"Druid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... ceased the king beckoned Enda to him, and was about to place his hand in Mave's when a Druid, whose white beard almost touched the ground, and who had been a favourite of the dead stepmother, and hated Mave for her sake, ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... their little breasts pointing to the zenith, moved in languorous rhythms, droning hoarse sacrificial chaunts. The colossus Memnon hymned; priests of Baal screamed as they lacerated themselves with knives; Druid priestesses crooned sybillic incantations. And over this pageant of woman and music the proud sun of old ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... 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 all void space, entangling its figures in labyrinths ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... 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 ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... will be surprised at my sudden reappearance, and more by what I am going to ask. But if my life and future are of any concern to you at all, I beg that you will grant my request. What I require of you, is, dear Harriet, that you meet me about eleven to-night by the Druid stones on Marlbury Downs, about a mile or more from your house. I cannot say more, except to entreat you to come. I will explain all when you are there. The one thing is, I want to see you. Come alone. Believe me, I would not ask this if my happiness did not hang upon it—God knows ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... 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
... against the rocks, through long ages”. (Printed by W. and B. Brookes, Lincoln, 1843, p. 24, &c.) The theory would seem to be now generally accepted. Thus: “that ancient river, the river” Witham, honoured, we believe, by the Druid as his sacred stream, {102} consecrated in a later age to the Christian, by the number of religious houses erected on its shores, through a yet earlier stage of its existence performed the laborious task of carving out the vale of Grantham, and so adding to ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... 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
... moonlight, and 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 ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... its pale colors rather than poured its light, and autumn had spread her tawny carpet of fallen leaves. About the middle of this hall, which seemed to have had the deluge for its architect, stood three enormous Druid stones,—a vast altar, on which was raised an old church-banner. About a hundred men, kneeling with bared heads, were praying fervently in this natural enclosure, where a priest, assisted by two other ecclesiastics, was saying mass. ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... the key to every mystic door Of Egypt's shrine; he knew the sacred rite Of druid, sage and seer; and loved the light Of Babylonian and Assyrian lore: He saw old Enoch when he walked with God; He watched Elijah smite the prophets dead; He knew the Israelites whom Moses led; And looked upon ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... the stag cold and 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 ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Druid stone That broods in the garden white and lone, And I stopped and looked at the shifting shadows That at some moments fall thereon From the tree hard by with a rhythmic swing, And they shaped in my imagining To the shade that a well-known ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... 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 in its first performances in 1902. There were comparatively ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... 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 strange ways this child of the old ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... the Grammar School, and met Ballantyne, who long afterward published his novels and brought about his bankruptcy. I heard also, read out from the same book, that the stone of Dryburgh was taken from the quarry that built Melrose, and that the name Dryburgh meant "Druid." Even the boys, I think, could hardly help feeling the mysterious, haunting charm of the place, which was as strange and secret as if the dark yew trees and Lebanon cedars guarding the ruins were enchanted ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... of Christ, 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 ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... its deepest, a wild goose Cried from the porter's lodge, and with long clamour Shook the ale horns and shields upon their hooks; But the horse-boys slept on, as though some power Had filled the house with Druid heaviness; And wondering who of the many changing Sidhe Had come as in the old times to counsel her, Maeve walked, yet with slow footfall being old, To that small chamber by the outer gate. The porter slept although ...
— In The Seven Woods - Being Poems Chiefly of the Irish Heroic Age • William Butler (W.B.) Yeats
... 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 by ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... of the bonneted ploughboys, the voices of the blackbird and the mavis, made him sad, and pleased was Lemercier to leave behind him all such sounds of life, and reach the wild and solitary place where the obelisk stood—a grim and time-worn relic of the Druid ages or the Danish wars. A rough misshapen remnant of antiquity it still remains to mark the scene of this hostile meeting, which yet forms one of the most famous traditions ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... it on a stand before him, for so great was the terror of contagion from those afflicted with leprosy, that even the affectionate mother of Bladud avoided the touch of her child,—"this ring was wrought by the master-hand of a Druid, a skillful worker in precious stones, within the sacred circle of Stonehenge. It was placed upon my finger before the mystic altar, when I became the wife of the king, your father, and was saluted by the ...
— The Children's Portion • Various
... 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
... side Bowed toward her, combing out her long black hair Damp from the river; and close behind her stood Eight daughters of the plough, stronger than men, Huge women blowzed with health, and wind, and rain, And labour. Each was like a Druid rock; Or like a spire of land that stands apart Cleft from the main, and wailed ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... would look through the half 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, his only covering being some sheep ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... still remaining there; but it was thought by somebody that the yard didn't require so much ornamental stone, so a quantity of it was removed to the place mentioned. If Mr. Shepperd has it set in a circle he may play the Druid amongst it, reserving the biggest block for a cromlech and the smoothest for a seat; if it is concentrated in one mass he may stand upon it, defy all the ex-churchwardens, and quoting Scott, cry out, "Come one, come all, this rock shall fly" &c. Originally, St. Thomas's cost a considerable ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... 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 weel I ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... displays unflagging industry and an exuberant fancifulness; "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
... discovered. Eventually master and man 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 his escape. Farmer Day never returned to the Plain ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... married Pollio, the Roman Proconsul. They have two children. But Pollio's love has vanished. In the first act he confides to his companion Flavius, that he is enamoured of Adalgisa, a young priestess in the temple of Irminsul, the Druid's god. ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... 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 eyes and drooping lips, stooping shoulders, heavy, dragging steps, gave them a ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... 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 the ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... were exaggerating, or inventing, or copying from one another.—It never occurs to our Canon to remember Iamblichus' statement that the Druids did not borrow or learn from Pythagoras, but Pythagoras from them. He quotes with no sign of doubt the things said by the classical writers about barbaric Druid rites; never dreaming that in respect to these there may have been invention, exaggeration, or copying one from another— and that other chiefly the gentle Julius who—but I have ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... to Loch 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 ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... 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 of this ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... 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 with a sigh of vast materialistic content, longed ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... she began to be tired of sitting still, and she rose and wandered through the park for nearly an hour, trying to find the places in which she had played in her childhood during a visit to her late aunt. She recognized a great toppling Druid's altar that had formerly reminded her of Mount Sinai threatening to fall on the head of Christian in "The Pilgrim's Progress." Farther on she saw and avoided a swamp in which she had once earned a scolding ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... works, part of them written, which passed into the hands of Lord Molesworth (we believe,) part of which were published (the "History of the Druid" and also "Giordano Bruno;") but whether they exist at the present time or not, we ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... soprano of finest quality, brilliant and vibrating, spanned two octaves, from C to C. She possessed the gift of beauty, and was said to unite the tragic inspiration of Pasta with the fire and energy of Malibran. A favorite role with her was that of the Druid priestess in "Norma." Her delivery of "Casta Diva" was said to be a transcendant effort ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... embosomed in 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 ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... "The Druid followed him and suddenly, as we are told, struck him with a druidic wand, or according to one version, flung at him a tuft of grass over which he had pronounced a ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... "Druid" is derived from the Celtic word "druidh," meaning "sage," connected with the Greek ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... Were Wandering and Hiding From Finn Her Song to Rouse Him from Sleep Her Lament for His Death The Parting of Goll and His Wife The Death of Osgar Oisin's Vision His Praise of Finn Oisin after the Fenians The Foretelling of Cathbad the Druid At Deidre's Birth Deirdre's Lament for the Sons of ...
— The Kiltartan Poetry Book • Lady Gregory
... it on fire, and the 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 occupied by ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... supposition that the Druids preferred to perform their religious 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, and rendered reverence to the sun, moon, and stars as the visible ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 2, December 1875 • Various
... a part of your own country which is 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 at once to his ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... Geoffrey of Monmouth, or Richard of Cirencester are no longer accepted as safe and infallible guides. We know that there were such people as the Druids, but we no longer attribute to them the great stone circles nor imagine them sacrificing on "Druid's altars," as our forefathers called the dolmens. The history of Britain no longer begins with the advent of Julius Caesar, nor is his account of the Celtic tribes and their manners accepted as a full and complete statement of all that is known about them. The study of flint implements, of barrows ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... widows, were too true to their brave husbands. So, when they had seen the last of their lovers quiet in death, they stripped off all their ornaments and fur robes, until all stood together, each clad in her own innocence, as pure in their purpose as if they were a company of Druid priestesses. ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... have found him out. I am not sure but I would rather have remembered him as one of the mystical fancies of the early dawn, some pure white dream materialized out of the tenuous mists by the incantations of the Druid pines. Neighborly and simple as are all the pasture people when we sit quiet long enough to see them and gain their confidence by making them feel that we are an integral portion of the place, as they are, they all have something of the mystical ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... saw the magic stone in the midst of the froth. The Welsh peasants believe the beads to possess medicinal virtues of many sorts and to be particularly efficacious for all maladies of the eyes. In Wales and Ireland the beads sometimes went by the name of the Magician's or Druid's Glass (Gleini na Droedh and Glaine nan Druidhe). Specimens of them may be seen in museums; some have been found in British barrows. They are of glass of various colours, green, blue, pink, red, brown, and so ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... at my call, Came my Naiads, one and all. Nursling of the mountain sky, Leaving Dian's choir on high, Down her cataracts laughing loud, Ockment leapt from crag and cloud, Leading many a nymph, who dwells Where wild deer drink in ferny dells; While the Oreads as they past Peep'd from Druid Tors aghast. By alder copses sliding slow, Knee-deep in flowers came gentler Yeo And paused awhile her locks to twine With musky hops and white woodbine, Then joined the silver-footed band, Which circled down my golden sand, By dappled park, and harbor shady, Haunt of ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... Solitude held sway, but there was more than solitude in that lonely aspect: something prehistoric and unknown, unearthly, incomprehensible. Cairn Brea and the Hill of Fires brooded in the distance; the remains of a Druid's altar showed darkly on the summit of a nearer hill. No sound broke the stillness except the faint and ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... on Sarum's treeless plain, The waste that careless Nature owns; Lone tenants of her bleak domain, Loomed huge and gray the Druid stones. ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... 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
... Manhattan permits himself to do except under compulsing!—you may come upon Fort Greene Park when the evening shadows are stealing down the streets to meet you, and the Martyrs' Monument strangely converted into a pagan altar, silhouetted against the sky amid its guardian druid grove wherein the lamps glow and twinkle and dark ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... exaggerate his eccentricity. As a traveller who met with adventures upon the roads of Britain he was surpassed by a dozen writers that could be named, and in our own day—to mention one—by that truly eccentric being "The Druid." {20b} The Druid had a special affinity with Borrow, in regard to his kindness for an old applewoman. His applewoman kept a stall in the Strand to which the Druid was a constant visitor, mainly for the purpose of having a chat and borrowing and repaying small sums, rarely exceeding ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... Jurgen left Cameliard, traveling toward Carohaise, and went into the Druid forest there, and followed ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... grand triumph for the young composer from the outset, especially as the lofty character of the Druid priestess was sung by that unapproachable lyric tragedienne, the Siddons of the opera, Madame Pasta. Bellini is said to have had this queen of dramatic song in his mind in writing the opera, and right nobly did she vindicate his judgment, for no European audience afterward but was thrilled and ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... withered half-breed woman, slipped in and out of the Forester's cabin tidying up bachelor confusion. The wind suffed through the evergreens in dream voices, pansy-soft to the touch. The slow-swaying evergreens rocked to a rhythm old as Eternity, Druid priests standing guard over the sacrament of love and night. From the purpling Valley came the sibilant hush of the River. Somewhere, from the branches below the Ridge, a water thrush gurgled a last joyous note that rippled liquid ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... of man's 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 ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... 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; ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... service was held in the "Druid's Grove," a place of mingled shade and sunshine, where a little tumbling creek was the only accompaniment to the hymns, and the birds trilled an obligato. An old tree-stump served as pulpit, and here Dr. Judson talked rather than preached to ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... Druid Hill Park before Mamise realized that she was wasting her time and her trip for ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... Luttrell, gayest bard that ever threw off a triplet amid the clattering of cabs and the chattering of clubs, art thou, too, mute? Where, where dost thou linger? Is our Druid among the oaks of Ampthill; or, like a truant Etonian, is he lurking among the beeches of Burnham? What! has the immortal letter, unlike all other good advice, absolutely not been thrown away? or is the jade incorrigible? ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... care or no sorrow on any person; we see others, but we ourselves are not seen." These gods are indeed more wise and beautiful than men; but men, when they are great men, are stronger than they are, for men are, as it were, the foaming tide-line of their sea. One remembers the Druid who answered, when some one asked him who made the world, "The Druids made it." All was indeed but one life flowing everywhere, and taking one quality here, another there. It sometimes seems to one as if there is a kind of day and night of religion, ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... none but I may touch its purity, And sped as lightly down the dewy bank As any mothy owl that hunts quick mice. They went crying, crying, but I lost them Before I stept, with the first tips of light, On Raven Crag near by the Druid Stones; So I paused there and, stooping, pressed my hand Against the stony bed of the clear stream; Then entered I the circle and raised up My shining hand in cold stern adoration Even as the first great gleam went up ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... of Nature-communion which we call physical science, there is the other, artistic phase. Day by day we find that the mystic influence of Nature on our human personality grows more intense and individual. Who can walk alone in your beautiful Druid Hill Park, among those dear and companionable oaks, without a certain sense of being in the midst of a sweet and noble company of friends? Who has not shivered, wandering among these trees, with a certain sense that the awful ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... old, so old that its root has been lost and we know not who first imagined it; but the idea, the central incident, doubtless goes back to Druid times, when a woman might well have offered herself up to the cruel gods to avert their wrath and stay the plagues which fell upon her people. Under a like impulse Curtius sprang into the gulf in the Forum, ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... 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 ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... religion, prepared the way for a true revelation. Within that little river territory, amid those obscure morasses of the Rhine and Scheld, three great forms of religion—the sanguinary superstition of the Druid, the sensuous polytheism of the Roman, the elevated but dimly groping creed of the German, stood for centuries, face to face, until, having mutually debased and destroyed each other, they all faded away in the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the holy bracelets, the metal girdle, the sacrificial axe, the knife of brass; and, in the midst, was a glass urn, containing a pinch or two of grey powder—human dust! proud dust—sad and last remnant of the Druid Chindonax. ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... sitting, half standing, they remained side by side, contemplating beneath the low clouds the 'old town' of the dead, which sloped away at their feet with its crowding throng of pinnacles and grey figures and humbler stones, rising like Druid architecture from the bright green. No birds were audible, no sound of tools, nothing but the water running away on all sides, and from the canvas cover of a half-finished monument the monotonous voices of two artisans discussing their worries. The rain without ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... side leaned a rowan-tree, with trunk and branches aged and gnarled amidst their fresh foliage. He crossed the burn to look through the gate, and pressed his face between the bars to get a better sight of a tame rabbit that had got out of its hutch. It sat, like a Druid white with age, in the midst of a gravel drive, much overgrown with moss, that led through a young larch wood, with here and there an ancient tree, lonely amidst the youth of its companions. Suddenly from the wood a large spaniel came bounding ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... in fear at what the maiden said, which he heard though he could not see her, called aloud to his Druid, Coran by name. "O Coran of the many spells," he said, "and of the cunning magic, I call upon thy aid. A task is upon me too great for all my skill and wit, greater than any laid upon me since I seized the kingship. A maiden ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... 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
... title of brothers and kinsmen of the Roman people. When the Sequani, their 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 Caesar (B.G. vii. 42), ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Rabbi, Rabbin, Rebbe; scribe. [Mohammedan &c.] 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 ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... 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 ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... calculi, and difficult parturition, in which 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 ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... winter's darkest time, to live upon the coarsest food, to feel cold such as Englishmen in England cannot even comprehend, often to starve, always to dwell in exile from the great world. Perchance, betimes, the savage scene is lost in a dreamy vision of some lonely Scottish loch, some Druid mound in far-away Lewis, some vista of a fireside, when storm howled and waves ran high ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... strong hands had the reins, for the 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
... not appear; it was, however, for a long 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 one of the properties ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... placed 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 ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... way 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
... The Queen herself looked a Venus-like dairymaid in straw hat and flowered skirt, and it was announced that the game of the afternoon should be that called "Descampativos." The guests trooped like children from the Little Trianon to a sequestered spot where lofty woods combined to cast a Druid shade upon the lawn. Here Vaudreuil was elected ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... "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
... hundred beacons, level above level, were kindled along a 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, bole 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, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... 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 his eighty disciples dwelt in caves of the rocks above, ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... 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 conqueror of the Gauls ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... the most 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 ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... former western limit of the known world, the Druids, in their medical treatment, relied much upon magic rites and incantations.[129:1] And the early Irish physicians, who belonged to the Druid priesthood, were devoted to mystical medicine, although they also prescribed various herbs with whose therapeutic use they were familiar.[129:2] In Ireland according to Lady Wilde,[129:3] invocations were formerly ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... be learned at Bandon Fair of how the County Cork hunter is arrived at, of the Lord Hastings colt out of a high-bred Victor mare; of New Laund, of Speculation, of Whalebone, of the ancient and well-nigh mythical Druid, whose name adds a lustre to any pedigree. These things are matters far more real and serious than English history to every man and boy in the fair field, whether he is concerned in practical horse-dealing or not. Even the mere visitor is fired with the acquisition of knowledge, ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... thy name," he said, "and why Thou waitest thus the druid knife, And carest not to live or die? Monk, hast thou little care ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... 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 the King ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards |
