Blair Collection > Celtic researches, on the origin, traditions & language, of the ancient Britons

141
111 Caesar's time, the inhabitants of Gaul had hecu
disturbed, in some degree, by the intercourse of strangers.
Their sacred groves had been traversed and violated by ft^ety
wliich they considered as profane. Druidisni, therefore, Avas
not so pure in that country as in Britain, the source of
the reformed institution, and many sons of the nobles in
Gaul were sent hither to finish their Education. De, Bel).
Gail. L.VÍ.
Wlien the Romans acquired a footing in Britain, they
found the country possessed by two nations ; the Belgai,
originally Celta, but somewhat intermixt with strangers, and
an indigenous race, who declared they were born in the
Island. The title of Native is a distinction claimed by the
first race of a country, and justly — a familj/ had originally
settled ; but the nation was born in the land. Amongst these
pure descendants of the Ccltse, the Druidism of Britain was in
the highest repute. The principal seat of the order was found
in Mona, an interior recess of that ancient race, which was
boj'n in the Island.
Into that sequestered scene, the Druids, who detested
warfare, had gradually retired, after the irruption of the
Belgce, and the fiuther incroachment of the Romans. They
had retired from their ancient, magnificent seat at Abury, and
from their Circular, Uncovered Temple on Salisbury Plain, in
which the Hyperborean sages had once chaunted their hymns
to Apollo, or Pla/j/z.
An order thus cautiously withdrawing itself, into the bosom
of its primitive nation, of whom it consisted, and for wlioni it
was calculated, could not have owed its fundamental principles
to any foreigners, or have been willing to adopt dieir tenets.
The Celtie must have received this institution from their very
earliest parents.