civilisation then co-existing in Gaul and Britain, it is not improbable
that the development of the non-military professional class varied very
considerably in different districts, and that all the aspects of Druidism
which the ancient writers specify found their appropriate places in the
social system of the Celts. In Gaul and Britain, as elsewhere, the
office of the primitive tribal medicine-man was capable of indefinite
development, and all the forms of its evolution could not have proceeded
_pari passu_ where the sociological conditions found such scope for
variation. It may well be that the oak and mistletoe ceremonies, for
example, lingered in remote agricultural districts long after they had
ceased to interest men along the main routes of Celtic civilisation. The
bucolic mind does not readily abandon the practices of millennia.

In addition to the term Druid, we find in Aulus Hirtius' continuation of
Caesar's _Gallic War_ (Bk. viii., c. xxxviii., 2), as well as on two
inscriptions, one at Le-Puy-en-Velay (Dep. Haute-Loire), and the other at
Macon (Dep. Saone-et-Loire), another priestly title, 'gutuater.' At
Macon the office is that of a 'gutuater Martis,' but of its special
features nothing is known.




CHAPTER VII--THE CELTIC OTHER-WORLD


In the preceding chapter we have seen that the belief was widely
prevalent among Greek and Roman writers that the Druids taught the
immortality of the soul. Some of these writers, too, point out the
undoubted fact, attested by Archaeology, that objects which would be