god of the Essuvii), and in some degree of Teutates, the cruelty of whose
rites is mentioned by Lucan. It had occurred to the present writer,
before finding the same view expressed by M. Salomon Reinach, that the
worship of Esus in Gaul was almost entirely local in character. With
regard to the rites of the Druids, Caesar tells us that it was customary
to make huge images of wickerwork, into which human beings, usually
criminals, were placed and burnt. The use of wickerwork, and the
suggestion that the rite was for purifying the land, indicates a
combination of the ideas of tree-worship with those of early agricultural
life. When the Emperor Claudius is said by Suetonius to have suppressed
Druidism, what is meant is, in all probability, that the more inhuman
rites were suppressed, leading, as the Scholiasts on Lucan seem to
suggest, to a substitution of animal victims for men. On the side of
civil administration and education, the functions of the Druids, as the
successors of the primitive medicine men and magicians, doubtless varied
greatly in different parts of Gaul and Britain according to the progress
that had been made in the differentiation of functions in social life.
The more we investigate the state of the Celtic world in ancient times,
the clearer it becomes, that in civilisation it was very far from being
homogeneous, and this heterogeneity of civilisation must have had its
influence on religion as well as on other social phenomena. The natural
conservatism of agricultural life, too, perpetuated many practices even
into comparatively late times, and of these we catch a glimpse in Gregory
of Tours, when he tells us that at Autun the goddess Berecyntia was
worshipped, her image being carried on a wagon for the protection of the
fields and the vines. It is not impossible that by Berecyntia Gregory
means the goddess Brigindu, whose name occurs on an inscription at Volnay
in the same district of Gaul. The belief in corn-spirits, and other
ideas connected with the central thought of the farmer's life, show, by
their persistence in Celtic as well as other folklore, how deeply they