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poems themselves, we only find lamentations for their loss. Of all those verses of the ancient Druids, which their youths frequently employed twenty years to learn[1], we cannot now recover a single fragment, or the slightest relique. The devastations of time, and a false zeal, have been equally fatal to them in Spain, France, Germany and England. This is granted, but should we not then rather look for their monuments in countries, later converted to Christianity? If the poems, of which we speak, have been ever committed to writing, shall we not more probably find them preserved in the north, than where they must have struggled for five or six centuries more against the attacks of time and superstition? This is no conjecture; it is what has really happened. We actually possess some of these Odes[2], which
- ↑ Cæsar, mentioning the British Druids, says, “Magnum ibi numerum versuum ediscere dicuntur; itaque nonnulli annos vicenos in disciplinâ permanent.” De Bell. Gall. 6. 13.
- ↑ Here again our author falls into the unfortunate mistake of confounding the Celtic and Gothic Antiquities. The Celtic Odes of the Druids are for ever lost; but we happily possess the Runic Songs of the Gothic Scalds: These however have nothing in common with the Druid Odes, nor contribute to throw the
