49 Fun Facts About Druids

The Celtic compound behind the word "druid" is traditionally read as meaning what?

Oak-knower is the traditional reading, though some linguists prefer 'strong seer'. Pliny had already guessed in the 1st century that the priests took their name from the tree.

Which druid brews the magic potion that gives Asterix's village its superhuman strength?

Getafix refuses the potion to Obelix, who fell into the cauldron as a baby and has been permanently strong ever since. In the original French the druid is called Panoramix.

In Pliny's famous account, a druid climbs a tree and cuts mistletoe with what?

A golden sickle, and the cut mistletoe was caught by others in a cloak. This one passage largely shaped the popular image of the druid.

Caesar said the druids met yearly in the land of which Gaulish people, whose name survives in Chartres?

Carnutes: Caesar says their land was reckoned the centre of all Gaul, and that people brought their disputes to the druids' yearly gathering there for judgment.

According to Caesar, druidic teaching was said to have originated where?

Britain: Caesar added that keen students still travelled there to study the doctrine more closely.

Caesar said druid pupils were forbidden to do what with their doctrine?

Write it down: pupils learned a great body of verse by heart instead. Caesar thought the ban kept the teaching from becoming common property and kept memories sharp.

Caesar said the druids kept public and private accounts in which alphabet?

Greek letters probably reached the Gauls through the Greek colony at Marseille. Caesar's men even found a census of the Helvetii written in them in a captured camp.

Which Roman writer hosted the druid Diviciacus in Rome?

Cicero wrote that his guest claimed a knowledge of nature and foretold events by augury. Caesar, who leaned on Diviciacus as an ally in Gaul, never once calls him a druid.

Diodorus likened the Gauls' belief in souls reborn in new bodies to the teaching of which philosopher?

Pythagoras: Diodorus wrote that his belief prevailed among the Gauls. Caesar credited the teaching to the druids and said it made warriors brave by removing the fear of death.

A Roman biographer says which emperor "utterly abolished" the druids' "cruel and inhuman" religion?

Claudius went further than Augustus, who had merely barred Roman citizens from taking part in the religion.

Tacitus describes druids hurling curses at Roman troops as they landed on which island?

Anglesey, then called Mona: Tacitus says the cursing druids and black-robed women with torches froze the soldiers with fear until their general urged them on.

Which Roman general led the assault on the druids' island stronghold around AD 60?

Suetonius Paulinus garrisoned the island and felled its sacred woods, then had to abandon the conquest when revolt broke out behind him.

News of whose revolt reached the Romans just after their victory over the druids' island?

Boudica: her rising forced the Romans to abandon the island, and it stayed outside the Empire until Agricola took it nearly two decades later.

Lucan named three Gaulish gods appeased with blood: Teutates, Esus and which thunder god?

Taranis: later commentators on Lucan say his victims were burned, while those of Esus were hung from trees.

Caesar reported that victims were burned inside a huge image made of what?

Wicker: Caesar describes huge figures with limbs woven from twigs, filled with living men and set alight. Criminals were the preferred victims, he says, but the innocent were used when they ran short.

Stonehenge frames the sunrise on which day, when modern Druids hold their best-known ceremony there?

The summer solstice: after police clashed with travellers nearby in 1985, access to the stones for the midsummer sunrise was barred for almost fifteen years.

Which animals were sacrificed after the mistletoe was cut in Pliny's rite?

Two white bulls, their horns bound for the first time, were killed after the cutting. The Gauls believed mistletoe taken in drink would make any barren animal fertile, Pliny adds.

Pliny's account of the druids' mistletoe rite records a Gaulish word meaning what?

All-healer: it is often taken as the Gauls' name for mistletoe itself, but the standard English translations of Pliny apply the word to the moon instead.

The Coligny calendar, linked to druidic astronomy, is displayed in which French city?

Lyon: the calendar was dug up in 1897 at Coligny, to the north-east, in fragments beside a broken bronze statue of a god.

Caesar said the Gauls reckoned time by what, rather than by days?

Nights: Caesar ties the custom to the Gauls' claim, taught by the druids, that they all descended from Dis, god of the underworld, so each new day began at nightfall.

Caesar named two honoured classes in Gaul: the druids and which other?

Equites, the knights: everyone else, Caesar claimed, was treated almost as a slave and never consulted, and many bound themselves to nobles to escape debt.

Christian scribes made the druid Mug Ruith a pupil of which New Testament figure?

Simon Magus, the sorcerer of Acts: in the tales he teaches Mug Ruith magic and helps him build a flying machine called the 'rowing wheel'.

The druidess Bodhmall secretly raised which Irish hero?

Fionn mac Cumhaill was hidden because his father's killers were hunting him. Bodhmall, his aunt, and the warrior woman Liath Luachra taught him to fight and hunt in the woods of Sliabh Bladma.

In the seventh-century Lives by Muirchú and Tírechán, druids are the pagan sorcerers who oppose which saint?

Patrick: these Lives, written long after his death, show a martial saint who contests with druids, overthrows idols and curses kings.

In early Irish law, the druid's social role was largely taken over by which figure?

The poet (fili) inherited the druid's standing as Christianity spread, while the druid himself sank in the law texts to a mere sorcerer.

The Welsh word dryw can mean 'seer' and also which bird?

Wren: early Irish texts likewise call it the druid bird, one that makes prophecies, and wren boys long hunted it each St Stephen's Day as the king of all birds.

Which 17th-century antiquary first credited the druids with building Stonehenge and Avebury?

John Aubrey filed both monuments under 'Templa Druidum', temples of the druids, in a survey he worked on for some thirty years. William Stukeley later made the idea popular.

Which deist portrayed the druids as a domineering priesthood ruling through credulity?

John Toland's hostile picture drew an answer from the clergyman William Stukeley, who set out to combat deism by recasting the druids as near-Christian patriarchs.

Iolo Morganwg, founder of the Gorsedd of Bards, was exposed after his death as a prolific what?

Forger: a Glamorgan stonemason by trade, he slipped poems and triads of his own into editions of medieval Welsh literature, and the fakes were only untangled in the 20th century.

Iolo Morganwg held his first Gorsedd ceremony in 1792 at which London location?

Primrose Hill: the Welsh bardic revival began in exile, among London's Welsh societies, and a plaque unveiled on the hill in 2009 marks Iolo's ceremony.

Iolo Morganwg's Gorsedd ritual survives today within which festival?

National Eisteddfod: the festival moves to a different town each year, and its Gorsedd rites long left a ring of standing stones behind, which is why such circles dot Wales.

Which 1831 Bellini opera gave the druids a place in the operatic repertoire?

Norma: its heroine is a druid high priestess in Roman Gaul who has secretly broken her vows and borne two children to the Roman proconsul.

Which French writer created the druidess Velléda in his epic Les Martyrs?

Chateaubriand set his epic during Rome's persecution of the early Christians and wrote Pliny's mistletoe-cutting scene into Velléda's story.

Which society, founded in London in 1781 on Masonic lines, is the oldest surviving druid order?

Ancient Order of Druids: it was a fraternal club with no religious aims at all, and discussion of religion or politics was banned from its lodge rooms.

The druid order founded in London in 1781 first met in what kind of venue?

A tavern: the King's Arms, just off Oxford Street. In one account, friends who drank there formed a society and took the druids' name at the suggestion of a member called Hurle.

Which future British prime minister was initiated into a fraternal druid lodge in 1908?

Winston Churchill was joining a social club, not a pagan faith: fraternal druid lodges like his barred any discussion of religion.

Druid Ross Nichols helped shape which eight-festival calendar now shared by many modern pagans?

The Wheel of the Year: Nichols brought the full cycle of eight seasonal festivals into Druidry in the years Wiccans took it up, which is why Druids and Wiccans keep the same eight.

The Reformed Druids of North America began in 1963 at which college?

Carleton, in Northfield, Minnesota: what began as a campus joke outlived its cause and grew into dozens of congregations across the United States and Canada.

The Reformed Druids of North America began as a protest against what college rule?

Compulsory religious services: the students founded their own 'religion' and handed in chapel slips for its meetings. The college dropped the rule in 1964, and the Druids carried on regardless.

Which pioneer of modern witchcraft belonged to the same London druid order as Ross Nichols?

Gerald Gardner, the founder of Wicca, joined the order years before his friend Nichols. Nichols left it in 1964, the year Gardner died, to found one of his own.

Which body did the Charity Commission register as a charity in 2010, recognising Druidry?

The Druid Network: the Commission accepted that Druids' worship of natural spirits counted as religious activity, which made Druidry a religion in charity law across England and Wales.

Modern Druid groups are usually known by what name?

Groves: the name nods to the belief that the ancient druids held their rites among trees. Larger bodies are usually called orders.

The Druidic concept of Awen comes from Welsh and Cornish words for what?

Inspiration: in Welsh myth awen is the muse of the bards, and Iolo Morganwg drew it as three rays of light, a symbol many Druids still wear.

Stonehenge was built during which periods, long before any druid is recorded?

Neolithic and Bronze Age: the monument is millennia older than the first written mention of druids. Modern Druids adopted it as their temple just as archaeologists were ruling the ancient ones out.

The bog body Lindow Man, sometimes linked to druids, was found in 1984 in which county?

Cheshire: peat cutters found him at Lindow Moss near Wilmslow. A blow had fractured his skull and a sinew cord circled his neck, which is why some see a ritual killing.

What jokey nickname did Lindow Man acquire?

Pete Marsh: hospital radiologists coined the pun on 'peat marsh' while examining the body, and the local press took it up.

Which Archbishop of Canterbury was made a druid of the Gorsedd of Bards?

Rowan Williams joined in 2002, soon after being named to Canterbury. The Gorsedd is a Welsh cultural honour, not a pagan rite: the future Queen Elizabeth II was inducted in 1946.

Welsh druid and physician William Price was arrested for openly practising what?

Cremation: in 1884 Price tried to burn the body of his infant son, whom he had named Iesu Grist, Welsh for Jesus Christ. The court ruled it no crime, clearing the way for the Cremation Act of 1902.

T. D. Kendrick's 1927 study complained that "a prodigious amount of" what had been written about druidism?

Rubbish: the worst kind, Kendrick wrote, was the sort 'that masquerades as deep and recondite learning', so he offered a documented summary of the facts instead.