Druids.

Druids. ANNE ROSS. Druids. 191 pages, 72 figures, 24 colour plates. 1999.Stroud & Charleston (SC): Tempus; 0-7524-1433-X hardback [poundssterling]19.99 & US$32.50. We have information about the Druids, but little knowledge. We have headings covering their interest in cosmology, divination divination,practice of foreseeing future events or obtaining secret knowledge through communication with divine sources and through omens, oracles, signs, and portents. ,sacrificial rites (including human sacrifice), the immortality of thesoul, judicial powers, social and political regulation. The innerstructure, the integrated content of their thought, remains unknown.Their teaching methods were oral. The Coligny Calendar, a complexachievement, suggests impressive intellectual capability. Druids were anIndo-European learned sacral sacral/sa��cral/ (sa��kral) pertaining to the sacrum. sa��craladj.In the region of or relating to the sacrum.sacral,adj pertaining to the sacrum. caste, one of several in the Celtic domain,and some of their ideas may have been rooted in pre-Indo-Europeancustoms and beliefs. Greeks could be reminded of Pythagoreans or evenStoics. In our own times, they have been compared to Shamans, a notionwhich gains colour from archaic elements fossilized in the Irishliterary tradition and the recurrent bird theme and head cult in Celticreligion. Irish references to Druids are rich and varied; but they donot resolve the central problem, even though they show Druids havingprecedence in speech over kings and surviving to coexist with Christianformer opponents. However, insular sources often may be contaminated byChristian hostility, and, gathering through time, clouds of ignoranceabout Druidic character and teaching of Druids. The earliest mention of Druids in antiquity seems to occur in alost Peripatetic 3rd-century BC essay called the `Magikos'. Notlong after, Sotion of Alexandria classified them with Chaldean mystics,Persian Magi, Greek Pythagoreans and Indian `Gymnosophistai', allgiven to enigmatic philosophical and theological modes of expression. SoDiogenes Laertius tells us in his variably useful biographical historyof the philosophers. Much later, in the 3rd century AD,emperors-in-waiting, Alexander Severus, Diocletian and Aurelian arereported to have received obscurely hinting prophecies from femaleDruids. Perhaps we should suspect propaganda. In the 4th century AD,Ausonius, poet and professor in Burdigala, refers to relatives andfriends with druidic connections. But the great period of druidicinfluence was long passed. The women who spoke to the emperors probablyresembled `wise women' of the later Celtic world more thanphilosopher statesmen like Divitiacus, the friend of Cicero'sbrother Quintus and of Julius Caesar. The latter's disingenuouslyobjective account of the Druids in his Commentaries reveals his opinionof their potential as opponents of his designs on Gaul, and consequentlyon Rome. Augustus banned them, and Claudius `rooted them out'. Intheir more fundamentalist mode, as wild maenads, they inspiredresistance in the wars following the Boudiccan revolt (60/61 AD). Theyalso supported the revolt of Civilis (71 AD). Although Ireland, andpresumably pre��sum��a��ble?adj.That can be presumed or taken for granted; reasonable as a supposition: presumable causes of the disaster. its Druids, were affected by continental influences beforePatrick's mission (428 AD), his arrival surely signals the declineof their greater influence together with the last significant infusionof `Roman' culture into an alien country. The evidence covers a great stretch of time. Neither over thatperiod nor at any point within it can we postulate for the Druidshomogeneity of function, intellectual level, doctrine, or social origin.Dr Anne Ross, exceedingly well qualified to treat so difficult asubject, accordingly places her study against the widest background ofCeltic culture and civilization from the earliest time to the residuum That which remains after any process of separation or deduction; a balance; that which remains of a decedent's estate after debts have been paid and gifts deducted. of archaic tradition, still discernible in the middle of the 20thcentury, like the fragment of the Taon occurring in the oral repertoireof a farmer in Skye. Unlike her predecessors, Kendrick (1925), Chadwick(1966), Piggott (1968), she adds the results of her own sociologicalfield investigations to her analysis of the historical, linguistic andarchaeological material. She infers from the longevity of Druidism inits varied forms and the importance attributed to it in the historicalrecord that most pagan Celtic religious practices and beliefs and manypost-pagan traditions have Druidic origins or associations. Her methodcould be described as broadly inductive. As such, it involves agrounding assumption. She assumes that Celtic culture and civilization,varied as it is in time and space, has a distinct identity and that theDruids focus its rays into an understandable convergence. Her view represents in general a refreshing change from recentlyfashionable reductionist re��duc��tion��ism?n.An attempt or tendency to explain a complex set of facts, entities, phenomena, or structures by another, simpler set: "For the last 400 years science has advanced by reductionism ... approaches. It is not irrefutable irrefutable - The opposite of refutable. but, as K.R.Popper properly understood, what worthwhile hypothesis is? Dr Ross putsforward her more speculative suggestions with caution, and where shedisagrees with others, does so with characteristic courtesy. Her book iswritten in an elegant style. Without loss of intellectual rigour, itreaches out to all who may be interested in its subject. It is also ahandsome piece of book production. Illustrations, of subjects bothfamiliar and unique, are of high quality. Richard Feachem'sdrawings and maps are beautiful and lucid. References CHADWICK, N.K. 1966. The Druids. Cardiff: University of Wales Affiliated institutionsCardiff University Cardiff was once a full member of the University but has now left (though it retains some ties). When Cardiff left, it merged with the University of Wales College of Medicine (which was also a former member). . KENDRICK, T.D. 1925. The druids: a study in Keltic prehistory prehistory,period of human evolution before writing was invented and records kept. The term was coined by Daniel Wilson in 1851. It is followed by protohistory, the period for which we have some records but must still rely largely on archaeological evidence to .London: Methuen. PIGGOTT, S. 1968. The Druids. London: Thames & Hudson. DAVID RANKIN University of Southampton In the most recent RAE assessment (2001), it has the only engineering faculty in the country to receive the highest rating (5*) across all disciplines.[3] According to The Times Higher Education Supplement