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Druid   Listen
noun
Druid  n.  
1.
One of an order of priests which in ancient times existed among certain branches of the Celtic race, especially among the Gauls and Britons. Note: The Druids superintended the affairs of religion and morality, and exercised judicial functions. They practiced divination and magic, and sacrificed human victims as a part of their worship. They consisted of three classes; the bards, the vates or prophets, and the Druids proper, or priests. Their most sacred rites were performed in the depths of oak forests or of caves.
2.
A member of a social and benevolent order, founded in London in 1781, and professedly based on the traditions of the ancient Druids. Lodges or groves of the society are established in other countries.
Druid stones, a name given, in the south of England, to weatherworn, rough pillars of gray sandstone scattered over the chalk downs, but in other countries generally in the form of circles, or in detached pillars.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Druid" Quotes from Famous Books



... dairymaid in straw hat and flowered skirt, and it was announced that the game of the afternoon should be that called "Descampativos." The guests trooped like children from the Little Trianon to a sequestered spot where lofty woods combined to cast a Druid shade upon the lawn. Here Vaudreuil was ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall

... beside one of the elder mourners. The bearers went first with the bier; the track was uneven, and the procession was lost to sight now and then behind the slopes. It was forever a mystery; these people might have been a company of Druid worshipers, or of strange northern priests and their people, and the doctor checked his impatient horse as he watched the retreating figures at their simple ceremony. He could not help thinking what strange ways this child of the old farm had followed, and ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... They were almost at Druid Hill Park before Mamise realized that she was wasting her time and her trip for nothing. She ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... look into the character of the natives and the state of their civilization, and not into the structure of their language. The brown-haired Celtic nations were certainly different from the race of the light-haired Germanic nations; and though the Druid caste recalls to our minds one of the institutions of the Ganges, this does not demonstrate that the idiom of the Celts belongs, like that of the nations of Odin, to a branch of the Indo-Pelasgic languages. ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... antiquity. The shepherd Celadon, banished on suspicion of faithlessness from the presence of his beloved Astree, seeks death beneath the stream; he is saved by the nymphs, escapes the amorous pursuit of Galatea, assumes a feminine garb, and, protected by the Druid Adamas, has the felicity of daily beholding his shepherdess. At length he declares himself, and is overwhelmed with reproaches; true lover that he is, when he offers his body to the devouring lions ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... famous things in the book, and one of the most important to its conduct, is the "Fountain of the Truth of Love," a few words on which will illustrate the general handling very fairly. This Fountain (presided over by a Druid, a very important personage otherwise, who is a sort of high priest thereof) has nothing in common with the more usual waters which are philtres or anti-philtres, etc. Its function is to be gazed in rather than to be drunk, and if you look into it, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... out of which they grew like mushrooms has nothing in any way peculiar about it. It is very thickly grown, and rises to a clearer part in the centre, a sort of mound where there is a circle of large boulders—old Druid stones, I'm told. At another place there's a small pond. There's nothing distinctive about it that I could mention—just an ordinary pine-wood, a very ordinary pine-wood—only the trees are a bit twisted in the trunks, some of 'em, and ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... a coradge, or priest, went through a strange ceremony of singing, and touching his eyebrows, nose, and breast, crossing himself, and pointing to the sky like an old Druid." ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... sounding barbican. And soon the Teviot side he won. Eastward the wooded path he rode. Green hazels o'er his basnet nod; He passed the Peel of Goldieland, And crossed old Borthwick's roaring strand; Dimly he view'd the Moat-hill's mound. Where Druid shades still flitted round; In Hawick twinkled many a light; Behind him soon they set in night; And soon he spurr'd his courser keen Beneath ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... engine of Friendship Fire Company, said to have been presented by George Washington. This old rotary type pumper is preserved in the Maryland Building at Druid Hill ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore

... a height is this foolish custom grown, that even the Christmas Pie, which in its very nature is a kind of consecrated cake and a badge of distinction, is often forbidden to the Druid ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe

... represented upon it in basso-relievo. We have some vestiges in England of the hippodromus, in which the ancient inhabitants of this country performed their races. The most remarkable is that near Stonehenge, which is a long tract of ground, about three hundred and fifty feet, or two hundred Druid cubits wide, and more than a mile and three quarters, or six thousand Druid cubits in length, enclosed quite round with a bank of earth, extending directly east and west. The goal and career are at the east end. The goal is a high bank of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various

... brazen door stands wide, and Balor comes Borne in his heavy car, and demons have lifted The age-weary eyelids from the eyes that of old Turned gods to stone; Barach, the traitor, comes And the lascivious race, Cailitin, That cast a druid weakness and decay Over Sualtem's and old Dectera's child; And that great king Hell first took hold upon When he killed Naisi and broke Deirdre's heart, And all their heads are twisted to one side, For when ...
— The Countess Cathleen • William Butler Yeats

... to the Chalk Downs of Wiltshire, you see these temples in their true grandeur. You have all heard of Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain. Some of you may have heard of the great Druid temple at Abury in Wilts, which, were it not all but destroyed, would be even grander than Stonehenge. These are ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley

... dwarf oak-trees made druid shadows all along the leafy galleries that overhung the pools. The pools themselves shone with a startling silver—so hushed, so dreamy was all that surrounded them that there seemed something of an unnatural wakefulness, a daylight observation, in their brilliant surfaces,—and ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne

... states of mind, the very sight of a clergyman in his sombre professional garb is sufficient to awaken all the wonderful within us. Imagination goes wandering back to the subtle priesthood of mysterious Egypt. We think of Jannes and Jambres; of the Persian magi; dim oak groves, with Druid altars, and priests, and victims, rise before us. For what is the priest even of our New England but a living testimony to the truth of the supernatural and the reality of the unseen,—a man of mystery, walking in the shadow of the ideal world,—by profession an expounder of spiritual ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... fables I endite, I, who in humble verse presume to write, May surely use this privilege of old, And, to my fancy, appellations mould. If I, instead of Anne, should Sylvia say, And Master Thomas (when the case I weigh) Should change to Adamas, the druid sage, Must I a fine or punishment engage? No, surely not:—at present I shall choose Anne and the Parson for my tale ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine

... not had a sleepless time that hot June night it probably would never have happened. As it was, after tossing and pitching on an uncomfortably warm mattress for several hours, he had dressed himself and left his Bolton-avenue home for a stroll in Druid Hill Park just as the dawn made itself evident. That was the ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump

... the queen as, soon after her shameful treatment by the Romans, seeking counsel from one of the native priests. The Druid prophesies the destruction of Rome and the ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin

... indifference to a function familiar from many repetitions. Little O'Grady wore his plaster-flecked blue blouse over his shabby brown suit and hardily announced himself as Phidias. Medora walked with a languid grace as a Druid priestess, and Miss Wilbur, the miniaturist, showed forth as Madame Le Brun, without whose presence no fancy-dress ball could ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller

... the remains of a British camp, for near these premises are Drude-heath (Druid's-heath) and Drude-fields, which we may reasonably suppose was the residence of a British priest: the military would naturally shelter themselves under the wing of the church, and the priest with ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton

... exuberant fancifulness; "I have used his materials," says Gibbon, "and rejected most of his fanciful conjectures"; his credulous works on the supposed Druidical remains at Stonehenge and elsewhere gained him the title of the "Arch-Druid" (1687-1765). ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... there about an hour, there came a horseman within the Druid's circle,—evidently a clerical personage by his white neckcloth, though his loose gray riding pantaloons were not quite in keeping. He looked at us rather earnestly, and at last addressed Mrs. ———, and announced himself as Mr. ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... that kind to venture at it. I can only say the fact, that I have read it with attention and interest. Being, as you know, not quite a Churchman, I felt a jealousy at the Church taking to herself the whole deserts of Christianity, Catholic and Protestant, from Druid extirpation downwards. I call all good Christians the Church, Capillarians and all. But I am in too light a humour to touch these matters. May all our churches flourish! Two things staggered me in the poem (and one of them staggered ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... Dudley Digges, Mr. P.J. Kelly, with Miss Walker and the brothers Fay,—Mr. W.G. Fay and Mr. Frank J. Fay,—were then the leading actors of the company. The playwrights, too, took part in their own or their fellows' plays in the lesser roles, Mr. Russell sometimes playing the druid in his "Deirdre" and Mr. Colum carrying a spear or wearing a pea-jacket as need was. One circumstance or another, politics or need, gradually lost the company every one of these actors that took part ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt

... in his madness, could not understand the reason of her desperate reluctance, and asked an old Druid-priest to set the conscience of the Princess at rest. Now this Druid, less religious than ambitious, sacrificed the cause of innocence and virtue to the favour of so great a monarch, and instead of trying to restore the King to his right ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault

... ostrich plume, the emblem of truth, is indicative of Light, Intelligence, or the life of the soul. In a discourse delivered by Dr. Stukeley in 1760, attention was directed to the grove of Abraham as "that famous oak grove of Beersheba, planted by the illustrious prophet and first Druid—Abraham; and from whom our celebrated British Druids came, who were of the same patriarchal reformed religion, and brought the use ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble

... the weird Druid held his mistletoe; There, for the scorched son of the sand, coiled bright, The torrid snake was hissing sharp and low; And there the Western ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... found him out. I am not sure but I would rather have remembered him as one of the mystical fancies of the early dawn, some pure white dream materialized out of the tenuous mists by the incantations of the Druid pines. Neighborly and simple as are all the pasture people when we sit quiet long enough to see them and gain their confidence by making them feel that we are an integral portion of the place, as they are, they all have something of the mystical about them. There are four ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... mountains hear the warning and awaken, In hushed processional issuing from the night, Like Druid priests with mystic white robes shaken, Communing in some immemorial rite: Round their old brows burns what pale augury, What benison, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various

... burst into laughter at this, foolish, light-hearted mirth which drenched the air all about her with the perfume of young gaiety. "Is it Miss Druid, or Mrs. Druid?" was ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... "Druid" is derived from the Celtic word "druidh," meaning "sage," connected with the Greek word for ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley

... abstraction whence men really appear as specks and life as a play; therefore to remain was to avow myself a runaway and to live henceforth despicable in my own eyes. For over the unfathomable deep of oriental custom the torrent of our civilization flows unblending, as in the Druid's legend the twin streams of Dee flow clear through Bala lake, and never mingle with its waters. Not for our use is that intricate mind which in logic needs more than two premises to a conclusion, and in art is intolerant of all void space, ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith

... eyes the stag cold and stiff; The deer-hound, majestic, looks lofty around, While he lists with delight to the harp's distant sound; Is it swept by the gale, as it slow wafts along The heart-soothing tones of an olden times' song? Or is it some Druid who touches, unseen, "The Harp of the North," newly ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... he whispered; And they arising —Of day's forget-me-nots The duskier sisters— Descended, relinquished The orchard, the trout-pool, The Druid circles, Sheepfolds of Dartmoor, Granite and sandstone, Torridge and Tamar; By Roughtor, by Dozmare, Down the vale of the Fowey Moving in silence. Brushing the nightshade By bridges ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... the first man who believed that day in Tara. Patrick blessed him and his seed. Patrick was then called to the king's bed, that he might eat food, and to prove him in prophecy (i.e., in Venturis rebus). Patrick did not refuse this, because he knew what would come of it. The druid Luchat Mael went to drink with him, for he wished to revenge on Patrick what he had done to his (the druid's) companion the day before. The druid Luchat Mael put a drop of poison into the goblet which was beside Patrick, that he might see ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various

... island from the character of barbarians given them by Caesar, he has made some errors, which, with your permission, I will attempt to rectify. First, I beg leave to dissent from the derivation of the word Druid, "Druidh," a wise man, as such a word is not to be found in the Welsh language. In one of your early volumes[5] there is a letter from a Correspondent, deriving the word (in the above language it is written Derwydd) from Dar and Gwydd, signifying chief in the presence, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various

... mountain sky, Leaving Dian's choir on high, Down her cataracts laughing loud, Ockment leapt from crag and cloud, Leading many a nymph, who dwells Where wild deer drink in ferny dells; While the Oreads as they past Peep'd from Druid Tors aghast. By alder copses sliding slow, Knee-deep in flowers came gentler Yeo And paused awhile her locks to twine With musky hops and white woodbine, Then joined the silver-footed band, Which circled down my golden sand, By dappled park, and harbor shady, Haunt of love-lorn knight ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... sound it was, when the pale shadow spake; For there was striving, in its piteous tongue, To speak as when on earth it was awake, And Isabella on its music hung: Languor there was in it, and tremulous shake, As in a palsied Druid's harp unstrung; And through it moan'd a ghostly under-song, Like ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats

... a happy valley, Crowned by high woodlands, where the Druid oak[669] Stood like Caractacus, in act to rally His host, with broad arms 'gainst the thunder-stroke; And from beneath his boughs were seen to sally The dappled foresters; as Day awoke, The branching stag ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... morning. Without explaining to herself the reason of the taste and accumulated fallacies of this picture, she sought, in turning over the pages, something which could fix her attention; she saw the word "Druid." ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny

... show that the legend of Merlin is a thing of complex growth, composed of traditions of independent and widely differing origin, most of which were told about Celtic bards and soothsayers. Merlin is, in fact, the typical Druid or wise man of Celtic tradition, and there is not the slightest reason for believing that he was ever paid divine honours. As a soothsayer of legend, he would assuredly belong to the pagan period, however much he is indebted to Geoffrey of Monmouth for his late popularity ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... the spreading oak Sat the Druid, hoary chief, Every burning word he spoke Full of ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various

... ladies; at their feet I sat; and smelt the heathy smell, Pluck'd harebells, turn'd the telescope To the country round. My life went well, For once, without the wheels of hope; And I despised the Druid rocks That scowl'd their chill gloom from above, Like churls whose stolid wisdom mocks The lightness of immortal love. And, as we talk'd, my spirit quaff'd The sparkling winds; the candid skies At our untruthful strangeness laugh'd; I kiss'd ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore

... fire on the Nine-stane Rig, in the middle of the old Druid stones, and there they placed the great brass cauldron. They heated it red hot, and some of them hasted to Hermitage Castle, and stripped a sheet of lead from the roof, and they wrapped the wicked lord in it, and plunged him in, and ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson

... treeless plain, The waste that careless Nature owns; Lone tenants of her bleak domain, Loomed huge and gray the Druid stones. ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... The Druid priests their rites forbore, And listen'd to the words that fell From Patrick's pious lips, as o'er The land he ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young

... the skies; Against our fallen and traitor lives The great winds utter prophecies: 15 With our faint hearts the mountain strives; Its arms outstretched, the druid wood Waits with its benedicite; And to our age's drowsy blood Still ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell

... with their songs, owing to the language, by no means an easy one, in which they were composed. Honour to them all! everlasting glory to the three greatest—Taliesin, Ab Gwilym and Gronwy Owen: the first a professed Christian, but in reality a Druid, whose poems fling great light on the doctrines of the primitive priesthood of Europe, which correspond remarkably with the philosophy of the Hindus, before the time of Brahma: the second the grand poet of Nature, the contemporary of Chaucer, but worth half a dozen of the ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... gray friar in yonder green bush, Clothed in sackcloth—a little gray friar, Like the druid of old in his temple—but hush! He's at vespers; ...
— Humour of the North • Lawrence J. Burpee

... was a gentleman with an Italian name and a perfect knowledge of English, who sang bass parts in a church up town, and enjoyed the reputation of having personated the chief Druid in Norma, at an early period of the New York opera. M. Bartin played one of numerous violins at the Academy of Music, and was believed to be kept down only by a powerful combination. Three months before this New Year's day, both of these gentlemen had volunteered their services, in company with ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... the tree sacred. These Druids have left their traces in some parts of England and France in rows of huge stones set upright; and wherever an immense stone was found lying on two others, in the shape of a table, there had been a Druid altar, where the priest offered sacrifices, often of human beings. So horrible may be a so-called religion that men themselves devise, and that has not come from the ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church

... return for this stop at Morains, which Walter considered a particular concession to the women of the party, he suggested that we take time to stop at Villandry to see a Druid stone which M. La Tour has been telling him about. You may remember that he and Archie are somewhat insane upon the subject of Druidical remains, but I notice that Archie is not as keenly interested in the Druids, this morning, as usual. He and Lydia ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton

... a druid of a brook chanting paganly to trees and moss. Ordinarily Kenny would have found its music and its shadows infinitely poetic. Now, wretchedly out of sorts, he plunged his face and hands into a shady pool with a sigh of vast materialistic content, longed to linger and cursed the ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple

... there, half sitting, half standing, they remained side by side, contemplating beneath the low clouds the 'old town' of the dead, which sloped away at their feet with its crowding throng of pinnacles and grey figures and humbler stones, rising like Druid architecture from the bright green. No birds were audible, no sound of tools, nothing but the water running away on all sides, and from the canvas cover of a half-finished monument the monotonous voices of two artisans discussing their worries. The rain without made it all the warmer within, and ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... could only be accounted for by the mighty force of agitated waters dashing against the rocks, through long ages”. (Printed by W. and B. Brookes, Lincoln, 1843, p. 24, &c.) The theory would seem to be now generally accepted. Thus: “that ancient river, the river” Witham, honoured, we believe, by the Druid as his sacred stream, {102} consecrated in a later age to the Christian, by the number of religious houses erected on its shores, through a yet earlier stage of its existence performed the laborious task of carving out the vale of Grantham, and so adding to the varied beauty ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter

... induced us to admit, for a long time, that it was perfectly genuine, and justly ascribed to the amiable Druid. With respect to the difficulty in regard to the preservation of so long a work for many centuries by the mere force of memory, the translator, together with the rest of the world, had already got over that objection in the case of the celebrated Poems of Ossian. And if he ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin

... thou and view it, All desolately sunk, The circle of the Druid, The cloister of the monk; The abbey boled and squalid, With its bush-maned, staggering wall; Ask by whom these were unhallow'd— Change, change hath ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... contrived, by way of a joke, to fasten the authorship of the piece upon Erskine. This poem is as pure fantasy as Tennyson's "Day Dream," and tells the story of a knight who, in obedience to a vision and the instructions of an ancient sage "sprung from Druid sires," enters an enchanted castle and frees the Princess Gyneth, a natural daughter of King Arthur, from the spell that has bound her for five hundred years. But true to his instinct, the poet lays his scene not in vacuo, but near his own ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... resembled the forming and reforming, the blending and melting asunder of a pile of sunset clouds. Like these, when the sun has set, it is subsiding into a fixed repose, a stern and colourless uniformity. Temple, tower, and dwelling-house assume the form of one solitary granite pile, a Druid monument. This monument, as Mr. Browning describes it,[54] consists really of two, so standing or lying as to form part of each other. The one cross-shaped is supposed to have been sepulchral, or in some other way sacred to death. ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... was full of life. They sped over the smooth, hedge-bordered roads, winding about fields and gardens until they arrived at Calderstone Park. Here the captain pointed out the Calder Stones, ruins of an ancient Druid place of worship or sacrifice. Then they drove leisurely through Sefton Park, thence ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson

... chief Druid proposed a trial by ordeal. The King said, 'Put your books into the water.' 'I am ready for that,' said Patrick. But the Druid said, 'A god of water this man adores, and I will not take part in the ordeal.' The King said, 'Put your books into the fire.' 'I am ready ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton

... wandered in Derrinrush, I came suddenly upon some blood-red beech-trees, and the hollow was full of blood-red leaves. You have been to Derrinrush: you know how mystic and melancholy the wood is, full of hazels and Druid stones. After wandering a long while I turned into a path. It led me to a rough western shore, and in front of me stood a great Scotch fir. The trunk has divided, and the two crowns showed against the leaden sky. It has two ...
— The Lake • George Moore

... of 45 degrees; the others are lying flat upon the ground. One of them, a round, flat boulder, bears upon its surface cup-marks arranged in irregular concentric circles. Was this the sacrificial stone of an ancient Druid; or are these boulders relics of the glacial period, and were the marks alluded to caused by the action of the weather? When we come to deal with Roman remains we stand upon firmer ground. On the same plain of Dalginross, and a short distance to the north of these boulders ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various

... the west when they came out on to the open hillside, and went on up the path, through the heather, that led to the Druid stone beside the Tober an Sidhe, the fairies' well. The mist, golden and green, that comes with an autumn sunset, half hid, half transfigured the wide distances of the valley of the Broadwater; the darkness of the woods, blended from this aspect into one, of Mount Music ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... of Nature-communion which we call physical science, there is the other, artistic phase. Day by day we find that the mystic influence of Nature on our human personality grows more intense and individual. Who can walk alone in your beautiful Druid Hill Park, among those dear and companionable oaks, without a certain sense of being in the midst of a sweet and noble company of friends? Who has not shivered, wandering among these trees, with a certain sense that the awful mysteries which the mother earth has brought with her out of ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims

... to join their Ashanti friends in the woods. These were now approaching the town; and Colonel Festing landed with the marines and marine artillerymen, a party of bluejackets belonging to the Baracouta, Druid, Seagull, and Argus, under Captain Freemantle, some men of the 2nd West India Regiment, and a body of Houssas. The Ashantis, some 2000 in number, marched boldly along, and attempted to outflank the position ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston

... Ivros Domnann[12] and at Inis Glora,[13] on the Western Sea. Until a prince from the north shall marry a princess from the south; until the Tailleken (St. Patrick) shall come to Erin, and until ye shall hear the sound of the Christian bell, neither my power nor thy power, nor the power of any Druid's runes can set ye free until that weird ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang

... city, nor would condescend 'Mid contradictions her delights to lend. Should e'er the fine-eyed maid to me be kind, Ah! surely it must be whene'er I find Some flowery spot, sequester'd, wild, romantic, That often must have seen a poet frantic; Where oaks, that erst the Druid knew, are growing, And flowers, the glory of one day, are blowing; Where the dark-leav'd laburnum's drooping clusters Reflect athwart the stream their yellow lustres, And intertwined the cassia's arms unite, With its own drooping buds, but very white. Where on one side are covert branches ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats

... Druid, the writer in the Encyclopedia Metropolitana says, "The name Druid is derived from deru, an oak." The Druids were an order of priests; they were divided into three classes, resembling the Persian magi. ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier

... holocaust of squires reduced to make an incense for me, though you have not performed Druid rites and packed them in gigantic osier ribs. Be philosophical, but accept your personal dues. Grant us ours too. I have a serious intention to preserve this young duchess, and I expect my task to be severe. I carry the banner aforesaid; verily and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... morning! Its rites foredone, its guardians dead, Its priestesses, bereft of dread, Waking the veriest urchin's scorning! Gone like the Indian wizard's yell And fire-dance round the magic rock, Forgotten like the Druid's spell At moonrise by his holy oak! No more along the shadowy glen Glide the dim ghosts of murdered men; No more the unquiet churchyard dead Glimpse upward from their turfy bed, Startling the traveller, late and lone; As, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... feature of the man. I said to myself right away, "This man is a mystic." Though they burned brightly in their sockets, they had a trick of turning abruptly dim; a sort of film or veil, closed over them. "Druid or old Celt," I murmured. "Give him a bit of mistletoe and he'd call his gods right down into my demi-tasse and scare the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... of man, if stone or rock Seem not his handy-work to mock By something cognizably shaped; Mockery—or model roughly hewn, And left as if by earthquake strewn, Or from the Flood escaped: Altars for Druid service fit; (But where no fire was ever lit, Unless the glow-worm to the skies Thence offer nightly sacrifice;) Wrinkled Egyptian monument; Green moss-grown tower; or hoary tent; Tents of a camp that never shall ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... might safely be pronounced a madman who preferred an avenue of trees to a street. Why, trees have no chimneys; and, were you to kindle a fire in the hollow of an oak, you would soon be as dead as a Druid. It won't do to talk to us of sap, and the circulation of sap. A grove in winter, bole and branch—leaves it has none—is as dry as a volume of sermons. But a street, or a square, is full of "vital sparks of heavenly flame" as a volume of poetry, and the ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... that one day King Conor and his nobles feasted at the house of Felim, his chief story-teller. And while they feasted a daughter was born to Felim the story-teller. Then Cathbad the Druid, who was also at the feast, became exceeding sad. He foretold that great sorrow and evil should come upon the land because of this child, and so he called her Deirdre, which ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... are not seen." These gods are indeed more wise and beautiful than men; but men, when they are great men, are stronger than they are, for men are, as it were, the foaming tide-line of their sea. One remembers the Druid who answered, when some one asked him who made the world, "The Druids made it." All was indeed but one life flowing everywhere, and taking one quality here, another there. It sometimes seems to one as if there is a kind of day and night of religion, and that a period ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory

... distance from the sepulchre; and, overgrown as the fragments were with grass and lichens, showed plainly that the lid had been removed to its present situation many years before. A stunted and doddered oak still spread its branches over the open and rude mausoleum, as if the Druid's badge and emblem, shattered and storm-broken, was still bending to offer its protection to the last ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... blackened against the dim glowing of the cones—sentient monoliths; a Druid curve; an arc of a metal Stonehenge. And as at dusk and dawn the great menhirs of Stonehenge fill with a mysterious, granitic life, seem to be praying priests of stone, so ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt

... Warton's "Pleasures of Melancholy," Contemplation is fabled to have been discovered, when a babe, by a Druid ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... easily, here in the country, where the sage bard, the great Merlin, or Myrdhyn, lived, induce the belief that this mysterious stone represents the Druid lover of the fatal Viviana;—may this not be the very stone brought from Brociliande, within, or under, which he is in durance; or rather is not this himself transformed to stone? Thus runs ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... hankerin' for bawkins,[1] Hamish. I whiles think ye will be some old Druid priest come back that's forgotten the word o' power, but kens dimly in his mind that the white glistening berries o' the oak and the old standing stanes are freens. Ye're no feart o' bawkins, and ye're never ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars

... gods too are ever kind, Lenehan said. If I had poor luck with Bass's mare perhaps this draught of his may serve me more propensely. He was laying his hand upon a winejar: Malachi saw it and withheld his act, pointing to the stranger and to the scarlet label. Warily, Malachi whispered, preserve a druid silence. His soul is far away. It is as painful perhaps to be awakened from a vision as to be born. Any object, intensely regarded, may be a gate of access to the incorruptible eon of the gods. Do ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... have been the labour of man's hands to lift the massive table of rock upon the supporting shafts—relics of an age when they were the only architecture, the only national monuments; when savage ancestors in lion skins, with stone weapons, led by white-robed Druid priests, came solemnly here and left the mistletoe wreath upon these Houses of Death for ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... be a dramatist and could not." Indeed, it is a pity he did not do this. He was capable of smiling benignly at himself, and sketching himself as if he were another man; a thing of which Tennyson, who took himself with awful seriousness, and walked with himself as a Druid might have walked in the sacred grove of ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... pagan days, the days of the Druid and the oak-grove, your excellency. But now we are held together by ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... late, and the post had not arrived before they had been obliged to start that morning. He tore open a large blue official envelope, "On Her Majesty's Service," and read his appointment to H.M.S. "Druid," one of the ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston

... younker promises to be the most formidable. I can easily throw him now, but what will he be a few years hence?" The youth greeted him joyously, and they began their usual match. The sullen serfs in the fields stopped to watch them, and an aged Druid priest, whom Arthur had brought with him, to give the old man air and exercise in the boat, opened his weak ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... he opened the window, the whole country commenced to laugh under its white mantle of snow—barren heath, ploughed land, Druid stones, even to the enormous oaks of the forest, with their glistening summits, that shook ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various

... the holy bracelets, the metal girdle, the sacrificial axe, the knife of brass; and, in the midst, was a glass urn, containing a pinch or two of grey powder—human dust! proud dust—sad and last remnant of the Druid Chindonax. ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... the writer in the Encyclopedia Metropolitana says, "The name Druid is derived from deru, an oak." The Druids were an order of priests; they were divided into three classes, resembling the Persian magi. The first class were the Druids proper; they were the highest nobility, to whom was entrusted all religious rites and ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier

... beautiful as long as the leaves of the tree survive in sufficient masses to produce the rich contrast of colour; but when the moss has literally conquered the whole tree, and after stripping its huge limbs bare, clothed them with its own wan masses, they always looked to me like so many gigantic Druid ghosts, with flowing robes and beards, and locks all of one ghastly grey, and I would not have broken a twig off them for the world, lest a sad voice, like that which reproached Dante, should have moaned ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble

... the Dublin, the Elizabeth, the York, and the Dover. To these must be added the Druid frigate, the sloop of war, and the Gnat. My division ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper

... theology. The entire extirpation, thus brought about, of any conceivable system of religion, prepared the way for a true revelation. Within that little river territory, amid those obscure morasses of the Rhine and Scheld, three great forms of religion—the sanguinary superstition of the Druid, the sensuous polytheism of the Roman, the elevated but dimly groping creed of the German, stood for centuries, face to face, until, having mutually debased and destroyed each other, they all faded away in the pure light ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... everywhere of things remote and strange, it may have been easier to attempt to realise the ancient religion there than in a busier or more prosaic place. Yet at every point I have felt how much would have been gained could an old Celt or Druid have revisited his former haunts, and permitted me to question him on a hundred matters which must remain obscure. But this, alas, ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch

... "inaccessible light" in which God—our God—is shrouded, and to behold one another's faces in the light that streams from the Lamb? And so, very tempting as my fire is—and I am as much a fire-worshipper as an Irish Druid or a Peruvian Inca—I always like to go out as the days are lengthening and the sun is stretching out his compasses to measure in ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan

... becoming acquainted with all the existing traditions and records regarding St. Columba. About the year 563 of the Christian era, Columba visited Brude, King of the Picts, in his royal fort on the Ness, and found the Pictish sovereign attended by a court or council, and with Brochan as his chief Druid or Magus. Brochan retained an Irish female, and consequently a countrywoman of Columba's, as a slave. The 33d chapter of the second book of Adamnan's work is entitled, "Concerning the Illness with ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson

... prophet, Miss Boone. You gave utterance to some Druid-like remarks as we crossed the Stygian pool. The worst your fancy painted couldn't equal what ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... the miser; palsied, jealous, lean, He looks the very skeleton of Spleen! 'Mid forests drear, he haunts, in spectred gloom, Some desert abbey or some druid's tomb; Where hearsed in earth, his occult riches lay, Fleeced from the world, and buried from the day. With crutch in hand, he points his mineral rod, Limps to the spot, and turns the well-known sod. While ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... characteristically concise style, introduces London into authentic history during the apostolic era and the reign of Nero.[1] Suetonius Paulinus, governor of Britain, came in hot haste from Mona, suspending the slaughter of the Druid leaders in this their last fastness, to restore the Roman arms. For Boadicea, Queen of the Iceni, outraged at the treatment of herself and her two daughters, had, like a second Deborah, raised a popular uprising against the foreign invaders. Colchester fallen, the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock

... worshipped Mercury, Apollo, Mars, Jupiter, and Minerva, is of the same base metal as the statements of more modern writers that the Buddhists worship the Trinity, and that they take Buddha for the Son of God. Caesar most likely never conversed with a Druid, nor was he able to control, if he was able to understand, the statements made to him about the ancient priesthood, the religion and literature of Gaul. Besides, Caesar himself tells us very little about the ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... only husband of the queen, but also rightful monarch of Tir na n'Og. For in that land was a strange custom. The office of king was the prize of a race every seven years. Oisin's predecessor had consulted a Druid as to the length of his own tenure, and had been told that he might keep the crown for ever unless his son-in-law took it from him. Now the king's only daughter was the finest woman in Tir na n'Og, or indeed in the world; and the king naturally thought ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland

... modern works at the bidding of Mr. Armstrong, who gave his bookseller a standing order to supply everything that was proper, and rarely for his own individual amusement or instruction had recourse to any shelf but one which contained neat editions of the complete works of the Druid and Mr. Apperley, the Life of Assheton Smith, and all the volumes of the original Sporting Magazine bound in crimson russia. These, with Ruff's Guide, the Racing Calendar, and a few volumes on farriery, ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... the last, king Eochaid sent for his Druid, and he set to him the task to seek for Etain; now the name of the Druid was Dalan. And Dalan came before him upon that day; and he went westwards, until he came to the mountain that was after that known as Slieve Dalan; and he remained there upon that night. And the Druid deemed it a grievous ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy

... names and some remains, such as we are accustomed to call Druidical, and certain customs still observed. Perhaps worthy of a word is the circumstance that in the parish where the Bishop now lives, and has always lived, Kirk Michael, there is a place called by a name which in the Manx signifies Chief Druid. Strangely are the faiths of the ages ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine

... inventing, or copying from one another.—It never occurs to our Canon to remember Iamblichus' statement that the Druids did not borrow or learn from Pythagoras, but Pythagoras from them. He quotes with no sign of doubt the things said by the classical writers about barbaric Druid rites; never dreaming that in respect to these there may have been invention, exaggeration, or copying one from another— and that other chiefly the gentle Julius who—but I have ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... muffled in his sable cloak, Like an old Druid from his hollow oak, As ravens solemn, and as boding, cries, "Ten thousand worlds for the three unities!" Ye doctors sage, who through Parnassus teach, Or quit the tub, ...
— English Satires • Various

... Penmanmaur, Taught by Plinlimmon's Druid power, England's genius filled all measure Of heart and soul, of strength and pleasure, Gave to the mind its emperor, And life was larger than before: Nor sequent centuries could hit Orbit and sum of SHAKSPEARE'S wit. The men who lived with him became Poets, ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... cried, pointing to the Druid pile of stones; "there you shall vow yourself to me and I to you, before terrible witnesses. I shall have no fear that you will break your oath. Reflect upon what ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth

... come like a shadow, From the shadow of Druid trees, Where Usk, with mighty murmurings, Past Caerleon of the fallen kings, Goes out ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton

... drover gave information, whereupon Day was arrested and lodged in Fisherton Jail at Salisbury. Later he was sent to take his trial at Devizes, on horseback, accompanied by two constables. At the "Druid's Head," a public-house on the way, the three travellers alighted for refreshments, and there Day succeeded in giving them the slip, and jumping on a fast horse, standing ready saddled for him, made his escape. Farmer Day never returned ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson

... thy name," he said, "and why Thou waitest thus the druid knife, And carest not to live or die? Monk, hast thou ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith

... served three years in the West Indies; that he was transferred to the main-top, and served five years in the Mediterranean; that he was made captain of the foretop, and sailed six years in the East Indies; and, at last, was rated captain's coxswain in the Druid frigate, attached to the Channel fleet cruising during the peace. Having thus condensed the genealogical and chronological part of this history, I now come to a portion of it in which it will be necessary that I should ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... a Druid lies, Where slowly winds the stealing wave; The year's best sweets shall duteous rise To ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins

... its deepest, a wild goose Cried from the porter's lodge, and with long clamour Shook the ale horns and shields upon their hooks; But the horse-boys slept on, as though some power Had filled the house with Druid heaviness; And wondering who of the many changing Sidhe Had come as in the old times to counsel her, Maeve walked, yet with slow footfall being old, To that small chamber by the outer gate. The porter slept although he sat upright With still ...
— In The Seven Woods - Being Poems Chiefly of the Irish Heroic Age • William Butler (W.B.) Yeats

... park, which Evelyn mentions as "sweet and delectable", nowadays there is but little to be seen. There still remains, however, a beech grove called the "Druid's Temple", a "Lover's Walk" for sentimental youth, and a wood of acacias and cedars, yews and tulip trees—once known as the "Wilderness", but since the eighteenth century called the "Menagerie", because of a Duchess of Norfolk who kept an aviary within its precincts. Mrs. Delany, in 1756, ...
— The Dukeries • R. Murray Gilchrist

... petals to the heart; straight the mind's glance goes back to how many other pageants of summer in old times When perchance the sunny days were even more sunny; when the stilly oaks were full of mystery, lurking like the Druid's mistletoe in the midst of their mighty branches. A glamour in the heart came back to it again from every flower; as the sunshine was reflected. from them so the feeling in the heart returned tenfold. To the dreamy ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies



Words linked to "Druid" :   non-Christian priest



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