and much from Breton, Welsh, Gaelic, and Irish folk-lore.
That all thus recovered will be in a corrupted form I am well aware, but a practised eye will be able to restore what is disintegrated, and will know to detect antiquity, though disguised under the newest robe.
A careful study of these sources, conducted by the light of comparative mythology, will, I am satisfied, lead to the discovery that, under the name of Methodism, we have the old druidic religion still alive, energetic, and possibly more vigorous than it was when it exercised a spiritual supremacy over the whole of Britain. With the loss of the British tongue, much of the old terminology has died out, and a series of adaptations to Christianity has taken place, without radically affecting the system[1].
- ↑ Exception has been taken to this remark by some of the reviews; but the writer believes unjustly. Those who have made the fragments of Bardic religious poems, and the scheme of Druidic rites their study, cannot fail with astonishment to note the remarkable coincidence which exists between modern Wesleyanism and the religion of our British forefathers.
