"Druid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Ye've 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 ye're never tired o' hearing about them. Aweel, it's a kind o' bravery I envy ye, for ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... 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 be to your ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... 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 seen ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... ruined door of the chapel at the stained glass or the statuettes of painted wood which stood on the altar. These plunged me in endless reveries. The strange and terrible physiognomy of these saints, more Druid than Christian, savage and vindictive, pursued me like a nightmare. Saints though they were, they were none the less subject to very strange weaknesses. Gregory, of Tours, has told us the story of a certain Winnoch, who passed through Tours on his way to Jerusalem, ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... horse was full of life. They sped over the smooth, hedge-bordered roads, winding about fields and gardens until they arrived at Calderstone Park. Here the captain pointed out the Calder Stones, ruins of an ancient Druid place of worship or sacrifice. Then they drove leisurely through Sefton Park, thence ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... rites under the shadows of oaken groves. The Greeks also called the Druids Saronides, from two Celtic words sar and dhuine, signifying "excellent or superior men." The Celtic meaning of the word "Druid" is to enclose within a circle, and a Druid meant a prophet, a divine, a bard, a magician; one who was admitted to the mysteries of the inner circle. The Druidic religion was astronomical, and purely deistical, ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 2, December 1875 • Various
... 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 ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... 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, as ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... Dudley Digges, Mr. P.J. Kelly, with Miss Walker and the brothers Fay,—Mr. W.G. Fay and Mr. Frank J. Fay,—were then the leading actors of the company. The playwrights, too, took part in their own or their fellows' plays in the lesser roles, Mr. Russell sometimes playing the druid in his "Deirdre" and Mr. Colum carrying a spear or wearing a pea-jacket as need was. One circumstance or another, politics or need, gradually lost the company every one of these actors that took part ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... 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, ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... has thrown its charm over the poetry and religion of all races. Ocean us leaves the o'erarching floods and rocky grottoes at the call of bound Prometheus; Cyrene, with her nymphs, sits in the cool Peneus, where comes Aristaeus mourning for his stolen bees; the Druid washed his hedge-hyssop in the sacred water, and priestesses lived on coral reefs visited by remote lovers in their sundown seas; Schiller's diver goes into the purpling deep and sees the Sea-Horror reaching out its hundred arms; the beautiful ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... genius loci speaks 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 this, alas, ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... Frederic Clapp were highly commended for their excellence. Some of the older peaches of fine quality had of late been neglected, and among them Druid Hill and Brevoort. ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... famous things in the book, and one of the most important to its conduct, is the "Fountain of the Truth of Love," a few words on which will illustrate the general handling very fairly. This Fountain (presided over by a Druid, a very important personage otherwise, who is a sort of high priest thereof) has nothing in common with the more usual waters which are philtres or anti-philtres, etc. Its function is to be gazed in rather than to be drunk, and if you look into it, loving somebody, you see your mistress. ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... stiff; The deer-hound, majestic, looks lofty around, While he lists with delight to the harp's distant sound; Is it swept by the gale, as it slow wafts along The heart-soothing tones of an olden times' song? Or is it some Druid who touches, unseen, "The Harp of the North," newly strung ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... of the near village of Edlington we have probably a trace of the mystic Druid, i.e. British, deity Eideleg, while in Horsington we may have the Druid sacred animal. Olivers' Religious Houses, ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... for, be it never so pale. Will not one of heaven's delights be to see the "inaccessible light" in which God—our God—is shrouded, and to behold one another's faces in the light that streams from the Lamb? And so, very tempting as my fire is—and I am as much a fire-worshipper as an Irish Druid or a Peruvian Inca—I always like to go out as the days are lengthening and the sun is stretching out his compasses to measure in wider arcs ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... The Druid priests their rites forbore, And listen'd to the words that fell From Patrick's pious lips, as o'er The land he ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... they have often been called by titles equivalent to the "tree of life," and are thus connected with the nigh innumerable myths which relate to some mystic tree as the source of life. The ash Ygdrasyl of the Edda, the oak of Dordona and of the Druid, the modern Christmas tree, the sacred banyan, the holy groves, illustrate but faintly the prevalence of tree worship. Even so late as the time of Canute, it had to be forbidden in England ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... when the pale shadow spake; For there was striving, in its piteous tongue, To speak as when on earth it was awake, And Isabella on its music hung: Languor there was in it, and tremulous shake, As in a palsied Druid's harp unstrung; And through it moan'd a ghostly under-song, Like hoarse night-gusts sepulchral ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... 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.
... old place... The woods and parks are splendid, and the old ruin of the castle defended by Lady Blanche is the most interesting thing possible. Half the other great places I go to are mushroom greatness, but this is the real old thing of Druid remains and the old baronial castle of knights in armour and fair Saxon-looking women, and with heavy portcullises to enter by, and dungeons and subterranean passages, etc. There is a statue of our Saviour over the door, and in Cromwell's siege a cannon ball made ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... hands to lift the massive table of rock upon the supporting shafts—relics of an age when they were the only architecture, the only national monuments; when savage ancestors in lion skins, with stone weapons, led by white-robed Druid priests, came solemnly here and left the mistletoe wreath upon these Houses of Death ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... neighbours on the other side of the Arar, with whom they were continually quarrelling, invaded their country and subjugated them with the assistance of a German chieftain named Ariovistus, the Aedui sent Divitiacus, the druid, to Rome to appeal to the senate for help, but his mission was unsuccessful. On his arrival in Gaul (58 B.C.), Caesar restored their independence. In spite of this, the Aedui joined the Gallic coalition against ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... crammed with nosegays: but the fresh earth, and the dead leaves, and the effluvia of breaths made such a stench and moisture, that they were suffocated; and when they remounted, the legs and wings of chickens, and remnants Of ham (for the supper was not removed) poisoned them more. A druid in an arbour distributed verses to the ladies; then the Baccelli(363) and the dancers of the Opera danced; and then danced the company; and then it being morning, and the candles burnt out, the windows ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... Druid form, in awful guise, With words of wond'rous import, there may range, Making aloud mysterious sacrifice, With gestures incommunicably strange, Praying to the gods he worshipped, to restore His dear lov'd Cymru to her days ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... 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, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... a fire on the Nine-stane Rig, in the middle of the old Druid stones, and there they placed the great brass cauldron. They heated it red hot, and some of them hasted to Hermitage Castle, and stripped a sheet of lead from the roof, and they wrapped the wicked lord in it, and plunged him in, and stood round ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... looking about and thinking, I sprang from the cairn and rejoined my guide. We now descended the eastern side of the hill till we came to a singular looking stone, which had much the appearance of a Druid's stone. I inquired of my guide whether there was any tale connected ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... for Joyce's Country, and the lonely loughs that lie, Wrapt in the cloak of silence, under the great gray sky; For the glens that have held in keeping for more than a thousand springs The ancient Druid wonders and the secrets ...
— Sprays of Shamrock • Clinton Scollard
... to have been quarried at Normandy, and ferried over; facsimiles of the cuts will be lithographed; and the Innkeeper of the "First and Last house in England" will gratefully present a piece of plate (a Druid "spanning" [consider Ezekiel's "putting the branch to the nose" as a sign of contempt]!) to the author of "Hints for a Chisel," "Proverbial Phil.," &c. &c. &c. But—revenous a nos moutons: to the Logan: until it was scrupulously pointed ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... and then went 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 a hut of branches, while ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... style, introduces London into authentic history during the apostolic era and the reign of Nero.[1] Suetonius Paulinus, governor of Britain, came in hot haste from Mona, suspending the slaughter of the Druid leaders in this their last fastness, to restore the Roman arms. For Boadicea, Queen of the Iceni, outraged at the treatment of herself and her two daughters, had, like a second Deborah, raised a popular uprising against the foreign invaders. Colchester ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... hill; a dark and slender column with here and there a child walking beside one of the elder mourners. The bearers went first with the bier; the track was uneven, and the procession was lost to sight now and then behind the slopes. It was forever a mystery; these people might have been a company of Druid worshipers, or of strange northern priests and their people, and the doctor checked his impatient horse as he watched the retreating figures at their simple ceremony. He could not help thinking what ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... 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
... his may serve me more propensely. He was laying his hand upon a winejar: Malachi saw it and withheld his act, pointing to the stranger and to the scarlet label. Warily, Malachi whispered, preserve a druid silence. His soul is far away. It is as painful perhaps to be awakened from a vision as to be born. Any object, intensely regarded, may be a gate of access to the incorruptible eon of the gods. Do you ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... earlier missionaries among the Druid Celts of Britain and France, though they found in Druidism a more elaborate faith than that of the Norsemen, encountered no such resistance as we find in the great religious systems of our day. Where can we point to so easy a conquest as that of Patrick in Ireland, or that of the Monks of ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... converse sweet, Took luncheon. On a little mound Sat the three ladies; at their feet I sat; and smelt the heathy smell, Pluck'd harebells, turn'd the telescope To the country round. My life went well, For once, without the wheels of hope; And I despised the Druid rocks That scowl'd their chill gloom from above, Like churls whose stolid wisdom mocks The lightness of immortal love. And, as we talk'd, my spirit quaff'd The sparkling winds; the candid skies At our untruthful strangeness laugh'd; I kiss'd ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... records or surmises or inferences simply accept it as existing. Some of these—guesses, let us call them—seem to show that there was some sort of structure there when the Romans came, therefore it must have been a place of importance in Druid times—if indeed that was the beginning. Naturally the Romans accepted it, as they did everything of the kind that was, or might be, useful. The change is shown or inferred in the name Castra. It was the highest protected ground, ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... lichens, showed plainly that the lid had been removed to its present situation many years before. A stunted and doddered oak still spread its branches over the open and rude mausoleum, as if the Druid's badge and emblem, shattered and storm-broken, was still bending to offer its protection to the ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... that cringe and plot, We Sinais climb and know it not. Over 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 Still shouts the inspiring sea. Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us; The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in, The priest hath his fee who comes and shrives us. We bargain for the graves we lie in; At the Devil's booth ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... with all the formalities of the isle, as prescribed in its oldest records. The Court was held in the open air, before the Dempster and the Keys of the island, assembled under the vaulted cope of heaven, and seated on the terrace of the Zonwald Hill, where of old Druid and Scald held their courts of judgment. The criminal was heard at length in his own defence, which amounted to little more than those specious allegations of public consideration, which are ever used to colour the ugly front of treason. ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... he'd noticed its shape and its shine; And, as soon as we reached the "Old Druid," I begged him to drink to its welfare and mine In a glass of my ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... the sky, whose 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
... the 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 wakefulness, a daylight observation, in their brilliant surfaces,—and on them, ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... the professors and system of Ireland, and we need not go 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 ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... 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 disease and ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... antiquity. The shepherd Celadon, banished on suspicion of faithlessness from the presence of his beloved Astree, seeks death beneath the stream; he is saved by the nymphs, escapes the amorous pursuit of Galatea, assumes a feminine garb, and, protected by the Druid Adamas, has the felicity of daily beholding his shepherdess. At length he declares himself, and is overwhelmed with reproaches; true lover that he is, when he offers his body to the devouring lions of the Fountain of Love, the beasts refuse their ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... you go to the Chalk Downs of Wiltshire, you see these temples in their true grandeur. You have all heard of Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain. Some of you may have heard of the great Druid temple at Abury in Wilts, which, were it not all but destroyed, would be even grander than Stonehenge. These are made ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... pleasure for him to catch up on the 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 ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... threw On wave and dripping oar, still own thy reign, Travelling with thee through many a sleepless hour. Now shrink, like my weak will: a sterner power Empurpleth yonder hills beneath thee piled, Hills, where Caesarian sovereignty was won On high basaltic levels blood-defiled, The Druid moonlight quenched ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... 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 ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... In winter keen beats out his thrilling scores. Leave me the reed unplucked beside the stream. And he will stoop and fill it with the breeze; Leave me the viol's frame in secret trees, Unwrought, and it shall wake a druid theme; Leave me the whispering shell on Nereid shores. The God of ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... redeemed his promise was evidenced by his being 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 ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... 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
... here in the country, where the sage bard, the great Merlin, or Myrdhyn, lived, induce the belief that this mysterious stone represents the Druid lover of the fatal Viviana;—may this not be the very stone brought from Brociliande, within, or under, which he is in durance; or rather is not this himself transformed to stone? Thus ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... consolation and the balm of joy! Select, sacred, and heaven-ordained and anointed priests and priestesses they, of a GOD of love in a world of sorrow. Not their commission is it to declare to cowering criminals a GOD wrathful, vindictive, and scarcely less bloody than the Druid's deity, hating with infinite venom the unhappy violator of his laws; not theirs to deal out curious metaphysics and cold abstractions, giving a stone for bread and an adder for an egg to the sons of sorrow and the daughters of misfortune; ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... that day in Tara. Patrick blessed him and his seed. Patrick was then called to the king's bed, that he might eat food, and to prove him in prophecy (i.e., in Venturis rebus). Patrick did not refuse this, because he knew what would come of it. The druid Luchat Mael went to drink with him, for he wished to revenge on Patrick what he had done to his (the druid's) companion the day before. The druid Luchat Mael put a drop of poison into the goblet which was beside Patrick, that he might see what Patrick would ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... quarrelled and the drover gave information, whereupon Day was arrested and lodged in Fisherton Jail at Salisbury. Later he was sent to take his trial at Devizes, on horseback, accompanied by two constables. At the "Druid's Head," a public-house on the way, the three travellers alighted for refreshments, and there Day succeeded in giving them the slip, and jumping on a fast horse, standing ready saddled for him, made ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... in the (early) springtime there came to tempt him a druid who said to him:—"In the name of your God cause this apple-tree branch to produce foliage." Mochuda knew that it was in contempt for divine power the druid proposed this, and the branch put forth leaves on the instant. The ...
— The Life of St. Mochuda of Lismore • Saint Mochuda
... a vision of the morning! Its rites foredone, its guardians dead, Its priestesses, bereft of dread, Waking the veriest urchin's scorning! Gone like the Indian wizard's yell And fire-dance round the magic rock, Forgotten like the Druid's spell At moonrise by his holy oak! No more along the shadowy glen Glide the dim ghosts of murdered men; No more the unquiet churchyard dead Glimpse upward from their turfy bed, Startling the traveller, late and lone; As, on some night of starless weather, They ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... good druid who was traveling that way found them in this condition. The druids were the physicians of those 10 times as well as the priests. So he stanched their blood, and brought them, as it were, from death to life again. As soon as they were sufficiently recovered ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... with an Italian name and a perfect knowledge of English, who sang bass parts in a church up town, and enjoyed the reputation of having personated the chief Druid in Norma, at an early period of the New York opera. M. Bartin played one of numerous violins at the Academy of Music, and was believed to be kept down only by a powerful combination. Three months before this New Year's day, both of these ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... on the whole, a bloodless kind of poetry. It suggests the pale gray matter of the cerebrum rather than flesh and blood. Mr. William Rossetti has made a suggestive remark about him. He is not so essentially a poet, says this critic, as he is a Druid that wanders among the bards, and strikes the harp with even more ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... 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 about these gathered ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... 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
... 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 the ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... all this hillside, and the brightly-watered plain below, with the corn-yellow champaign above, were inhabited by a Druid-taught race, wild enough in thoughts and ways, but under Roman government, and gradually becoming accustomed to hear the names, and partly to confess the power, of Roman gods. For three hundred years after the birth of Christ they heard the name ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... enormous fire that could be seen for miles. When the great logs and the faggots were piled together Saint Patrick kindled the pile with his own hands and the flames shot high in the air, throwing strange shadows on the trees and causing the Irish to cry out in fear and astonishment. The Druid priests were greatly angered and perturbed at what Saint Patrick had done, and they went at once to the King, who was named Laoghaire MacNeill, telling him that the foreign band had desecrated the Druid faith and must be punished with death. Then ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... mistletoe was revered as a sacred plant, consecrated to the powers of darkness; and annually it became an important rite among the Druids to proceed into the forest in search of the mistletoe, which, being found, was cut down by the Arch Druid, and its parts, after a solemn sacrifice, were distributed among the people. Clavel[196] very ingeniously remarks, that it is evident, in reference to the legend, that as Balder symbolizes the Sun-god, and Lok, Darkness, this search for ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... band, The ancient legends of our native land— Chivalric Britomart, and Una fair, 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 pour'd the strain ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... utters a cry in its mother's womb. They question Cathba the chief druid, who answers: "That which has clamoured within thee is a fair-haired daughter, with fair locks, a majestic glance, blue eyes, and cheeks purple as the fox-glove"; and he foretells the woes she will cause among men. This girl is ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... 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
... thoughts I walked across the open down, toward a circular camp, the earthwork, probably, of some old British town. Inside it, some thousand or so of labouring people were swarming restlessly round a single large block of stone, some relic of Druid times, on which a tall man stood, his dark figure thrown out in bold relief against the dreary sky. As we pushed through the crowd, I was struck with the wan, haggard look of all faces; their lacklustre ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... characters upon it, too much defaced to be read. The whole stock of a great bookseller was, in his eyes, a cheap exchange for a shred of parchment, containing half a homily written by St. Patrick. He would have gratefully given all his patrimonial domains to one who should inform him what pendragon or druid it was who set up the first ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... to fulfil his contract within a reasonable time. In the present instance, the fact that the contract was made does not stand in doubt; it is not disputed. Now arises a second question. Can a man who is on weekdays a Freemason, a Rechabite, an Oddfellow, a Forester, an Ancient Druid, and an Ancient Buffalo, and on Sundays (as I gather) ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... went 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
... a play; therefore to remain was to avow myself a runaway and to live henceforth despicable in my own eyes. For over the unfathomable deep of oriental custom the torrent of our civilization flows unblending, as in the Druid's legend the twin streams of Dee flow clear through Bala lake, and never mingle with its waters. Not for our use is that intricate mind which in logic needs more than two premises to a conclusion, and in art is intolerant of ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... 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 from the ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... 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 ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... "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
... low in the west when they came out on to the open hillside, and went on up the path, through the heather, that led to the Druid stone beside the Tober an Sidhe, the fairies' well. The mist, golden and green, that comes with an autumn sunset, half hid, half transfigured the wide distances of the valley of the Broadwater; the darkness of the woods, blended ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... betting on his left hand against his right, and crying and cursing because the right WOULD win. "Come and bet with me," said he to Sculloge. "Faith, I have but a sixpence in the world," was the reply; "but, if you like, I'll wager that on the right." "Done," said the old man, who was a Druid; "if you win I'll give you a hundred guineas." So the game was played, and the old man, whose right hand was always the winner, paid over the guineas and told Sculloge to go to the Devil ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... natives retired to join their Ashanti friends in the woods. These were now approaching the town; and Colonel Festing landed with the marines and marine artillerymen, a party of bluejackets belonging to the Baracouta, Druid, Seagull, and Argus, under Captain Freemantle, some men of the 2nd West India Regiment, and a body of Houssas. The Ashantis, some 2000 in number, marched boldly along, and attempted to outflank the position ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... there alone Holds secret commune with the mountain wind. Wherefore this place precisely doth she choose? Why hither always doth she drive her flock? For hours together I have seen her sit In dreamy musing 'neath the Druid tree, Which every happy creature shuns with awe. For 'tis not holy there; an evil spirit Hath since the fearful pagan days of old Beneath its branches fixed his dread abode. The oldest of our villagers ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... 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 ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... in one day 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... was never written! It sprang from the heart of some old Druid priest as he was urging on the Welsh to drive the Romans from their country. It is two verses from 'The Song of the Men ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... 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 pure ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... 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; for all that remains is two ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... as "the poet who would be a dramatist and could not." Indeed, it is a pity he did not do this. He was capable of smiling benignly at himself, and sketching himself as if he were another man; a thing of which Tennyson, who took himself with awful seriousness, and walked with himself as a Druid might have walked in the sacred grove ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... England, and was one of the founders of the Society of Antiquaries, to which he acted as sec. He pub. Itinerarium Curiosum (1724) and Stonehenge (1740). He made a special study of Druidism, and was called "the Arch-Druid." ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... 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 in a grove or cave; then retire there, and leave our oak to stand in its ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... right a big tract of woodland is haloed by a denser cloud of vivid violet as if the pillar of cloud which led the Israelites by day had rested there; or as if mingled smoke and incense were rising from Druid altars around the sacred grove. As a matter of fact, it is a mingling of the ever increasing humidity, the dust particles in the air and the smoke from many April grass fires. To the left of the meadow there is a sweep of arable land where disc harrows, seeders, and ploughs are at work. The ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... 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
... 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
... thou and view it, All desolately sunk, The circle of the Druid, The cloister of the monk; The abbey boled and squalid, With its bush-maned, staggering wall; Ask by whom these were unhallow'd— Change, change hath done ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... mountain side. He might safely be pronounced a madman who preferred an avenue of trees to a street. Why, trees have no chimneys; and, were you to kindle a fire in the hollow of an oak, you would soon be as dead as a Druid. It won't do to talk to us of sap, and the circulation of sap. A grove in winter, hole and branch—leaves it has none—is as dry as a volume of sermons. But a street, or a square, is full of "vital sparks of heavenly flame" as a volume of poetry, and the heart's ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... questions in turn. There is also a game called "Man and Object," in which two players go out and decide upon a man (or woman) and something inanimate or not human with which he is associated or which he is known to have used, such as "Washington and his hatchet," "Whittington and his cat," "A druid and his mistletoe-knife." They then return and each player asks them each a question in turn until ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... the most famous modern works at the 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 literary necessities. But to ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... home; but the Buddhist believes too, what the West forgets, what the old druid Murdoch, before he died, taught to Columba on Iona: That all life in nature is divine, and that there is no death, only change from one form to another. So they reverence trees and flowers and birds and beasts, and ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... prince from the north shall marry a princess from the south; until the Tailleken (St. Patrick) shall come to Erin, and until ye shall hear the sound of the Christian bell, neither my power nor thy power, nor the power of any Druid's runes can set ye free until that ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... and the Son of a Druid, and I had learned the language of the birds. And one morning, as I walked abroad, I heard a blackbird and a robin talking, and when I heard what they said ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... 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: And welcomed there ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... and then the new wife began to be jealous of the love of her husband for his four children. It troubled her so much that she began to lose her beauty and her health, and at last she took to her bed and did not leave it for a year. And after that time there came a great Druid to visit her. You know who and what the Druids were, I think. They were the priests of the old religion of Ireland, before St. Patrick came and made the people Christians. They were powerful in magic; they could bring storms and could drive them away; they could foretell the future; they could ...
— Fairies and Folk of Ireland • William Henry Frost
... at 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 When something seems awaited, though unknown, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... 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
... its former occupants—have left behind. For there has been coincidence here, a coincidence that must be rare. The site on which this modern house now stands was Roman, before that Early Britain, with burial mounds, before that again, Druid—the Druid stones still lie in that copse below the field, the Tumuli among the ilexes behind the drive. The older building Sam Franklyn altered and practically pulled down was a monastery; he changed the chapel ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... 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 ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... 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
... her. On the one hand were her imperious needs, which almost compelled assumption of fact; but the wind blew, and when she looked up the clouds sailed over the mountains. She sat on a grey rock to rest. It had lain there for thousands of years, and she was reminded of the Druid circle above the Greta. She could get no further with her thinking, and knelt down and prayed for light. It is of all prayers the most sincere, but she was not answered—at least not then. The next Sunday she went again to mass, ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... to Skaill lay along an almost straight road to the northward, by Hamla Voe and the western shores of the loch of Stenness, past the Druid standing stones. ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... from 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 the ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the leaves of the tree survive in sufficient masses to produce the rich contrast of colour; but when the moss has literally conquered the whole tree, and after stripping its huge limbs bare, clothed them with its own wan masses, they always looked to me like so many gigantic Druid ghosts, with flowing robes and beards, and locks all of one ghastly grey, and I would not have broken a twig off them for the world, lest a sad voice, like that which reproached Dante, should have moaned out ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... goes that one day King Conor and his nobles feasted at the house of Felim, his chief story-teller. And while they feasted a daughter was born to Felim the story-teller. Then Cathbad the Druid, who was also at the feast, became exceeding sad. He foretold that great sorrow and evil should come upon the land because of this child, and so he called her Deirdre, which ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... Druid, the writer in the Encyclopedia Metropolitana says, "The name Druid is derived from deru, an oak." The Druids were an order of priests; they were divided into three classes, resembling the Persian ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... Druid lies, Where slowly winds the stealing wave; The year's best sweets shall duteous rise To deck its poet's ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... facts—that he was put into the mizzentop, and served three years in the West Indies; that he was transferred to the maintop, and served five years in the Mediterranean; that he was made captain of the foretop, and sailed six years in the East Indies; and, at last, was rated captain's coxswain in the "Druid" frigate, attached to the Channel fleet cruising during the peace. Having thus condensed the genealogical and chronological part of this history, I now come to a portion of it in which it will be necessary that I should enter ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... 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
... brazen door stands 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, sidelong ...
— The Countess Cathleen • William Butler Yeats
... already planted amid the Wisconsin forests? Soon, their tales of the origin of things, and the Providence which rules them, will be so mingled with those of the Indian, that the very oak-tree will not know them apart,—will not know whether itself be a Runic, a Druid, or a ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli |
