Druids: A Very Short Introduction

Very Short Introductions #232

by Barry Cunliffe

The Druids have been known and discussed for at least 2400 years, first by Greek writers and later by the Romans, who came in contact with them in Gaul and Britain. According to these sources, they were a learned caste who officiated in religious ceremonies, taught the ancient wisdoms, and were revered as philosophers. But few figures flit so elusively through history, and the Druids remain enigmatic and puzzling to this day. In this Very Short Introduction, one of the leading authorities on British archaeology, Barry Cunliffe, takes the reader on a fast-paced look at the ever-fascinating story of the Druids, as seen in the context of the times and places in which they practiced. Sifting through the evidence, Cunliffe offers an expert's best guess as to what can be said and what can't be said about the Druids, discussing the origins of the Druids and the evidence for their beliefs and practices, why the nature of the druid caste changed quite dramatically over time, and how successive generations have seen them in very different ways.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Religion, Archaeology, Audiobook, Spirituality, Philosophy

145 pages, Paperback

First published May 27, 2010

About the author

Sir Barrington Windsor Cunliffe taught archaeology in the Universities of Bristol and Southampton and was Professor of European Archaeology at the University of Oxford from 1972 to 2008, thereafter becoming Emeritus Professor. He has excavated widely in Britain (Fishbourne, Bath, Danebury, Hengistbury Head, Brading) and in the Channel Islands, Brittany, and Spain, and has been President of the Council for British Archaeology and of the Society of Antiquaries, Governor of the Museum of London, and a Trustee of the British Museum. He is currently a Commissioner of English Heritage.

Reviews

[Nandakishore Mridula · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think the first time I heard about the druids was when I first encountered the Stonehenge in one of the Reader's Digest books.



As is usual with Reader's Digest, the article was filled with all kinds of pseudo-scientific balderdash that is the trademark of that group of publications: but my gullible preteen self swallowed it whole - about strange rituals and esoteric ceremonies conducted during the equinoxes and solstices, and the group of mysterious individuals who presided over them. The article hinted that these pagans knew secrets about the universe which we were not privy to, and I was thrilled - because it was similar to what many Indians believed about our ancient sages called rishis.

The first druid I encountered in person was the following guy.



Getafix, the venerable druid who inhabits the village of Asterix and Obelix in Gaul, cuts mistletoe at the time of the full moon with a golden sickle to use in his potions. He has regular meetings with fellow druids in the Forest of the Carnutes. And he brews a magic potion which gives superhuman strength to the Gauls - and thus, is a thorn in the side of Julius Caesar who is trying to subdue the whole of Gaul.

Well, most of the things mentioned above (except for the bit about the magic potion) is true, it seems. However, things are not as clear cut as one would think when it comes to druids. Quite a lot is lost in the mists of antiquity.

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In the current short book, Barry Cunliffe gives us a very brief tour through the realm of the druids, in time and space. The actual historical data available is very meagre: They have left behind no written records, and the only two people who have written about them, who we can assume with reasonable certainty had personal contact, are the stoic philosopher Posidonius and of course, Julius Caesar. Posidonius's works are now lost, and we know him only at second hand now - but being a stoic, it is quite possible that he romanticised the druids as "noble savages". By the same logic, Caesar may have purposefully demonised them, as savages with "altars steeped in human blood", to be brought under the civilised control of Rome.

From archaeological evidence, we can know of the pagan Celts as a people who inhabited Western Europe and the British Isles. It seems that they worshipped the sky, the earth and water, as evidenced by the various burial mounds containing sacred objects - as well as some sacrificial victims consigned to bogs and water bodies. Corpses were both cremated and buried, and the head has been "singled out for special treatment", as the skulls ritually preserved in many instances eloquently demonstrate. It seems that they were experts in gauging the seasons and time, and the lunar calendar played a special role in their rituals. Since they left behind no narrative art (except possibly for the famous Gundestrup Cauldron), most of what we envision about pagans is educated conjecture.

So we have to fall back on the tales of the people who encountered the druids to piece together their picture. There are three traditions which mention them:

1. The Greek Tradition
2. The Late Republican Tradition
3. The Imperial Tradition

The Greeks' interaction with the barbarian tribes of Western Europe was by and large prompted by trade and largely peaceful. It seems that the Greeks had real respect for the druids - our popular image of white-bearded wise men stem most probably from the Greek accounts, according to which they were wise philosophers who believed in the transference of the soul, and studied astronomy and nature.

The Late Republican Tradition (to which Posidonius belongs), as we saw earlier, was rather partial towards the druids: but his Histories, quoted by other writers such as Strabo, gives us a detailed insight into Celtic society. Strabo says there are three classes of men comprising the elite: the Bards (singers and poets), the Vates (interpreters of sacrifice and natural philosophers) and the Druids (the moral philosophers).

(I feel that the Vates were the pagan equivalent of ordinary Brahmin priests in India, while the Druids were the equivalent of the ascetic rishis. However, it's a personal interpretation.)

Julius Caesar, who opined that druids were originally from the British Isles, does not divide the class of wise men into functional categories - for him, there are only two privileged classes in Celtic society, the Knights and the Druids (again, roughly corresponding to the Brahmins and Kshatriyas of Vedic society). He acknowledges the power of the druids, who can excommunicate whole communities and make it impossible for them to live; it seems that they kept education to themselves, initiating only the select few into their ranks. His main concern, however, is that the druids are a pan-national brotherhood ruled by an Archdruid who has control cutting across tribal boundaries.


"An Archdruid in his Judicial Habit" - aquatint by S. R. Meyrick and C. H. Smith which popularised the image of the druid

Caesar goes on to demonise the druids with the description of their horrific sacrifices, including the notorious wicker man, where sacrificial victims are placed into a huge wicker effigy and burnt en masse.


Famous illustration of "The Wicker Man" by Aylet Sammes

Caesar was victorious in crushing all pagan revolts and bringing the whole of Gaul under his control - but the Celts survived in Ireland, until they were assimilated into Christianity through a slow process, spanning centuries.

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Pagan religion has had its renaissance in Britain and mainland Europe since the Seventeenth Century onward, with romantics seeing it as the "natural" heritage of Europe (in contrast to Christianity which is a foreign import). Based on this, a lot of romantic ideas have sprung about the druids which, according to the author, is more fit for the realm of fairy tale than history. After its heyday in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries, Druidical Religion seems to have faded into the background as just another faith. However, its innate earthiness and strong ties to nature may be just what the doctor ordered for a planet which is moving inexorably towards ecological disaster - provided it also does not pick up the aggression of many of today's main belief systems.


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This book is a very concise introduction to a vast subject. It is highly readable (as most of the books in this series are) and manages to hold the reader's interest. But if you are looking for an in-depth study of the druidical religion, this may not be the place to come to. This is only a springboard.

[NAT.orious reads ☾ · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 STARS ★★✬✩✩, still searching for druids

This book is… not for those who want to know stuff about ‘druids’.

⤐ Overall.
Even for a VSI, what we know about ‘druids’ is little to nothing. Barry sure had a hard time filling these pages. Little spoiler alert; the modern societies that carry the term druid in the title are not it. Neither are all the kitchen witches out there, even though they/we sure try to adapt the heritage as neatly as possible. Huge surprise there.


Considering the sole focus of this book lies on what might be called the ‘druids’ of Celtic societies, this talks surprisingly little about… well… ‘druids’. It does, however, offer additional information of what is known about Celtic tribes.

I still found this to be a very confusing read that meandered and tiptoed around the topic of ‘druids’. I closed this book unsatisfied and confused. It may be owed to the information available, but let's not pretend we can't expect more from academic writers.

Again, the image of the ‘savage’, is used by Romans and Christians to derogate foreign cultures. Another h-u-g-e surprise.

‘In the Posidonian tradition, the Celts and Druids were presented in the comforting, if patronizing, guise of ‘the noble savage’, under the Imperial tradition they had become the enemy who must be destroyed in the name of humanity. The demonization of others to justify aggression is a familiar political ploy.’

⤐ The book is structured as follows.
Preface
List of illustrations

1 THE DRUIDS IN TIME AND SPACE
2 THE EUROPEAN THEATRE
3 THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF RELIGIOUS PRACTICE AT THE TIME OF THE DRUIDS
4 ENTER THE DRUIDS: FIRST CONTACT
5 ALTARS STEEPED IN HUMAN BLOOD
6 TWILIGHT IN THE FAR WEST
7 RENAISSANCE AND REDISCOVERY
8 ROMANTICISM AND THE RISE OF NATIONALISM
9 NEODRUIDS AND THE NEOPAGANS
10 SO, WHO WERE THE DRUIDS?

Further reading
Index
_____________________
writing quality + easy of reading = 3*

structure = 3*

enjoyability = 2*

insightfulness = 2*

[H (trying to keep up with GR friends) Balikov · Rating 3 out of 5]

Druids – a very short review. My fantasy met reality in Cunliffe’s book. I’ve been to Stonehenge and other places where lines of force and circles of power were constructed. I’ve read stories and some “scholarly” articles that have extolled the druids as defenders of the Earth and wise in the ways of nature. I can even remember a time in FRP when I became sagacious druid who waited patiently with a sickle of gold for the full moon to rise so I could cut the mistletoe needed for a particularly powerful potion.

From Cunliffe’s analysis, I now conclude that if these things be true, it is not because we can find any fact, written record or artifact to justify that train of thought. Romans wrote occasionally about them as they encountered the Gauls and the Britons.

We, apparently, should credit William Blake and others in the 18th and 19th centuries for their enthusiastic extrapolation from those meager kernels of information. For such a short book (less than 140 pages including further reading), there was too much discussion about what we can’t know and what assertions were unsupported to tightly hold my attention to the text. Perhaps, non-fiction should be even more brief until we discover a new trove of items. I depart disappointed but with my fantasies still held it a tight grip.

If you want a more expansive and well written piece, I heartily recommend Nandakishore Varma's review

[Sonic · Rating 2 out of 5]

This author killed my interest by page 92. I do not know if I am able to finish this dry, boring book. The author might have killed my wish to finish this book, and possibly my interest in Druids altogether. Obviously scholarly, he spends so much time droning on about what we do not and cannot know about these ancient peoples, that we are left with a sleep-aid.
A book to put one to sleep.

[Darwin8u · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is amazing how much we know about Druids comes from Roman era histories and writings built around one agenda or another's. Cunliffe does a good job of exploring what we know through writings, archaeology, etc., and separating THAT from the myths and romantic reconfigurations of Celtic and Druid myths and histories. There are certain civilizations and certain expressions of our past that seem to capture the imagination far beyond the actual knowledge base. I fair and interesting exploration of Druids (and fairly the decline of Druid culture).

[Jason Ray Carney · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting VSI. I read the first half, put it aside, and returned to it a year later, so my memory of the first chapters is fuzzy. The latter half looks at how the Romantics and the Victorians fictionalized the druids for artistic and cultural reasons. The final chapter is very insightful and suggests that it is highly reasonable to speculate that the druids emerged as a distinct priest class as Neolithic Europeans came to rely upon agriculture and the lunar calendar necessary for agricultural production. One aspect of druidism that was overlooked was the druid figure in popular culture. Cunliffe is a historian and not a cultural critic, so you can't blame him, but his commentary on druids as rendered in films like Wicker Man and Excalibur might have been interesting. The typical strengths and weaknesses of the VSI are present here: scholarly in tone, compressed, and sometimes focused on technicalities and academic caveats, and so not as interesting to a general reader.

[Brian Turner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another fun Very Short Introduction, in which Cunliffe manages to pack in a surprising amount of interesting information about the Druids, without repeating himself too much on what he's already covered in his other writings.

There were omissions, and Cunliffe can be curiously critical of some historical sources (Tacitus) while being entirely accepting of others (Pliny the Elder - the man who wrote about ants collecting gold in their nest!). However, this doesn't spoil what is otherwise a decent tour of Druids as historical figures.

[Samantha Puc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cunliffe takes an interesting approach to the vast and complex history of Druidism. He attempts to separate fact from fiction and succeeds quite well, unfolding the traditions and myths with discussion of history, geographical changes, technological advances, and more. His contextual understanding of the Druids and where they came from is extremely helpful and clearly-written. A great introduction for anyone who is unfamiliar with Druidism aside from the fantastical stories, and an interesting look at some of the deeper elements for those with just a bit of the history under their belts.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little overlap with Cunliffe's other book in the "Very Short Introduction" series, but overall very enjoyable. I would recommend this book as a vaccination against the sillyness of modern neo-paganism/druidism and its claims of some sort of connection to whatever the bronze and iron age druids actually were.

[Cameron Johnston · Rating 5 out of 5]

Does what it says on the tin, a very short introduction to the druids, including part of the original first-hand sources (very scarce, most of which survive only in snippets quoted by others), the later decline and reinvention in more modern times.
It's very readable and very interesting to scrape away all the modern add-ons to try and get a sense of what they really were.

[Ray Campbell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short book, short on details. Apparently the Romans wrote about the Celts as they moved through Gaul into Britain. Writers including Julius Caesar recorded accounts of mysterious rights observed by the holy men/mystics of these people who are identified separately as Druids. Everything else we think we know about them is probably an invention of the 19th century romantics reaching for an idealized mystic ancestor who would give the modern British an ancient heritage equal to that of the Greeks and Romans - it's not true. The historical and archeological records simply do not support the range of influence or level of culture we continue to ascribe to these ancient people.

OK - so now you don't have to read the book. There is no particularly brilliant twist or genius in the telling. We have no record of specific Druid personalities, so the book is a fairly perfunctory review of what we know and don't really know with very little compelling story telling. Not painful to read, but nothing special.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I believe that these series could have easily saves some trees and combines this with The Celts: A Very Short Introduction. Quite a lot of information was overlapping. But other than that, again a decent read, which showed me what kind of difficulties researchers must go through, that almost everything from prehistory is more likely just assumptions, every civilization or age has it's own agendas and biases to express. Reminds me of the song from The Low - Plastic Cup.

[Karissa Bursch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Relatively quick read that was very fair and informative regarding a topic I didn't know much about at all - Druids! A good reminder of how much of the ancient past is shrouded in mystery and has been lost to time. Fun read on my train ride through Europe

[Maya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read my review at Celtic Scholar

[a. · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. nothing special, but a comprehensive and yet succinct overview of what we know of the druids, mostly from collated primary sources.

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent introduction to the subject of The Druids about which history doesn't actually have a huge amount of direct information. Cunliffe does an excellent job of drawing that information together and helping separate the mythology from the history.

The 'A Very Short Introduction' series is good at packing a lot of facts and ideas into a small number of pages and then leaving you with a bibliography that allows you to dip into if you want to know more.

The Druids that emerge from this book are not necessarily the bloodthirsty pagans that we're sometimes led to believe. There seems to have a bit a split in Celtic society of bards, augers and Druids. Bards could big you up or smash you down. The augers - called Vates in various sources - oversaw sacrifices and made predictions and the Druids were more philosophers, judges, astronomers and 'scientists'. It is interesting to note the way the perception of Druids became more pejorative as the Greek sources gave way to the Roman ones and the Romans, perhaps, were looking for ways to excuse their bloodthirsty conquest of Gaul (which if the sources are to be believed was genocidal in scale - 1/3rd killed and 1/3rd sold in slavery.) The Druidic tradition died out as the Romans made an effort to destroy them and then the Christian Church popped up to strike the final blow. The Church's annexation of pagan festivals as Christian ceremonies meant that by the 7th century Druidism was effectively dead.

Then various different factors - nationalism, antiquarianism, romanticism etc - created some mythological version of Druidism that we see today at eisteddfods, at Stonehenge (which was old before Druidism even appeared) and in the hippy takes that we have now.

Cunliffe tells this story well. He reviews archaeological evidence of Celtic religious practices and takes us through the evidence in stages. It makes you really wish certain ancient texts had survived extant rather than in gobbets and quotes like they do. Posidonious's Histories being very high up on my list of texts it would be nice to miraculously recover.

Anyway I've waffled on too long. It's an excellent introduction to the subject and perfect for what I wanted.

[Carl Buckfield · Rating 3 out of 5]

I cannot review this book in its quality of scholarship as I do not know the area. This is the first book I read on druids ever, knowing nothing about them prior to reading this and knowing very little about the Celts and the Iron Age. But Cunliffe comes across as being very reasoned and unbiased always telling the reader when we must be sceptical of sources (Roman historians in particular).

This book doesn't give too much concrete detailed information on the ancient druids. The first chapter gives historical context and discussion around the origin and quality of sources. The next two chapters are about their religious beliefs. We are not told much more than people were buried with items for the afterlife because they believed the soul was indestructible and passes from body to body. We are also not told a lot more than there is a male sky god and female earth/fertility god. I hoped there would be more speculation about the psychology/ reasoning here. But Cunliffe doesn't go beyond the evidence which is good. But I wanted more of the speculation even if it isn't accurate. The next three chapters are the druids origins, how they were viewed by Romans and how Christianity lead to its end. But again not much information is given as we don't know what is bias and what isn't. The final chapters are about 18th century interest in druids and modern neopaganism, but again, we don't learn about Druids, we learn about their misunderstanding.

Overall, still an interesting read. I'm excited to read Hutton's Blood and Mistletoe.

[Bt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am an actress, and I found this to provide a lot of useful background information for playing an interactive ancient Irish druid character. It had good historical context and good information about what druids did, their leadership structures, what people at the time thought of them, etc. A lot of druid books I looked at were either only looking at druids from one side (for instance, the Roman side, which viewed them as barbarians), or they were too vague about what druids actually physically did, or they were mystical/fantastical/pseudo-scientific (many were even written by modern druids and combined with modern druid ideas). This book, however, was refreshingly straightforward and more comprehensive.

I did do some skimming, though, because this book has a lot of discussion of different information sources on druids and how they came about and such. It's important to know some of that (and to understand why we can't know a lot of things about druids for sure), but there were chapters of it, and I was mostly interested in the content of those sources rather than the sources themselves.

Overall, it was a very helpful book that helped me get a better picture of druids and also of Samhein (which I needed to study and understand for my acting role). I highlighted interesting and important parts so I could go back and study, and I had lots of yellow in it by the end.

[Alison Volkert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very short introduction indeed. This short book tries to pack in as much information about the druids as possible into a ~4 hour listen - which admittedly is not very much. I did find the brief history interesting, picked up a couple new tidbits of knowledge about the structure of Celtic society and hierarchies which I didn’t know before.

This is a good introduction if you’re coming into the subject fresh. However, it tries to cover thousands of years of history up to the modern neo-pagan movement which makes it so none of these subjects are given enough attention (which I’m sure is by design). Unfortunately it felt more like a whirlwind of information as opposed to feeling more cohesive. I would be interested in reading the author’s longer and more academic works as this format is a bit of a struggle.

[Becky · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an academic paper written by an Oxford University professor of archeology. It was a bit too scholarly for my taste—the helpful chapter for me was the last chapter called “So, who were the Druids?” It summed up the author’s points without the academic need to talk so extensively about sources. Since there aren’t any primary sources (the Druids, themselves, wrote nothing down) there is a LOT of discussion about sources in the rest of the book. Basically we don’t know much. Still, the Roman descriptions of Druids are interesting to read about. What we do now is that the druids were an elite intellectual class. The paganism of today bears no resemblance or continuity of the original Druids. It is almost entirely a construct of the Romantic Era in their longing for the idealized past.

[Logan Streondj · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful attempt at reconciling historical sources of what druidism was about, and explaining the various confusions that came along the way. It is a materialist approach, and unfortunately there was no mentioned of any channelled material. so would have to check that out elsewhere. But it is good to have the materialist overview also sometimes to get some good grounding.

Worth archiving. Interesting factoid I learned is that "druid" means "of the oak". And that druids were similar to a religious caste or class of the celtic peoples.

[Thomas Ray]

For speculation about prehistory, the fictional book Stonehenge, like all Bernard Cornwell's, is inventive and entertaining, a plausible narrative of what could've happened, within the framework of what little is known of the period.

[Lijadora del Prado · Rating 3 out of 5]

a short academic introduction. not only to the druids (of which there's little known), but also on the views and agendas they figured in through the ages. from Caesar's account (who fought them and had 2nd hand knowledge) to the 'green movement's of our own time.

not what I expected, but interesting nonetheless.

(the Audible narrator has a way to butcher French phrases and names into something unrecognizable, which was slightly distracting at times)

[Carl Palmateer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Druids always fascinate even though so little is known. The brings out what material is known showing the need to view them in the context of the larger Celtic community that spanned hundreds of years and much of Europe. He briefly touches on today's Druids but points out there is little if any continuity between then and now. All in all a good intro but a having some knowledge of Celtic studies helps understanding the original Druids.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The scholarship that is apparent here is impressive, if not exhaustive. I came looking for descriptions of Druids, examples of Druidic law, and evidence of Druidic dominance over Celtic Kings and Rulers. What I found was foundational reporting about how the Druids might have come into being and a glance at their impact on government, wars, and everyday life.

I picked the wrong book to learn what I wanted to know

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating subject which this book covers very well as the title says a very short introduction, however I suspect the author has covered everything there is to know about the druids as it seems that nearly everything that has been written in ancient texts was most probably plagiarised from one or two sources with the main one being Pytheas of Massalia.
Highly recommended

[Dean S. · Rating 3 out of 5]

A useful history of the evolution of the druid as a figure, but if you're looking for religious studies, this is largely archaeology. In my view, that's a boon, and this book offers ways to wade through centuries of misinformation and myth carefully. Manual on druidry in practice this may not be, but it's not a bad study, either.

[Jason · Rating 2 out of 5]

The information I could have gleaned about this that was actually on Druids, and not on Roman historiography, could have probably filled a notecard: we know close to nothing. They were probably advisors and mysticists maybe. When the Romans altered Gallo-Celtic society their roles got absorbed quickly.

Now you don't have to read the book.

[Kevin]

This "very short introduction" of the Druids is as good as the series goes, but Cunliffe's perceptions and very honest academic viewpoint suggest there isn't much to know beyond the short intro here due to a true lack of sources.
Admirably Cunliffe does solid work to separate the reality from the mythology; and those from the ideas of neo-celts.

[Nicole · Rating 2 out of 5]

You can read the last two chapters to understand the ‘important’ points. Everything else dives into how historians portrayed and transformed druidism to fit into Christianity.

Wish I realised that sooner.