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CHAPTER IV.
CONDITION, CUSTOMS, AND SUPERSTITIONS OF THE PEOPLE.
There is little to be remarked, because little is
known, respecting the social and moral aspects of
the untutored race which, in the earliest historic age,
sought a domicile or refuge amidst the forests of
the Fylde, or invaded its glades in search of prey. The habits
of the Setantii were simply those of other savage tribes who
depended for their daily sustenance upon their skill and prowess
in the chase, and whose intercommunion with the world beyond
their own limited domains, was confined to hostile or friendly
meetings with equally barbarous races whose frontiers adjoined
their own. Certain disinterred roots were necessary adjuncts
to their repasts, and indeed, on many occasions, when outwitted
by the wild tenants of the woods, formed the sole item. Their
Druidical faith and the supreme power of the priesthood over
their almost every action, both secular and religious, have already
been referred to in an earlier page. The remorseless sacrifice of
fellow beings on their unhallowed altars, and the general spirit
of cruelty and inhumanity which pervaded all their rites, are not
to be regarded as disclosing a naturally callous and brutal
disposition on the part of the Setantii, but as indications of the
deplorable ignorance in which they existed, and the blind
obdedience which they yielded to the principles indoctrinated
by the Druids. That the Setantii, however submissive to the
dictates and requirements of their priests, were far from passively
allowing the encroachments of others on their liberties is shown
by the promptitude and fierceness with which they combatted
the progress of the Roman legions through their territory. No
