Free A Brief History of the Celts by Peter Berresford Ellis Page A

and misconceptions, have become the basis for a veritable ‘Druid industry’ which was created from the seventeenth century and has lasted into modern
times.
    We saw in Chapter 3 that Celtic society was based on a caste system and that the second level was the intellectual class. This class encompassed all the professional occupations – judges,
doctors, historians and genealogists, philosophers, story-tellers, astronomers and astrologers, as well as the priestly orders who mediated with the deities. After them, in rank, came the
warrior-nobles; the producers; the menials; and lastly those who had no position in society, hostages, prisoners and those who had lost their ‘civil rights’ through crime.
    As with most things Celtic, it is the Greek writers who first record the name Druidae and then not until the second century BC . Diogenes Laertius, a Greek living in the
third century AD , quoted the works of more ancient writers, suchas Soton of Alexandria (
fl. c.
200–170 BC ),
which discussed the Druids. The name is clearly one of Celtic origin although linguists still battle over its exact meaning. There is popular support for the claims of Strabo and Pliny the Elder
that the word was cognate with the Greek word
drus
, an oak. The Indo-European root is also found in Irish and Welsh as
dair
and
dar
. Hence it is thought the word might be
dru-uid
, oak knowledge. This last
uid/wid/vid
root is the same as the Sanskrit
vid
, to know or to see, and is seen in the Hindu Vedas, which means
‘knowledge’, the most ancient religious texts surviving in an Indo-European language. Therefore the idea is that Druid means ‘those whose knowledge is great’.
    The classical texts referred to Druids only in Gaul and Britain. Druids are not mentioned as existing among the Cisalpine Celts, the Iberian Celts, the eastern Celts or the Galatian Celts.
Neither are the Druids mentioned in connection with Ireland, although, of course, we know that they existed there from subsequent native literature.
    Does this mean that the Druids were confined to the Gaulish and British Celts? Some scholars tend to be very literal, and where there is a source, even though written by a hostile witness, it is
often accepted without question on the basis of its antiquity.
    The answer to the question, of course, depends on what your interpretation of the function of a Druid is. If one accepts that the Druids were an intellectual caste or class, as Caesar lets slip
and Dion Chrysostom later spells out, comparing them rightly with the Brahmins of Hindu society, then we may argue that Druids or their class equivalent appeared throughout Celtic society. That the
Druids encompassed several intellectual fields may certainly be accepted from the evidence.
    We also find that the Celts did have specific names for their priests, such as
gutuatri
meaning ‘speakers (to the gods)’, aGaulish cognate to the
Irish
guth
, voice. The
gutuatri
are known from inscriptions and a reference to a
gutuatros
put to death by Caesar, mentioned in Aulus Hirtius’ addition to the
Gallic War.
Hirtius was one of Caesar’s lieutenants in Gaul.
    Other words are also used to describe the priestly functions, such as
antistites
,
sacerdotes
and
semnotheoi.
The term
semnotheoi
is preserved by Laertius from
Soton and is used as a synonym for a Druid, but perhaps only describing a particular Druidic priestly function.
    Several Greek and Latin writers speak of Dryades or Druidesses and the existence of such female Druids is certainly confirmed by native Celtic sources, although the classical sources seem to
place more emphasis on male Druids.
    The earliest sources on the Druids, written by Greeks, are known only in quotation from the later Alexandrian school; significantly, these sources are respectful of the Druids and, indeed, the
Celts in general. We will deal with these shortly but first we must examine those sources by which the Druids have, sadly, become more popularly