CHAPTER II
THE CELTS: THEIR RELIGION AND FESTIVALS
The first reference to Great Britain in European annals of which we know was the statement in the fifth century B. C. of the Greek historian Herodotus, that Phoenician sailors went to the British Isles for tin. He called them the "Tin Islands." The people with whom these sailors traded must have been Celts, for they were the first inhabitants of Britain who worked in metal instead of stone.
The Druids were priests of the Celts centuries before Christ came. There is a tradition in Ireland that they first arrived there in 270 B. C., seven hundred years before St. Patrick. The account of them written by Julius Caesar half a century before Christ speaks mainly of the Celts of Gaul, dividing them into two ruling classes who kept the
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