Note 8 — Chapter I · INTRODUCTION

In the course of his criticism the same writer pertinently observes:—

“Why, what a wonderful thing is this! We have, in the first place, the most weighty and explicit testimony—Strabo’s, Cæsar’s, Lucan’s—that this race once possessed a special, profound, spiritual discipline, that they were, to use Mr. Nash’s words, ‘Wiser than their neighbours’. Lucan’s words are singularly clear and strong, and serve well to stand as a landmark in this controversy, in which one is sometimes embarrassed by hearing authorities quoted on this side or that, when one does not feel sure precisely what they say, how much or how little. Lucan, addressing those hitherto under the pressure of Rome, but now left by the Roman Civil War to their own devices, says:—

“‘Ye too, ye bards, who by your praises perpetuate the memory of the fallen brave, without hindrance poured forth your strains. And ye, ye Druids, now that the sword was removed, began once more your barbaric rites and weird solemnities. To you only is given the knowledge or ignorance (whichever it be) of the gods and the powers of heaven; your dwelling is in the lone heart of the forest. From you we learn that the bourne of man’s ghost is not the senseless grave, not the pale realm of the monarch below; in another world his spirit survives still.’”