Читать книгу Myths of the Rhine - M. Xavier - Страница 39

At one time venomous reptiles had become so numerous in the regions of the Rhine, that they caused continually serious accidents among the people, the majority of whom lived all day long in the open air, and did not always sleep under shelter. During their winter sleep, these reptiles rolled themselves up into vast balls, and became apparently glued to each other by a kind of viscous ooze. In this state they were called by the Celts Serpents Eggs, or rather Serpents’ Knots, while the Romans called them anguimim.

These strange balls were used medicinally by the Druids like the mistletoe; they employed them even in their religious ceremonies, and soon they became so rare, that only the wealthiest people could procure them, by paying their weight in gold. If the Druids had really at first been misled so as to adopt superstitious customs, which they repented of in their hearts, they soon found means to make these same superstitious rites beneficial to the people.

Unfortunately serpents’ knots, oaks, and their parasites, did not long satisfy a people ever desirous of new things. It is a well-known fact that innovations, however small may have been their first beginning, are sure to go on enlarging and increasing from day to day.

The old party of Tree worshippers, still numerous and very active as all old parties are, complained of the suppression of their companion-trees, the ancient family oracles, for the purpose of favoring one single oak tree—a tree which yet was not able, in spite of all the privileges it enjoyed, to put them into communication with Estes, the god of heaven.

This complaint was certainly not unfounded;—it had to be answered.

The Druids consisted of three classes:—

The Druids proper (Eubages, they were called in Gaul) were philosophers as well as scholars, perhaps even magicians, for magic was at that time nothing more than the outward form of science. They were charged with the maintenance of the principles of morality, and had to study the secrets of nature. The Prophets, on the other hand, knew how to interpret in the slightest breath of wind, the language of the holy oak, which spoke to them in the rustling of its leaves, in the soughing of the branches, in the low cracking heard within the trunk, and even in the earlier or later appearance of the foliage. There were, finally, the Bards, poets bound to the altar.

While the bards were singing around the oak, the prophets caused it to render its oracles. These oracles soon increased largely not only in Europe, but also in Asia Minor, where a Celtic colony, according to Herodotus, established in the land they had conquered the oracle of Dodona. Early Greece worshipped an oak tree, which Strabo, however, assures us was a beech. There is no disputing about trees any more than about colors; but Homer calls it an oak, and an oak it must remain for us.