The legacy of the Druids

The legacy of the Druids

Lough Derg--Pilgrimage--Temporality--Druidry

"It is a long passage of time since the men of Ireland first felt the mystery of those quiet little hills and looked for the unseen in the waters that lie at their feet, for the spiritual history of Derg stretches back into the dimmest age of legend..."

Shane Leslie, 1885-1971

Leslie, Shane, Lough Derg in Ulster : The Story of St. Patrick’s Purgatory, pp. 1-2

Maunsel, Dublin

1909

Digitised by archive.org, sponsored by University of California Libraries

Public domain

Monograph

English

Religious History

Text

DD_0020

54.6083, -7.8714

https://archive.org/details/loughderginulste00lesliala/page/2

"It is a long passage of time since the men of Ireland first felt the mystery of those quiet little hills and looked for the unseen in the waters that lie at their feet, for the spiritual history of Derg stretches back into the dimmest age of legend. In the far past strange unholy rites were practised there. The cairns on the hills about are the gravestones of elder faiths that died of sheer old age.

Though little of the former worship of Ireland has come down to us, there is a wisp of flotsam to be gleaned drifting with the customs of the people. Here and there we may lay curious hands on some charm or curse that was in Ireland before Padruig, and is still borne on by the sacred current of Faith. No temples were left to bring wonder to the eyes of strangers, only a few gaunt circles of stone that have stood dumb and without meaning for so many centuries, yet perhaps not meaningless to all.

Once these grim stones were great among the heathen and received the homage of a religious race. Of the rise and splendour of Druidism there is no record. History reveals only its last phase, a slow and angry agony during the dawn of Rome's rebirth and second conquest of the world. Druids there remained throughout Ireland, and the people feared them pitiably unto their last hour. Their wise old bones must be lying by the red waters of Derg, but how have they perished that even the place of their perishing has been lost? They are gone beyond the sweep of imagination, for even a dreamer practised in his dreaming will not easily see their white robes fluttering in the bygone oak forests, or the weird rites which some wise old women forgot a few generations back."

Monograph