Blair Collection > Critical dissertations on the origin, antiquities, language, government, manners, and religion, of the antient Caledonians, their posterity the Picts, and the British and Irish Scots

icjo Of the Bards.
It is idle to attempt to invefligate the etymon^
of Bard, Nothing can be more trivial than the
opinion of thofe v/ho derive it from Bardus, an
imaginary King, who, according to Berofus, reign-
ed over the Gauls and Britains, and v/as the inven-
tor of poetry. Bard is undoubtedly Celtic ; and
being a monofy liable it is vain to hope to trace it
to any root.
the human mind. Accudomed to look through this groC- at-
mofphere, our ideas of lupernatural things are ihangely magni-
fied and contufed, and our diftempered dreams, on that Abject,
make deeper and more permanent impreffions than any materia!
objects can do. If in an age when we can bring the wifdom or'
former times to the aid of reafon and philotophy, we are a!moft
incapable of divefling true religion of the trappings of fuperfti-
tion, it is much more improbable, that, in a barbarous period,
the human mind could extricate itfelf from the chains of fuper-
ftitious fanaticifm. Dr. Macpherfon, therefore, has accounted
better for the filence concerning religion in the poems of Oiil-
an, than the tranllator has done, by the fuppofed extinction of
the Druids.
It is certain, that feveral tribes of American Indians have ap-
parently no figns of religious fiiperilitioii among them. This'
neither proceeds from grofs ignorance nor from the refinements
of philofophy ; for the firll has been always known tocieate
more fyftems of enthufiafm than the fcepticilm of the latter has
been ever able to deftroy. It mull be afcribed to the ferenity
and unchangeablenefs of the climate of the more inland and
South>;rn parts of North America, which preferves an equal dif-
pofition of mind among the natives, not fubjedt to the ludden
reverfes of joy and melancholy, fo common under a more varia-
ble fky. Superltition delights to dwell in the fogs of ifiands,
the mid of mountains, and the grofs vapors of a fenny country.
Thefe circumflances throw a melancholy over the mind that is
\ery produftive of vain and fupernatural fears and pannics.
It was from this caufe, perhaps, that Britain was anciently the
principal feat of Druidical fuperftitions ; and on the fame ac-
count, though from other circumftances, it now poffcflcs true
religion in its purity, it will, in a courfe, of ages, revert to that
gloomy enthufiafm fo fuitable to its moift air and variable climate.
A CERTAIN"