"Druid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... symbol of pagan superstition. You will think of the bold Crusader, Henry the Lion; of Wittikind, the brave Saxon duke who, after a twenty years' resistance, was finally conquered and baptized into Christianity; of the wild, half-clad Saxons, with their bloody horse-head ensign; of the Druid priests, who sacrificed human beings as well as white horses; and so, far back to the god Woden himself, who was probably merely some great hero or warrior who lived in a period so remote that we have no record ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... grand triumph for the young composer from the outset, especially as the lofty character of the Druid priestess was sung by that unapproachable lyric tragedienne, the Siddons of the opera, Madame Pasta. Bellini is said to have had this queen of dramatic song in his mind in writing the opera, and right nobly did she vindicate his judgment, for no European audience ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... wound pours the oil of consolation and the balm of joy! Select, sacred, and heaven-ordained and anointed priests and priestesses they, of a GOD of love in a world of sorrow. Not their commission is it to declare to cowering criminals a GOD wrathful, vindictive, and scarcely less bloody than the Druid's deity, hating with infinite venom the unhappy violator of his laws; not theirs to deal out curious metaphysics and cold abstractions, giving a stone for bread and an adder for an egg to the sons of sorrow and the daughters of misfortune; but ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... day King Conor and his nobles feasted at the house of Felim, his chief story-teller. And while they feasted a daughter was born to Felim the story-teller. Then Cathbad the Druid, who was also at the feast, became exceeding sad. He foretold that great sorrow and evil should come upon the land because of this child, and so he called her Deirdre, which means ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... said Toby. "It puts our Druid Hill Park in the shade, that's a fact; makes it take a back seat and play second fiddle, as ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... lived on roots, to train himself for the monastic life; and then went north-west, to Poitiers, to found Liguge (said to be the most ancient monastery in France), to become Bishop of Tours, and to overthrow throughout his diocese, often at the risk of his life, the sacred oaks and Druid stones of the Gauls, and the temples and idols of the Romans. But he—like many more—longed for the peace of the hermit's cell; and near Tours, between the river Loire and lofty cliffs, he hid himself in a hut of branches, while his eighty disciples dwelt in caves of ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... Wales, where, for a long period, they maintained the observance of the Druidical form of worship; and although that country has long since become Christianized, the society of the Ancient Order of Druids has existed with an uninterrupted succession at Pout-y-prid, where the Arch-Druid resides, and from, whence emanated the charter of the Grand Lodge of the order in this country. In reference to the Druidism on the continent, history records the fact that when one of the reigning kings became a convert to Christianity the whole of his subjects were baptized into the Church of ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... day in the (early) springtime there came to tempt him a druid who said to him:—"In the name of your God cause this apple-tree branch to produce foliage." Mochuda knew that it was in contempt for divine power the druid proposed this, and the branch put forth leaves on the instant. The druid demanded "In the name of your God, ...
— The Life of St. Mochuda of Lismore • Saint Mochuda
... records regarding St. Columba. About the year 563 of the Christian era, Columba visited Brude, King of the Picts, in his royal fort on the Ness, and found the Pictish sovereign attended by a court or council, and with Brochan as his chief Druid or Magus. Brochan retained an Irish female, and consequently a countrywoman of Columba's, as a slave. The 33d chapter of the second book of Adamnan's work is entitled, "Concerning the Illness with which the Druid (Magus) Brochan was visited ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... know. The furthest records or surmises or inferences simply accept it as existing. Some of these—guesses, let us call them—seem to show that there was some sort of structure there when the Romans came, therefore it must have been a place of importance in Druid times—if indeed that was the beginning. Naturally the Romans accepted it, as they did everything of the kind that was, or might be, useful. The change is shown or inferred in the name Castra. It was ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... the king beckoned Enda to him, and was about to place his hand in Mave's when a Druid, whose white beard almost touched the ground, and who had been a favourite of the dead stepmother, and hated Mave for her sake, ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... strikes it. But an apple-tree or a pear-tree will serve the purpose, and up in the Alp region they burn the acorn-bearing oak. What we shall do to-day is an echo of Druidical ceremonial—of the time when the Druid priests cut the yule-oak and with their golden sickles reaped the sacred mistletoe; but old Jan here, who is so stiff for preserving ancient customs, does not know that this custom, like many others that he stands for, is ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... out about nine. Dr Johnson was curious to see one of those structures which northern antiquarians call a Druid's temple. I had a recollection of one at Strichen; which I had seen fifteen years ago: so we went four miles out of our road, after passing Old Deer, and went thither. Mr Fraser, the proprietor, was at home, and shewed it to us. But I had augmented it in my mind; for all ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... album of Linnaeus: but in Germany we have pretty much the same conversion of a favourite druidical plant, the trefoil, or shamrock, and the cinquefoil; both of them go in Bavaria and many other parts of Germany under the name of Truten-fuss, or Druid's foot, and are thought potent charms in guarding fields and cattle from harm; but there too, as with us, possibly the oldest title of guy, the term Druid, has grown into a name of the greatest disgrace: "Trute, Trute, Saudreck," "Druid, Druid, sow dirt," is an insulting phrase ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 41, Saturday, August 10, 1850 • Various
... soon as he opened the window, the whole country commenced to laugh under its white mantle of snow—barren heath, ploughed land, Druid stones, even to the enormous oaks of the forest, with their glistening summits, that ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... extirpation, thus brought about, of any conceivable system of religion, prepared the way for a true revelation. Within that little river territory, amid those obscure morasses of the Rhine and Scheld, three great forms of religion—the sanguinary superstition of the Druid, the sensuous polytheism of the Roman, the elevated but dimly groping creed of the German, stood for centuries, face to face, until, having mutually debased and destroyed each other, they all faded away in the pure light ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... most famous modern works at the bidding of Mr. Armstrong, who gave his bookseller a standing order to supply everything that was proper, and rarely for his own individual amusement or instruction had recourse to any shelf but one which contained neat editions of the complete works of the Druid and Mr. Apperley, the Life of Assheton Smith, and all the volumes of the original Sporting Magazine bound in crimson russia. These, with Ruff's Guide, the Racing Calendar, and a few volumes on farriery, supplied ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... change! Go thou and view it, All desolately sunk, The circle of the Druid, The cloister of the monk; The abbey boled and squalid, With its bush-maned, staggering wall; Ask by whom these were unhallow'd— Change, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... still of hard and wasted work. On either side of the way, at too sadly frequent intervals, ruined wells or desolate yawning cellar-holes, with tumbling chimneys standing like Druid ruins, show that fair New England homes once there were found. Flaming orange tiger-lilies, most homely and cheerful bloom of country gardens, have spread from the deserted dooryards, across the untrodden foot-paths, in weedy thickets a-down the hill, ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... Fergus, to my grief, resigned the sovereignty, and caused me, a boy, to be made king of Ulla and captain of the Red Branch. But now I say, ere we consider what province or territory shall first see the embattled Red Branch cross her borders, let us enquire of Cathvah the Ard-Druid, whether the omens be propitious, and whether through his art he is able to reveal to us some rite to be performed or prohibition ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... In days to come the field shall blend, The story dim and date obscure; In legend all shall end. Even now, involved in forest shade A Druid-dream the strife appears, The fray of yesterday assumes The haziness of years. In North and South still beats the vein ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... concourse of persons were assembling on Mowbray Moor. The chief gathering collected in the vicinity of some huge rocks, one of which, pre-eminent above its fellows, and having a broad flat head, on which some twenty persons might easily stand at the same time, was called the Druid's Altar. The ground about was strewn with stony fragments, covered tonight with human beings, who found a convenient resting-place amid these ruins of some ancient temple or relics of some ancient world. The shadowy concourse increased, the dim circle of the nocturnal assemblage each ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... the following morning Jurgen left Cameliard, traveling toward Carohaise, and went into the Druid forest ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... to Gertrude and May Stonehenge, hanging stones,—the wonder of Salisbury Plain, where stand the ruins of the Druid temple—three circles of upright moss-grown stones with flat slabs across their tops, in which it is supposed the sun was worshiped with human sacrifices. Many burial mounds are scattered about. A broad driveway, ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... watch eyes the stag cold and stiff; The deer-hound, majestic, looks lofty around, While he lists with delight to the harp's distant sound; Is it swept by the gale, as it slow wafts along The heart-soothing tones of an olden times' song? Or is it some Druid who touches, unseen, "The Harp of the North," ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... the mountain sky, Leaving Dian's choir on high, Down her cataracts laughing loud, Ockment leapt from crag and cloud, Leading many a nymph, who dwells Where wild deer drink in ferny dells; While the Oreads as they past Peep'd from Druid Tors aghast. By alder copses sliding slow, Knee-deep in flowers came gentler Yeo And paused awhile her locks to twine With musky hops and white woodbine, Then joined the silver-footed band, Which circled down my golden sand, By dappled park, and harbor shady, Haunt of love-lorn ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... what the maiden said, which he heard though he could not see her, called aloud to his Druid, Coran ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... a coradge, or priest, went through a strange ceremony of singing, and touching his eyebrows, nose, and breast, crossing himself, and pointing to the sky like an old Druid." ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... wine-vat, dwell beyond the stir And tumult of defeated dreams; and deep Among pale eyelids heavy with the sleep Men have named beauty. Your great leaves enfold The ancient beards, the helms of ruby and gold Of the crowned Magi; and the king whose eyes Saw the Pierced Hands and Rood of Elder rise In druid vapour and make the torches dim; Till vain frenzy awoke and he died; and him Who met Fand walking among flaming dew, By a grey shore where the wind never blew, And lost the world and Emir for a kiss; And him who drove the gods out of their liss And till ...
— The Secret Rose • W. B. Yeats
... Baracouta bombarded the place, and set it on fire, and the natives retired to join their Ashanti friends in the woods. These were now approaching the town; and Colonel Festing landed with the marines and marine artillerymen, a party of bluejackets belonging to the Baracouta, Druid, Seagull, and Argus, under Captain Freemantle, some men of the 2nd West India Regiment, and a body of Houssas. The Ashantis, some 2000 in number, marched boldly along, and attempted to outflank the position ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... had made ready a splendid feast, and welcomed the new-comers gladly, and they ate and drank together. When the feast was over the Druid Derry sang songs before Grania, and she, knowing he was a man of wisdom, asked him why Fionn had come thither. 'If you know not that,' said the Druid, 'it is no wonder that I ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... which Evelyn mentions as "sweet and delectable", nowadays there is but little to be seen. There still remains, however, a beech grove called the "Druid's Temple", a "Lover's Walk" for sentimental youth, and a wood of acacias and cedars, yews and tulip trees—once known as the "Wilderness", but since the eighteenth century called the "Menagerie", because of ...
— The Dukeries • R. Murray Gilchrist
... being exactly like a modern respectable Englishman. As a joke for a Christmas pantomime this would be all very well; but one expects the jokes of Bernard Shaw to have some intellectual root, however fantastic the flower. And obviously all historic common sense is against the idea that that dim Druid people, whoever they were, who dwelt in our land before it was lit up by Rome or loaded with varied invasions, were a precise facsimile of the commercial society of Birmingham or Brighton. But it is a part of the Puritan in Bernard Shaw, a part of ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... you go to the Chalk Downs of Wiltshire, you see these temples in their true grandeur. You have all heard of Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain. Some of you may have heard of the great Druid temple at Abury in Wilts, which, were it not all but destroyed, would be even grander than Stonehenge. These are ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... them a fragment of a Druid pile, Some glorious throne of early British art? Some trophy worthy of our rising isle, Soon from its dull obscurity to start. Wert thou an altar for a world's respect? Now the sole remnant ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 357 - Vol. XIII, No. 357., Saturday, February 21, 1829 • Various
... its deepest, a wild goose Cried from the porter's lodge, and with long clamour Shook the ale horns and shields upon their hooks; But the horse-boys slept on, as though some power Had filled the house with Druid heaviness; And wondering who of the many changing Sidhe Had come as in the old times to counsel her, Maeve walked, yet with slow footfall being old, To that small chamber by the outer gate. The porter slept although he sat upright With still and stony limbs and open eyes. Maeve ...
— In The Seven Woods - Being Poems Chiefly of the Irish Heroic Age • William Butler (W.B.) Yeats
... among the Druid bards the queen, like a queen of night—tall, commanding, with great dark eyes like dusky diamonds; deep, piercing were those eyes, set beneath eyebrows fit for Juno. Every lineament of her face spoke forth ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... under the professors and system of Ireland, and we need not go beyond the testimonies of English antiquaries, from Bede to Camden, that these schools were regarded as the first in Europe. Ireland was equally remarkable for piety. In the Pagan times it was regarded as a sanctuary of the Magian or Druid creed. From the fifth century it became equally illustrious in Christendom. Without going into the disputed question of whether the Irish church was or was not independent of Rome, it is certain that Italy did not send out more apostles from the fifth to the ninth centuries than Ireland, and we ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... manhood bend the skies; Against our fallen and traitor lives The great winds utter prophecies: 15 With our faint hearts the mountain strives; Its arms outstretched, the druid wood Waits with its benedicite; And to our age's drowsy blood Still ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... accounted for by the mighty force of agitated waters dashing against the rocks, through long ages”. (Printed by W. and B. Brookes, Lincoln, 1843, p. 24, &c.) The theory would seem to be now generally accepted. Thus: “that ancient river, the river” Witham, honoured, we believe, by the Druid as his sacred stream, {102} consecrated in a later age to the Christian, by the number of religious houses erected on its shores, through a yet earlier stage of its existence performed the laborious task of carving out the vale of Grantham, and so adding to ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... about the shore of Mona those Neronian legionaries Burnt and broke the grove and altar of the Druid and Druidess, Far in the East Boadicea, standing loftily charioted, Mad and maddening all that heard her in her fierce volubility, Girt by half the tribes of Britain, near the colony Camulodune, Yell'd and shriek'd between her daughters o'er a ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... out and decide upon a man (or woman) and something inanimate or not human with which he is associated or which he is known to have used, such as "Washington and his hatchet," "Whittington and his cat," "A druid and his mistletoe-knife." They then return and each player asks them each a question in turn until the ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... as pretty a pocket lake as there is, followed the carry. Next came Lake Ambajeejus, larger, but hardly less lovely. Those who dislike long names may use its shorter Indian title, Umdo. We climbed a granite crag draped with moss long as the beard of a Druid,—a crag on the south side of Ambajeejus or Umdo. Thence we saw Katahdin, noble as ever, unclouded in the sunny morning, near, and yet enchantingly vague, with the blue sky which surrounded it. It was still an isolate pyramid rising with no effect from the fair blue lakes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... Sarum's treeless plain, The waste that careless Nature owns; Lone tenants of her bleak domain, Loomed huge and gray the Druid stones. ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... the Kabaros drummed; and hard by, in the brake, brown nymphs, their little breasts pointing to the zenith, moved in languorous rhythms, droning hoarse sacrificial chaunts. The colossus Memnon hymned; priests of Baal screamed as they lacerated themselves with knives; Druid priestesses crooned sybillic incantations. And over this pageant of woman and music the proud sun of old Egypt scattered ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... whispered; And they arising —Of day's forget-me-nots The duskier sisters— Descended, relinquished The orchard, the trout-pool, The Druid circles, Sheepfolds of Dartmoor, Granite and sandstone, Torridge and Tamar; By Roughtor, by Dozmare, Down the vale of the Fowey Moving in silence. Brushing the nightshade By bridges Cyclopean, ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Light, Intelligence, or the life of the soul. In a discourse delivered by Dr. Stukeley in 1760, attention was directed to the grove of Abraham as "that famous oak grove of Beersheba, planted by the illustrious prophet and first Druid—Abraham; and from whom our celebrated British Druids came, who were of the same patriarchal reformed religion, and brought the use of sacred ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... were pursuing me. At other times I would look through the half ruined door of the chapel at the stained glass or the statuettes of painted wood which stood on the altar. These plunged me in endless reveries. The strange and terrible physiognomy of these saints, more Druid than Christian, savage and vindictive, pursued me like a nightmare. Saints though they were, they were none the less subject to very strange weaknesses. Gregory, of Tours, has told us the story of a certain ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... skilful Tuatha surrounded themselves and their coveted island with magic-made tempest and terrors; in vain they reduced it in size so as to be almost invisible from sea; Amergin, one of the sons of Milesius, was a Druid skilled in all the arts of the east, and led by his wise counsels, his brothers countermined the magicians, and beat them at their own weapons. This Amergin was, according to universal usage in ancient ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... rarely visited and too little known. He will speak to you of one of the remotest and most interesting corners of our old English soil. He will tell you of the grand and varied scenery; the mighty Druid relics; the quaint legends; the deep, dark mines; the venerable remains of early Christianity; and the pleasant primitive population of the county of CORNWALL. You will inquire, can we believe him in all that he says? This brings me at once to his second qualification—he invariably ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... The name "Druid" is derived from the Celtic word "druidh," meaning "sage," connected with the Greek word ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... that he loved, thy noblest voice is mute. Land that he loved, that loved him! nevermore Meadow of thine, smooth lawn or wild sea-shore, Gardens of odorous bloom and tremulous fruit, Or woodlands old, like Druid couches spread, The master's feet shall tread. Death's little rift hath rent the faultless lute: The singer of ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... Diodorus Siculus, whose life overlapped Caesar's, we learn that Druid was a native British name. "There are certain philosophers and theologians held in great honour whom they call Druids."[56] Whether this designation is actually of Celtic derivation is, however, uncertain. Pliny thought it was ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... prophet, Miss Boone. You gave utterance to some Druid-like remarks as we crossed the Stygian pool. The worst your fancy painted couldn't equal what ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... of a spring afternoon, straying into a solitary ravine that opened up before us on the moors that stretched to the very edge of the coast, we came upon an ancient wood of dwarf oak, so venerable and time-worn in appearance that it looked like a survival of the Druid age. There was not an opening to be seen in its thick undergrowth, nor any sign of path or track through it, but it was with a mutual consent and understanding that we made our ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... first man who believed that day in Tara. Patrick blessed him and his seed. Patrick was then called to the king's bed, that he might eat food, and to prove him in prophecy (i.e., in Venturis rebus). Patrick did not refuse this, because he knew what would come of it. The druid Luchat Mael went to drink with him, for he wished to revenge on Patrick what he had done to his (the druid's) companion the day before. The druid Luchat Mael put a drop of poison into the goblet which was beside Patrick, that ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... of squires reduced to make an incense for me, though you have not performed Druid rites and packed them in gigantic osier ribs. Be philosophical, but accept your personal dues. Grant us ours too. I have a serious intention to preserve this young duchess, and I expect my task to be severe. I carry the banner aforesaid; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... open to the sky, whose ruins may still be seen on the lonely expanse of Salisbury Plain. There, on one of the fallen blocks, Carlyle and Emerson sat, when they made their pilgrimage to Stonehenge[1] many years ago, and discussed the life after death, with other questions of Druid philosophy. ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... service was held in the "Druid's Grove," a place of mingled shade and sunshine, where a little tumbling creek was the only accompaniment to the hymns, and the birds trilled an obligato. An old tree-stump served as pulpit, and here Dr. Judson talked rather than ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... they have often been called by titles equivalent to the "tree of life," and are thus connected with the nigh innumerable myths which relate to some mystic tree as the source of life. The ash Ygdrasyl of the Edda, the oak of Dordona and of the Druid, the modern Christmas tree, the sacred banyan, the holy groves, illustrate but faintly the prevalence of tree worship. Even so late as the time of Canute, it had to be forbidden in England by ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... rest of the squadron: the 'Melville' (a three-decker, Sir W. Parker's flagship), the 'Blenheim,' the 'Druid,' the 'Calliope,' and several 18-gun brigs. We took Hong Kong, Chusan, Ningpo, Canton, and returned to take Amoy. One or two incidents only in the several engagements seem ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... minds now Keltic tales of yore, Dark Druid rhymes that thrall; Deirdre's song, and wizard lore Of ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... the Nine-stane Rig, in the middle of the old Druid stones, and there they placed the great brass cauldron. They heated it red hot, and some of them hasted to Hermitage Castle, and stripped a sheet of lead from the roof, and they wrapped the wicked lord in it, and plunged him in, and stood round in solemn silence till the contents of that ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... miles. When the great logs and the faggots were piled together Saint Patrick kindled the pile with his own hands and the flames shot high in the air, throwing strange shadows on the trees and causing the Irish to cry out in fear and astonishment. The Druid priests were greatly angered and perturbed at what Saint Patrick had done, and they went at once to the King, who was named Laoghaire MacNeill, telling him that the foreign band had desecrated the Druid faith and must be punished ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... I am going to ask. But if my life and future are of any concern to you at all, I beg that you will grant my request. What I require of you, is, dear Harriet, that you meet me about eleven to-night by the Druid stones on Marlbury Downs, about a mile or more from your house. I cannot say more, except to entreat you to come. I will explain all when you are there. The one thing is, I want to see you. Come alone. Believe ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... the other, like a vast circus, where the wintry sun shed its pale colors rather than poured its light, and autumn had spread her tawny carpet of fallen leaves. About the middle of this hall, which seemed to have had the deluge for its architect, stood three enormous Druid stones,—a vast altar, on which was raised an old church-banner. About a hundred men, kneeling with bared heads, were praying fervently in this natural enclosure, where a priest, assisted by two other ecclesiastics, was saying mass. The poverty of the sacerdotal vestments, the feeble voice of the ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... remains of a British camp, for near these premises are Drude-heath (Druid's-heath) and Drude-fields, which we may reasonably suppose was the residence of a British priest: the military would naturally shelter themselves under the wing of the church, and the priest with the protection of ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... Tara next The news: "Laeghaire, the King, sits close in cloud Of sullen thought, or storms from court to court, Because the chiefest of the Druid race Locru, and Luchat prophesied long since That one day from the sea a Priest would come With Doctrine and a Rite, and dash to earth Idols, and hurl great monarchs from their thrones; And lo! At Imber Boindi late there stept A priest ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... of sunset clouds. Like these, when the sun has set, it is subsiding into a fixed repose, a stern and colourless uniformity. Temple, tower, and dwelling-house assume the form of one solitary granite pile, a Druid monument. This monument, as Mr. Browning describes it,[54] consists really of two, so standing or lying as to form part of each other. The one cross-shaped is supposed to have been sepulchral, or in some other way sacred to death. The latter, on which he mainly ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... a gentleman with an Italian name and a perfect knowledge of English, who sang bass parts in a church up town, and enjoyed the reputation of having personated the chief Druid in Norma, at an early period of the New York opera. M. Bartin played one of numerous violins at the Academy of Music, and was believed to be kept down only by a powerful combination. Three months before this New Year's day, both of these gentlemen had volunteered ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... gods too are ever kind, Lenehan said. If I had poor luck with Bass's mare perhaps this draught of his may serve me more propensely. He was laying his hand upon a winejar: Malachi saw it and withheld his act, pointing to the stranger and to the scarlet label. Warily, Malachi whispered, preserve a druid silence. His soul is far away. It is as painful perhaps to be awakened from a vision as to be born. Any object, intensely regarded, may be a gate of access to the incorruptible eon of the gods. Do you not think it, Stephen? Theosophos ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... embosom'd in a happy valley, Crown'd by high woodlands, where the Druid oak Stood like Caractacus in act to rally His host, with broad arms 'gainst the thunderstroke; And from beneath his boughs were seen to sally The dappled foresters—as day awoke, The branching stag ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... catch up on the thought that was forward and re-create for it all the matter he had missed. But he could not often make these sleepy sallies; his master was too experienced a teacher to allow any such bright-faced, eager-eyed abstractions, and as the druid women had switched his legs around a tree, so Finegas chased his mind, demanding sense in his questions ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... in the west when they came out on to the open hillside, and went on up the path, through the heather, that led to the Druid stone beside the Tober an Sidhe, the fairies' well. The mist, golden and green, that comes with an autumn sunset, half hid, half transfigured the wide distances of the valley of the Broadwater; the darkness of the woods, blended from ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... way to Skaill lay along an almost straight road to the northward, by Hamla Voe and the western shores of the loch of Stenness, past the Druid standing stones. ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... banished on suspicion of faithlessness from the presence of his beloved Astree, seeks death beneath the stream; he is saved by the nymphs, escapes the amorous pursuit of Galatea, assumes a feminine garb, and, protected by the Druid Adamas, has the felicity of daily beholding his shepherdess. At length he declares himself, and is overwhelmed with reproaches; true lover that he is, when he offers his body to the devouring lions of the Fountain of Love, the beasts refuse their prey; the venerable Druid discreetly guides ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... the key to every mystic door Of Egypt's shrine; he knew the sacred rite Of druid, sage and seer; and loved the light Of Babylonian and Assyrian lore: He saw old Enoch when he walked with God; He watched Elijah smite the prophets dead; He knew the Israelites whom Moses led; And looked upon the bloom ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... been somewhat coldly received in the morning. Without explaining to herself the reason of the taste and accumulated fallacies of this picture, she sought, in turning over the pages, something which could fix her attention; she saw the word "Druid." ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... walking beside one of the elder mourners. The bearers went first with the bier; the track was uneven, and the procession was lost to sight now and then behind the slopes. It was forever a mystery; these people might have been a company of Druid worshipers, or of strange northern priests and their people, and the doctor checked his impatient horse as he watched the retreating figures at their simple ceremony. He could not help thinking what strange ways this child of the old farm had followed, and what a quiet ending it was to her wandering ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... the Druid had a little of the rust of antiquity about her. The Coquette has never got a chase under her lee, ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... vassalage; two classes alone possessing all rank and dignity, and for the most part all the riches of the country. These were the Druids and the warriors. The former composed an order consisting of three classes, Druids, Prophets, and Bards; all of whom were subject to the power of the Arch-Druid. To this order appertained the knowledge of all the sciences which were then understood. The Druids were the expounders of religious mysteries, the framers of laws, the pronouncers of judgments, and the arbitrators ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... therefore to remain was to avow myself a runaway and to live henceforth despicable in my own eyes. For over the unfathomable deep of oriental custom the torrent of our civilization flows unblending, as in the Druid's legend the twin streams of Dee flow clear through Bala lake, and never mingle with its waters. Not for our use is that intricate mind which in logic needs more than two premises to a conclusion, and ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... A little druid wight Of withered aspect; but his eye was keen With sweetness mixed,—a russet brown bedight. ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... placed under the orders of Admiral McBride, who gave him the command of a squadron, consisting of the Crescent and Druid, frigates, Liberty brig, and Lion cutter. The first service he had to perform was to carry a small convoy of transports with troops, &c. to Guernsey and Jersey, and furthermore to obtain pilots for the ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... hand, she trod with reverent awe down the dim aisles of the Past, and saw how the soul of man, bound in its prison-house, had ever struggled to voice itself in words. Roaming in the dense forest with the stern and bloody Druid,—bounding over the waves with the fierce pirates who supplanted them, and in whose blue eyes and beneath whose fair locks gleamed indeed the ferocity of the savage, but lurked also, though unseen and unknown, the tender chivalry of the English gentleman,—gazing admiringly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... grave a Druid lies. Where slowly winds the stealing wave; The year's best sweets shall duteous rise To deck its poet's sylvan grave. Ode on the Death ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... there about an hour, there came a horseman within the Druid's circle,—evidently a clerical personage by his white neckcloth, though his loose gray riding pantaloons were not quite in keeping. He looked at us rather earnestly, and at last addressed Mrs. ———, and announced himself as Mr. Hinchman,—a clergyman whom she had been trying to find in Salisbury, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the eighteenth century the Druid temple legend began to gain ground and many great men gave support to their interpretation; it is not yet an exploded idea. Stukely, the archaeological writer, gives a definite date—460 B.C.—as that of their erection, and Dr. Johnson, writing to Mrs. Thrale, says:—"It is, in my opinion, to ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... receiv'd, (If legends old may claim to be believ'd) 40 No sordid gifts from us, the golden ear, The burnish'd apple, ruddiest of the year, The fragrant crocus, and, to grace his fane, Fair damsels chosen from the Druid train- Druids, our native bards in ancient time, Who Gods and Heroes prais'd in hallow'd rhyme. Hence, often as the maids of Greece surround Apollo's shrine with hymns of festive sound, They name the virgins ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton
... Golden Chains the Kings of India led, Or rent the Turban from the Sultan's Head. One, in old Fables, and the Pagan Strain, With Nymphs and Tritons, wafts him o'er the Main; Another draws fierce Lucifer in Arms, And fills th' Infernal Region with Alarms; A Third awakes some Druid, to foretel Each future Triumph from his dreary Cell. Exploded Fancies! that in vain deceive, While the Mind nauseates what she can't believe. My [Muse th' expected [1]] Hero shall pursue From Clime to Clime, and keep him still in View; His shining March describe in faithful Lays, Content to ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... affliction To wrong the innocent, Let the fools be silent, As erst in Badon's fight,— With Arthur of liberal ones The head, with long red blades; Through feats of testy men, And a chief with his foes. Woe be to them, the fools, When revenge comes on them. I Taliesin, chief of bards, With a sapient druid's words, Will set kind Elphin free From haughty tyrant's bonds. To their fell and chilling cry, By the act of a surprising steed, From the far distant North, There soon shall be an end. Let neither grace nor health Be to Maelgwn ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 3 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... giants supposed to have once roved these gloomy wilds. Solitude held sway, but there was more than solitude in that lonely aspect: something prehistoric and unknown, unearthly, incomprehensible. Cairn Brea and the Hill of Fires brooded in the distance; the remains of a Druid's altar showed darkly on the summit of a nearer hill. No sound broke the stillness except the faint and distant ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... was, when the pale shadow spake; For there was striving, in its piteous tongue, To speak as when on earth it was awake, And Isabella on its music hung: Languor there was in it, and tremulous shake, As in a palsied Druid's harp unstrung; And through it moan'd a ghostly under-song, Like hoarse night-gusts ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... Joyce's Country, and the lonely loughs that lie, Wrapt in the cloak of silence, under the great gray sky; For the glens that have held in keeping for more than a thousand springs The ancient Druid wonders and the secrets ...
— Sprays of Shamrock • Clinton Scollard
... Latin among the Gauls, I believe we must look into the character of the natives and the state of their civilization, and not into the structure of their language. The brown-haired Celtic nations were certainly different from the race of the light-haired Germanic nations; and though the Druid caste recalls to our minds one of the institutions of the Ganges, this does not demonstrate that the idiom of the Celts belongs, like that of the nations of Odin, to a branch of the Indo-Pelasgic languages. From analogy of structure and of roots, the Latin ought to have penetrated ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... successive nights a Druid, a Forester, and a Loyal and Ancient Shepherd. All these three are Benefit Societies, and the mysteries of initiation into each are very similar. Colonel CHORKLE (who ought to have gone through the business long ago) was made a Druid with ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 25, 1891 • Various |
