The Druids
материал по английскому языку на тему

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Although since Christian times Druids have been identified as wizards and soothsayers, in pre-Christian Celtic society they formed an intellectual class comprising philosophers, judges, educators, historians, doctors, seers, astronomers, and astrologers. The earliest surviving Classical references to Druids date to the 2^nd century BC.

The word «Druidae» is of Celtic origin. The Roman writer Pliny the Elder (Gaius Plinius Secundus, 23/24-79 AD) believed it to be a cognate with the Greek word «drus», meaning «an oak». «Dru-wid» combines the word roots «oak» and «knowledge» («wid» means «to know» or «to see» - as in the Sanskrit «vid»). The oak, together with the rowan and hazel, was an important sacred tree to the Druids. In the Celtic social system, Druid was a title given to learned men and women possessing «oak knowledge (or «oak wisdom).

The Druids emerged from the ancient Celtic tribes, at the time when the people had to live close to nature to survive. By the light of the storyteller"s fire, and with the play of the harp, the Druids dreamed magic for their people. In the deep woods they would gather, bringing together their mysticism and philosophy, their insight and learning. Their spirit emerged from the tides of the sea, the light of the Sun, created an institution that inspired and uplifted their world.

To become a Druid, students assembled in large groups for instruction and framing, for a period of up to twenty years. The mythologies describe Druids who were capable of many magical powers such as divination and prophesy, control of the weather, healing, levitation and shapechanging themselves into the forms of animals. Their education was so rigorous that at the end of it they were virtually walking encyclopedias. A good word for them would seem to be «priests» and for two reasons: the Romans never used it, and the Druids did not minister to congregations as priests do.

With the revival of interest in the Druids in later times, the question of what they looked like has been largely a matter of imagination. Early representations tended to show them dressed in vaguely classical garb. Aylett Sammes, in his Britannia Antiqua Illustrata (1676), shows a Druid barefoot dressed in a kneelength tunic and a hooded cloak. He holds a staff in one hand and in the other a book and a sprig of mistletoe. A bag or scrip hangs from his belt.

Brendan Myers Sammes"s drawing was subsequently copied and modified by William Stukeley who shortened his beard, removed the mistletoe, turned the bag at this side of bottle or gourd, and placed an axe-head in his belt.

Besides observing that the name «Druid» is derived from «oak», it was Pliny the Elder, in his Naturalis Historia (XVI,95), who associated the Druids with mistletoe and oak groves: «The Druids...hold nothing more sacred than the mistletoe and the tree on which it grows provided it is an oak. They choose the oak to form groves, and they do not perform any religious rites without its foliage...» Pliny also describes how the Druids used a «gold pruning hook» or «sickle» to gather the mistletoe: «Anything growing on those trees [oaks] they regard as sent from heaven and a sign that this tree   has been chosen by the gods themselves. Mistletoe is, however, very rarely found, and when found, it is gathered with great ceremony and especially on the sixth day of the moon... They prepare a ritual sacrifice and feast under the tree, and lead up two white bulls whose horns are bound for the first time on this occasion. A priest attired in a whitevestment ascends the tree and with a golden pruning hook cuts the mistletoe which is caught in a white cloth. Then next they sacrifice the victims praying that the gods will make their gifts fecundity to any barren animal, and it is predominant against all positions.»

Many Druids were women; the Celtic woman enjoyed more freedom and rights than women in any other contemporary culture, including the rights to enter battle, and divorce her husband. A nineteenth-century painting shows a Druidess holding both the sickle and a sprig of mistletoe. She is also standing next to a megalithic structure.

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