CELTIC LITERARY REMAINS.  THE DRUIDS.—­Let us take up the consideration of literature in Britain in the order of the conquests mentioned in the first chapter.

We recur to Britain while inhabited by the Celts, both before and after the Roman occupation.  The extent of influence exercised by the Latin language upon the Celtic dialects cannot be determined; it seems to have been slight, and, on the other hand, it may be safely assumed that the Celtic did not contribute much to the world-absorbing Latin.

The chief feature, and a very powerful one, of the Celtic polity, was Druidism.  At its head was a priesthood, not in the present meaning of the word, but in the more extended acceptation which it received in the middle ages, when it embraced the whole class of men of letters.  Although we have very few literary remains, the system, wisdom, and works of the Druids form one of the strong foundation-stones of English literature and of English national customs, and should be studied on that account.  The Druid proper was governor, judge, philosopher, expounder, and executioner.  The ovaidd, or ovates, were the priests, chiefly concerned in the study of theology and the practice of religion.  The bards were heroic poets of rare lyric power; they kept the national traditions in trust, and claimed the second sight and the power of prophecy.  Much has been said of their human sacrifices in colossal images of wicker-work—­the “immani magnitudine simulacra” of Caesar—­which were filled with human victims, and which crackled and disappeared in towering flame and columns of smoke, amid the loud chantings of the bards.  The most that can be said in palliation of this custom is, that almost always such a scene presented the judicial execution of criminals, invested with the solemnities of religion.

In their theology, Esus, the God Force—­the Eternal Father—­has for his agents the personification of spiritual light, of immortality, of nature, and of heroism; Camul was the war-god; Tarann the thunder-god; Heol, the king of the sun, who inflames the soldier’s heart, and gives vitality to the corn and the grape.[4]

But Druidism, which left its monuments like Stonehenge, and its strong traces in English life, now especially found in Wales and other mountainous parts of the kingdom, has not left any written record.

ROMAN WRITERS.—­Of the Roman occupancy we have Roman and Greek accounts, many of them by those who took part in the doings of the time.  Among the principal writers are Julius Caesar, Tacitus, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, and Suetonius.

PSALTER OF CASHEL.—­Of the later Celtic efforts, almost all are in Latin:  the oldest Irish work extant is called the Psalter of Cashel, which is a compilation of the songs of the early bards, and of metrical legends, made in the ninth century by Cormac Mac Culinan, who claimed to be King of Munster and Bishop of Cashel.