarse sacrificial chaunts. The colossus Memnon hymned; priests of Baal screamed as they lacerated themselves with knives; Druid priestesses crooned sybillic incantations. And over this pageant of woman and music the proud sun of old Egypt ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... was of the renowned and ancient family of the Caerlyons, Marquises of Camelot, who have preserved the old faith ever since the conversion of the venerable Druid, their first ancestor, and whose pedigree goes far beyond the date of the arrival of King Brute in these islands. Pendragon is the title of the eldest son of the house. The sons have been called Arthurs, Uthers, and Caradocs, from immemorial time. Their heads have fallen ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was as different from one published by his Northern brother, in the essential moral and humane elements of Christianity, as though they were divided from each other by a gulf as wide as that which yawns between a Druid priest and ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... night was at its deepest, a wild goose Cried from the porter's lodge, and with long clamour Shook the ale horns and shields upon their hooks; But the horse-boys slept on, as though some power Had filled the house with Druid heaviness; And wondering who of the many changing Sidhe Had come as in the old times to counsel her, Maeve walked, yet with slow footfall being old, To that small chamber by the outer gate. The porter slept although he sat upright With still and ...
— In The Seven Woods - Being Poems Chiefly of the Irish Heroic Age • William Butler (W.B.) Yeats
... beer was bitterness. It was on the skirts of Salisbury Plain, and the midnight wind that rattled my lattice window came moaning at me from Stonehenge. There was a hanger-on at that establishment (a supernaturally preserved Druid I believe him to have been, and to be still), with long white hair, and a flinty blue eye always looking afar off; who claimed to have been a shepherd, and who seemed to be ever watching for the reappearance, on the verge of the horizon, ...
— The Holly-Tree • Charles Dickens
... possible level of thought and instinctive sentiment to which man could attain without supernatural light and help. If this last perhaps is preferable to the others, where was this scaffolding the highest? Over Confucius, or Socrates, or the Scandinavian seer, or Druid or Aztec priest? Was it highest at Athens, because there the great apostle to the Gentiles planted his feet upon it, and said, in the ears of the Grecian sophists, "Him whom ye ignorantly worship declare I unto you?" At that brilliant centre of pagan civilization it might have reached its loftiest ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... Littleholme, where the road Creeps up to hills of ancient-looking stone. Under the hanging eaves at Littleholme A latticed casement peeps above still gardens Into a crown of druid-solemn trees Upon a knoll as high as a small house, A shapely mound made so by nameless men Whose smoothing touch yet shows through the green hide. When the slow moonlight drips from leaf to leaf Of that sharp, plumy gloom, and the hour comes ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... held the key to every mystic door Of Egypt's shrine; he knew the sacred rite Of druid, sage and seer; and loved the light Of Babylonian and Assyrian lore: He saw old Enoch when he walked with God; He watched Elijah smite the prophets dead; He knew the Israelites whom Moses led; And looked upon ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... in after centuries the Druid sacred cattle were cross-bred with the urus or wild German buffalo, described by Caesar, or else with native breeds of domestic cattle, owned by the Gauls; and that the Jersey of to-day is the far-descended progeny of this singular ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... the solemn character of the Druid festival, All-hallow Eve lost much of its ancient dignity, and became the carnival-night of the year for wild, grotesque rites. As century after century passed by, it came to be spoken of as the ...
— Our Holidays - Their Meaning and Spirit; retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... capture the twelve last rioters that leave the enclosure, and let their leader, who is a thousand times more guilty than they, oversee the restoration of the pavement, and himself remove yonder Druid's temple, that lies before ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... beneath the spreading oak Sat the Druid, hoary chief, Every burning word he spoke Full of rage, ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... sound? The legal point becomes almost metaphysical. On this and other grounds Fitzjames decided that a telephone was a kind of telegraph, and the decision has not been disturbed. The other case was that of the Queen v. Price,[192] tried at Cardiff in 1883. William Price, who called himself a Druid, was an old gentleman of singularly picturesque appearance who had burnt the body of his child in conformity, I presume, with what he took to be the rites of the Druids. He was charged with misdemeanour. Fitzjames gave a careful summary of the law relating to burials which includes some curious ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... have been a civilized people; besides possessing ships and armies and working in the metals, they had an organized body of surgeons, whose duty it was to attend upon the wounded in battle; and they had also a bardic or Druid class, to preserve the history of the country and the ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... ruins may still be seen on the lonely expanse of Salisbury Plain. There, on one of the fallen blocks, Carlyle and Emerson sat, when they made their pilgrimage to Stonehenge[1] many years ago, and discussed the life after death, with other questions of Druid philosophy. ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... holocaust of squires reduced to make an incense for me, though you have not performed Druid rites and packed them in gigantic osier ribs. Be philosophical, but accept your personal dues. Grant us ours too. I have a serious intention to preserve this young duchess, and I expect my task to be severe. I ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... perhaps also Atlantis—in early times sent pioneers into the West to spread religious teachings amongst their energetic inhabitants; those who settled in Gaul and the British Isles were the Druids. "I am a serpent, a druid," they said. This sentence proves that they were priests, and also the Atlantaean or Indian origin of their doctrines; for the serpent was the symbol of initiation in the sacred mysteries of India, as also ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... is an excrescence on the tree of our liberty. I pray you take it away. Worship it if you will, and in a manner imitate the Druid. He gave reverence to the mistletoe, but first he removed the parasite from the noble tree. Do you the same. Cut away this mistletoe with golden knife, as did the Druid; enshrine its imaginary divinity ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... sunset clouds. Like these, when the sun has set, it is subsiding into a fixed repose, a stern and colourless uniformity. Temple, tower, and dwelling-house assume the form of one solitary granite pile, a Druid monument. This monument, as Mr. Browning describes it,[54] consists really of two, so standing or lying as to form part of each other. The one cross-shaped is supposed to have been sepulchral, or in some other way sacred ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... Baltimore owes the name "The Monumental City," frequently applied to it. A small monument erected to the memory of Edgar Allan Poe stands in the Westminster Presbyterian churchyard, where he is buried; there is another monument to his memory in Druid Hill Park. In Greenmount Cemetery in the north central part of the city are the graves of Junius Brutus Booth, Mme Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte (1785-1879), the wife of Jerome Bonaparte, Johns Hopkins, John ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... lanterns searching for the well-loved young scapegrace. It was the Tailless Tyke and his master who one bitter evening came upon little Mrs. Burton, lying in a huddle beneath the lea of the fast-whitening Druid's Pillar with her latest baby on her breast. It was little M'Adam who took off his coat and wrapped the child in it; little M'Adam who unwound his plaid, threw it like a breastband across the dog's great chest, and tied the ends round the weary woman's waist. Red Wull it was who dragged her back ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... to vindicate the ancient inhabitants of this island from the character of barbarians given them by Caesar, he has made some errors, which, with your permission, I will attempt to rectify. First, I beg leave to dissent from the derivation of the word Druid, "Druidh," a wise man, as such a word is not to be found in the Welsh language. In one of your early volumes[5] there is a letter from a Correspondent, deriving the word (in the above language it is written Derwydd) from Dar and Gwydd, signifying chief in the presence, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... in his sable cloak, Like an old Druid from his hollow oak, As ravens solemn, and as boding, cries, "Ten thousand worlds for the three unities!" Ye doctors sage, who through Parnassus teach, Or quit the tub, or practise what ...
— English Satires • Various
... yonder grave a Druid lies, Where slowly winds the stealing wave; The year's best sweets shall duteous rise To deck its ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... dwarf oak-trees made druid shadows all along the leafy galleries that overhung the pools. The pools themselves shone with a startling silver—so hushed, so dreamy was all that surrounded them that there seemed something of an unnatural ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... placed under the orders of Admiral McBride, who gave him the command of a squadron, consisting of the Crescent and Druid, frigates, Liberty brig, and Lion cutter. The first service he had to perform was to carry a small convoy of transports with troops, &c. to Guernsey and Jersey, and furthermore to obtain pilots for ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... news: "Laeghaire, the King, sits close in cloud Of sullen thought, or storms from court to court, Because the chiefest of the Druid race Locru, and Luchat prophesied long since That one day from the sea a Priest would come With Doctrine and a Rite, and dash to earth Idols, and hurl great monarchs from their thrones; And lo! ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... what there was; and when finally he comprehended that the circle of stones once marked out a temple, and that the Druids really once stood there, he curled his lip, scornfully exclaiming, "Is that all?" and bounded off to pluck flowers. I think that, having heard of Stonehenge and a Druid temple which was built of stones so large that it was considered almost miraculous that they were moved to their places, he expected to see a temple touching the sky, perhaps. . . . Mr. Hawthorne came back the next Friday, much to our joy, and on Saturday afternoon we walked to the Nunnery ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... bidding of Mr. Armstrong, who gave his bookseller a standing order to supply everything that was proper, and rarely for his own individual amusement or instruction had recourse to any shelf but one which contained neat editions of the complete works of the Druid and Mr. Apperley, the Life of Assheton Smith, and all the volumes of the original Sporting Magazine bound in crimson russia. These, with Ruff's Guide, the Racing Calendar, and a few volumes on farriery, supplied Mr. Armstrong's ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... triumph for the young composer from the outset, especially as the lofty character of the Druid priestess was sung by that unapproachable lyric tragedienne, the Siddons of the opera, Madame Pasta. Bellini is said to have had this queen of dramatic song in his mind in writing the opera, and right nobly did she vindicate his judgment, for no European audience afterward but was thrilled and carried ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... plot, We Sinais[2] climb and know it not; Over our manhood bond the skies, Against our fallen and traitor lives The great winds utter prophecies; 15 With our faint hearts the mountain strives; Its arms outstretched, the druid[3] wood Waits with its benedicite:[4] And to our age's drowsy blood Still shouts the inspiring sea.[5] 20 Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us, The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in, The priest hath his foe who comes and shrives[6] us, We bargain for the graves we lie in; ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... waters dashing against the rocks, through long ages”. (Printed by W. and B. Brookes, Lincoln, 1843, p. 24, &c.) The theory would seem to be now generally accepted. Thus: “that ancient river, the river” Witham, honoured, we believe, by the Druid as his sacred stream, {102} consecrated in a later age to the Christian, by the number of religious houses erected on its shores, through a yet earlier stage of its existence performed the laborious task of carving out the vale of Grantham, and so adding to the varied ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... in with them a small portable tree which they proceeded to set upright. The chant now became extremely topical. Each Druid sang a verse in turn, while his fellow Druids danced a stately measure round the tree. As the verse was being sung, an imitation granite altar was ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... fear at what the maiden said, which he heard though he could not see her, called aloud to his Druid, Coran by name. "O Coran of the many spells," he said, "and of the cunning magic, I call upon thy aid. A task is upon me too great for all my skill and wit, greater than any laid upon me since I seized the kingship. A maiden unseen has met us, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... climbed the hill, the children talking perpetually, Ida unusually silent. The smoke of a gipsy fire was going up from a hollow near the Druid altar, and two figures were standing beside the altar; one, a young man, with his arm resting on the granite slab, and his head bent as he talked, with seeming earnestness, to Bessie Wendover. He turned as the crowd approached, and ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... And courteous Constance, doom'd to dark despair, By turns our thoughts engaged; and oft we talk'd Of times when monarch superstition stalk'd, And when the blood-fraught galliots of Rome Brought the grand Druid fabric to its doom: While, where the wood-hung Meinai's waters flow, The hoary harpers ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... becomes very intelligible; for Re is Irish for the moon, and Muadh signifies an image; and the compound word Reamham signifies prognosticating by the appearances of the moon. It appears by the life of our great St. Columba, that the Druid temples were here decorated with figures of the sun, the moon, and the stars. The Phoenicians, under the name of Bel-Samen, adored the Supreme; and it is pretty remarkable that to this very day, to ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... the fortieth year of Cormac McArthur McConn over the kingdom of Ireland, until he died at Clete, after a salmon-bone had stuck in his throat, from old prophecies which Malgon the Druid had made against him, after Cormac turned against the Druids on account of his manner of adoring God without them. For that reason the Devil (Diabul) tempted him (Malgenn) through the instigation, until he caused his death. ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... the following morning Jurgen left Cameliard, traveling toward Carohaise, and went into the Druid forest there, and ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... mountains hear the warning and awaken, In hushed processional issuing from the night, Like Druid priests with mystic white robes shaken, Communing in some immemorial rite: Round their old brows burns what pale augury, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... So far research on the subject seems to show that the legend of Merlin is a thing of complex growth, composed of traditions of independent and widely differing origin, most of which were told about Celtic bards and soothsayers. Merlin is, in fact, the typical Druid or wise man of Celtic tradition, and there is not the slightest reason for believing that he was ever paid divine honours. As a soothsayer of legend, he would assuredly belong to the pagan period, however much he is indebted to Geoffrey of Monmouth for his late popularity ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... oak-groves; and they really did consider the tree sacred. These Druids have left their traces in some parts of England and France in rows of huge stones set upright; and wherever an immense stone was found lying on two others, in the shape of a table, there had been a Druid altar, where the priest offered sacrifices, often of human beings. So horrible may be a so-called religion that men themselves devise, and that has not come ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... fables I endite, I, who in humble verse presume to write, May surely use this privilege of old, And, to my fancy, appellations mould. If I, instead of Anne, should Sylvia say, And Master Thomas (when the case I weigh) Should change to Adamas, the druid sage, Must I a fine or punishment engage? No, surely not:—at present I shall choose Anne and the Parson ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... As a joke for a Christmas pantomime this would be all very well; but one expects the jokes of Bernard Shaw to have some intellectual root, however fantastic the flower. And obviously all historic common sense is against the idea that that dim Druid people, whoever they were, who dwelt in our land before it was lit up by Rome or loaded with varied invasions, were a precise facsimile of the commercial society of Birmingham or Brighton. But it is a part of the Puritan ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... engine of Friendship Fire Company, said to have been presented by George Washington. This old rotary type pumper is preserved in the Maryland Building at Druid Hill Park, Baltimore. ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... Toby. "It puts our Druid Hill Park in the shade, that's a fact; makes it take a back seat and play second fiddle, ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... at this, foolish, light-hearted mirth which drenched the air all about her with the perfume of young gaiety. "Is it Miss Druid, or Mrs. Druid?" was ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... A little druid wight Of withered aspect; but his eye was keen With sweetness mixed,—a russet brown bedight. THOMSON: ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... this stop at Morains, which Walter considered a particular concession to the women of the party, he suggested that we take time to stop at Villandry to see a Druid stone which M. La Tour has been telling him about. You may remember that he and Archie are somewhat insane upon the subject of Druidical remains, but I notice that Archie is not as keenly interested in the Druids, this morning, as usual. He and Lydia are talking over some places that they mean ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... this long absence you will be surprised at my sudden reappearance, and more by what I am going to ask. But if my life and future are of any concern to you at all, I beg that you will grant my request. What I require of you, is, dear Harriet, that you meet me about eleven to-night by the Druid stones on Marlbury Downs, about a mile or more from your house. I cannot say more, except to entreat you to come. I will explain all when you are there. The one thing is, I want to see you. Come alone. Believe me, I would not ask this if my happiness did not hang upon it—God knows how entirely! ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... Loch Dairbhreach, the Lake of the Oaks, and the horses were stopped there. And Aoife bade the children of Lir to go out and bathe in the lake, and they did as she bade them. And as soon as Aoife saw them out in the lake she struck them with a Druid rod, and put on them the shape of four swans, white and beautiful. And it is what she said: "Out with you, children of the king, your luck is taken away from you forever; it is sorrowful the story will ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... wide, and Balor comes Borne in his heavy car, and demons have lifted The age-weary eyelids from the eyes that of old Turned gods to stone; Barach, the traitor, comes And the lascivious race, Cailitin, That cast a druid weakness and decay Over Sualtem's and old Dectera's child; And that great king Hell first took hold upon When he killed Naisi and broke Deirdre's heart, And all their heads are twisted to one side, For when they lived they warred on beauty and peace With obstinate, crafty, ...
— The Countess Cathleen • William Butler Yeats
... winter's darkest time, to live upon the coarsest food, to feel cold such as Englishmen in England cannot even comprehend, often to starve, always to dwell in exile from the great world. Perchance, betimes, the savage scene is lost in a dreamy vision of some lonely Scottish loch, some Druid mound in far-away Lewis, some vista of a fireside, when storm howled and waves ran high on the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... St. Columba. About the year 563 of the Christian era, Columba visited Brude, King of the Picts, in his royal fort on the Ness, and found the Pictish sovereign attended by a court or council, and with Brochan as his chief Druid or Magus. Brochan retained an Irish female, and consequently a countrywoman of Columba's, as a slave. The 33d chapter of the second book of Adamnan's work is entitled, "Concerning the Illness with which the Druid (Magus) Brochan was visited for refusing to liberate a ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... she began to be tired of sitting still, and she rose and wandered through the park for nearly an hour, trying to find the places in which she had played in her childhood during a visit to her late aunt. She recognized a great toppling Druid's altar that had formerly reminded her of Mount Sinai threatening to fall on the head of Christian in "The Pilgrim's Progress." Farther on she saw and avoided a swamp in which she had once earned a scolding from ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... seemed a perfect song is o'er: Carry the last great bard to his last bed. Land that he loved, thy noblest voice is mute. Land that he loved, that loved him! nevermore Meadow of thine, smooth lawn or wild sea-shore, Gardens of odorous bloom and tremulous fruit, Or woodlands old, like Druid couches spread, The master's feet shall tread. Death's little rift hath rent the faultless lute: The singer of ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... burned twenty of their towns! What men were those Camutes, fugitives, pursued by the sword, by famine, by winter, and whom nothing could conquer! What variety of character is there amongst their chiefs—from the druid Divitiac, the good and honest enthusiast of the Roman civilization, to the savage Ambio-rix, crafty, vindictive, implacable, who admired and imitated nothing save the savageness of the German: from Dumno-rix, that ambitious but fierce agitator, who wished to make the conqueror of the Gauls an instrument, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... high-priest of the Druids. It contained many relics—the sickle and the collar of gold, the holy bracelets, the metal girdle, the sacrificial axe, the knife of brass; and, in the midst, was a glass urn, containing a pinch or two of grey powder—human dust! proud dust—sad and last remnant of the Druid Chindonax. ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... only say the fact, that I have read it with attention and interest. Being, as you know, not quite a Churchman, I felt a jealousy at the Church taking to herself the whole deserts of Christianity, Catholic and Protestant, from Druid extirpation downwards. I call all good Christians the Church. Capillarians and all. But I am in too light a humor to touch these matters. May all our churches flourish! Two things staggered me ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... Grammar School, and met Ballantyne, who long afterward published his novels and brought about his bankruptcy. I heard also, read out from the same book, that the stone of Dryburgh was taken from the quarry that built Melrose, and that the name Dryburgh meant "Druid." Even the boys, I think, could hardly help feeling the mysterious, haunting charm of the place, which was as strange and secret as if the dark yew trees and Lebanon cedars guarding the ruins were enchanted Druid priests. There was a Druid urn, too, which looked as if it knew all the secrets of ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... have been of non-Celtic and even non-Aryan origin, and holding that the earliest non-Aryan or so-called Iberian people of Britain introduced the Druidic religion to the immigrant Celts. An argument advanced in favour of this theory is that the Continental Celts sent their neophyte Druid priests to Britain to undergo a special training at the hands of the British Druids, and that this island seems to have been regarded as the headquarters of the cult. The people of Cisalpine Gaul, for instance, had no Druidic priesthood. Caesar ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... food to keep her alive in the backwoods. We have neither fay nor fairy, ghost nor bogle, satyr nor wood-nymph; our very forests disdain to shelter dryad or hamadryad. No naiad haunts the rushy margin of our lakes, or hallows with her presence our forest-rills. No Druid claims our oaks; and instead of poring with mysterious awe among our curious limestone rocks, that are often singularly grouped together, we refer them to the geologist to exercise his skill in accounting for their appearance: instead of investing them with the solemn characters ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... infinitesimal key of the box. This small key had the appearance of coquetting with Mr. Pawket—it invariably disappeared behind the larger keys and eluded his efforts to single it out; it seemed to him flirtatious, feminine; and as he stood like an old Druid invoking the spirit of the tulip-tree, he addressed this small key ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... "Druid" is derived from the Celtic word "druidh," meaning "sage," connected with the Greek word for ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... has to dress-up in a Druid's robe, and put on a wig and a long false beard, to impress you silly people. I have to put on a purple mantle. I have no patience with such mummery; but you expect it from us; so I suppose it must be kept up. Will you wait here until ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... attempt to blend the Druid philosophy with Christianity arose the Pelagian heresy, first taught by Morgan, or Pelagius, a monk of Bangor, and which made great progress in Wales even after its refutation by St. Jerome. It was on this account ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... fragment of a Druid pile, Some glorious throne of early British art? Some trophy worthy of our rising isle, Soon from its dull obscurity to start. Wert thou an altar for a world's respect? Now the sole remnant ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 357 - Vol. XIII, No. 357., Saturday, February 21, 1829 • Various
... huge blocks blackened against the dim glowing of the cones—sentient monoliths; a Druid curve; an arc of a metal Stonehenge. And as at dusk and dawn the great menhirs of Stonehenge fill with a mysterious, granitic life, seem to be praying priests of stone, so ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... we joined the rest of the squadron: the 'Melville' (a three-decker, Sir W. Parker's flagship), the 'Blenheim,' the 'Druid,' the 'Calliope,' and several 18-gun brigs. We took Hong Kong, Chusan, Ningpo, Canton, and returned to take Amoy. One or two incidents only in the several ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... he whispered; And they arising —Of day's forget-me-nots The duskier sisters— Descended, relinquished The orchard, the trout-pool, The Druid circles, Sheepfolds of Dartmoor, Granite and sandstone, Torridge and Tamar; By Roughtor, by Dozmare, Down the vale of the Fowey Moving in silence. Brushing the nightshade By bridges Cyclopean, By ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... He found a druid of a brook chanting paganly to trees and moss. Ordinarily Kenny would have found its music and its shadows infinitely poetic. Now, wretchedly out of sorts, he plunged his face and hands into a shady pool with a sigh of vast materialistic ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... innocent, Let the fools be silent, As erst in Badon's fight,— With Arthur of liberal ones The head, with long red blades; Through feats of testy men, And a chief with his foes. Woe be to them, the fools, When revenge comes on them. I Taliesin, chief of bards, With a sapient druid's words, Will set kind Elphin free From haughty tyrant's bonds. To their fell and chilling cry, By the act of a surprising steed, From the far distant North, There soon shall be an end. Let neither grace nor health Be to Maelgwn Gwynedd, For this force and this wrong; And ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 3 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... Barnet heath In days to come the field shall blend, The story dim and date obscure; In legend all shall end. Even now, involved in forest shade A Druid-dream the strife appears, The fray of yesterday assumes The haziness of years. In North and South still beats the vein Of Yorkist ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... light that shone On Mohammed's uplifted crescent, On many a royal gilded throne And deed forgotten in the present; He saw the age of sacred trees And Druid groves and mystic larches; And saw from forest domes like these The ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte
... ample boughs, though as yet almost destitute of foliage, while the sod beneath them could scarcely boast a head of fern, couched a herd of deer. There lay a thicket of thorns skirting a sand-bank, burrowed by rabbits, on this hand grew a dense and Druid-like grove, into whose intricacies the slanting sunbeams pierced; on that extended a long glade, formed by a natural avenue of oaks, across which, at intervals, deer were passing. Nor were human figures wanting to give life and interest to the scene. Adown the glade came two keepers ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... embosom'd in a happy valley, Crown'd by high woodlands, where the Druid oak Stood like Caractacus in act to rally His host, with broad arms 'gainst the thunderstroke; And from beneath his boughs were seen to sally The dappled foresters—as day awoke, The branching stag swept down with all his herd, To quaff a brook ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... priest, Levite; Rabbi, Rabbin, Rebbe; scribe. [Mohammedan &c.] mullah, muezzin, ayatollah; ulema, imaum[obs3], imam, sheik; sufi; kahin[obs3], kassis[obs3]; mufti, hadji, dervish; fakir, faquir[obs3]; brahmin[obs3], guru, kaziaskier[obs3], poonghie[obs3], sanyasi[obs3]; druid, bonze[obs3], santon[obs3], abdal[obs3], Lama, talapoin[obs3], caloyer[obs3]. V. take orders &c. 995. Adj. the Reverend, the very Reverend, the Right Reverend; ordained, in orders, called to ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... re-elected Speaker of the Special Session which was held the following year. He was Director of the Reno Commercial Club, and surely the club spirit must be strong within him when you stop to think that he is a Mason, Elk, Moose, Druid, Woodman, and is active in the Y.M.C.A. At the present compilation, Mr. Frohlich is the owner of the Commercial ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... nights a Druid, a Forester, and a Loyal and Ancient Shepherd. All these three are Benefit Societies, and the mysteries of initiation into each are very similar. Colonel CHORKLE (who ought to have gone through the business long ago) was ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 25, 1891 • Various
... completely planned, and in some points so curiously furnished—the most beautiful ladies of easy virtue from Paris were collected and made a part of the freight. Hoche's mistress accompanied him, and his carriage was on board 'La Ville d'Orient,' taken by the 'Druid.' The hussars taken on board that vessel were those who guarded the scaffold at the execution of the unfortunate Lewis—they are clothed in scarlet jackets trimmed with gold and fur, and wear each the butcher's ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Teviot side he won. Eastward the wooded path he rode. Green hazels o'er his basnet nod; He passed the Peel of Goldieland, And crossed old Borthwick's roaring strand; Dimly he view'd the Moat-hill's mound. Where Druid shades still flitted round; In Hawick twinkled many a light; Behind him soon they set in night; And soon he spurr'd his courser keen ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... projections resembling a staircase to aid in the descent. Cinerary urns have been found in some of them, yet they do not appear to have been originally constructed as tombs. The Romans may have afterwards turned them to that service. In the vicinity there are the remains of a Druid circle, of large upright monoliths. These singular structures were formerly much more numerous, the people (who call them "the altars of the Gentiles") having destroyed a great many in building the village and the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... had not had a sleepless time that hot June night it probably would never have happened. As it was, after tossing and pitching on an uncomfortably warm mattress for several hours, he had dressed himself and left his Bolton-avenue home for a stroll in Druid Hill Park just as the dawn made itself evident. That was ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... angle of 45 degrees; the others are lying flat upon the ground. One of them, a round, flat boulder, bears upon its surface cup-marks arranged in irregular concentric circles. Was this the sacrificial stone of an ancient Druid; or are these boulders relics of the glacial period, and were the marks alluded to caused by the action of the weather? When we come to deal with Roman remains we stand upon firmer ground. On the same plain of Dalginross, and a short distance to the north of these boulders we have referred ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... of devotion among the Druids were either mid-day or midnight. The officiating Druid was cloathed in a white garment that swept the ground; on his head, he wore the tiara; he had the anguinum or serpent's egg, as the ensign of his order; his temples were encircled with a wreath of oak-leaves, and he waved in his hand the magic rod. As regards the Druid sacrifice ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... he is able to tell you something about a part of your own country which is still too rarely visited and too little known. He will speak to you of one of the remotest and most interesting corners of our old English soil. He will tell you of the grand and varied scenery; the mighty Druid relics; the quaint legends; the deep, dark mines; the venerable remains of early Christianity; and the pleasant primitive population of the county of CORNWALL. You will inquire, can we believe him in all that he says? This brings me ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... from my bed-side Where none but I may touch its purity, And sped as lightly down the dewy bank As any mothy owl that hunts quick mice. They went crying, crying, but I lost them Before I stept, with the first tips of light, On Raven Crag near by the Druid Stones; So I paused there and, stooping, pressed my hand Against the stony bed of the clear stream; Then entered I the circle and raised up My shining hand in cold stern adoration Even as the first great ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... with a certain respect to the superstitious narrative of the Breton leader. He was not surprised to find such beliefs and such poetry in a man born in face of a savage sea, among the Druid monuments of Karnac. He realized that Milliere was indeed condemned, and that God, who had thrice seemed to approve his judgment, alone could save him. But one last question ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas |
