ABSTRACT
If we except Pinkerton's work, we may say that Stukeley's theory held the field without a rival. Certainly no one seriously attempted to challenge the druids as builders of Stonehenge and other monuments, and they continued in splendid possession for wellnigh a hundred years after Stukeley's time. And it was natural enough that during this length of time popular fancy should adopt them as obviously the ideal priests for the tenantless altars and temples; thus, with leisure to work its way unopposed throughout all the land, and with the argument of scholars in its support, the familiar fiction was formidable indeed;
1 There is, however, a connection between wrens and druids, since the wren was a prophetic bird (see Cormac's Glossary, 60; on the word dryw see Rev. Celtique, XX, 340, and XLIII, 453). Rowland (Mona Antiqua, pp. 84, 89) translated the name Druid's Mam.ion, claiming it was the site of the Archdruid's dwelling. The word Drew does, of course, occur in the names of places where there are megaliths, as at Stanton Drew, but it should be no longer necessary to point out that it is merely a personal name, and not a variant of druid. There are three examples, and in each instance it can be shown that the land belonged to a family called Drew (see Rev. J. E. Jackson in Aubrey's Topographical Coil. for Wilts, Devizes, 1862, p. 103, for the references to all three sites; also Thumam, in Wilts. Arch. Mag., III (1856), 168; and Crawford, Long Barrows of the Cotswolds, 231). The only place I know where tradition may really keep alive the memory of a druidic place of worship is at Chartres, and there it has nothing to do with megalithic remains. But it is a fact that in the cathedral crypt one may visit a recess in the foundation of the masonry now called the Druids' Grotto, and, more important, a stela probably of Gaulish, i.e. druidic, date. Legend has it that in pagan times the druids worshipped here the Mother of God (/a Vierge devant enfanter or Virgo paritura), and up to the end of the 18th century a wooden image existed that was supposed to be the object of their adoration, though it was really of early medireval date. Legend also places the site of this druid worship at Fermincourt, near Dreux (Cochin, Mem. A cad. Celt., IV, 1809), and this must surely add considerable interest to the fact that the first printed
The word comes to light once more in 8th century Irish glosses and in the early medireval manuscripts of Ireland, where it had never ceased to circulate in the vulgar tongue, 1 while a supposed variant form, derwydd, is also found in a few early poems of the Welsh bards. In the I4th century, for example, the Irish scribe who translated the Historia Britonum of "Nennius" uses" druid" as the equivalent of magi, i.e. seers or magicians, in the original; and there is no doubt that at about that time, and before it, the word was well known to the Irish clerks.
