The Druids [Hardcover]

Peter Berresford Ellis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1994

An account of who and what the Druids were, covering their Druidic training, philosophies and beliefs, portraying them as doctors, lawyers and advisers to kings and arguing that they were the intellectuals of ancient Celtic society. First published in 1994.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Constable; First edition. edition (December 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802837980
• ISBN-13: 978-0802837981
• ASIN: 0094724504
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,559,676 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

51 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A good introduction to the Druidic controversies, December 16, 2000

By 

Michael Martinez - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Druids (Paperback)

Peter Berresford Ellis is a popular historian, not an academic historian. The primary difference between popular and academic historians is that they write for different audiences. Ellis' work has been criticized for lacking the kind of detailed references that a peer-reviewed book or article would include. The reader must guess where the citations and allusions may be researched and accept the citations and translations as accurate.

Hence, you're not likely to find many historians recommending an Ellis book to their students. But students who have read Ellis will have a very clear idea of what materials to look for. And he does a very good job of challenging long-standing interpretations which have always been flimsy or weak at best. Unfortunately for him, the science of historical analysis requires accountability and Ellis refuses to be accountable. He takes his case to the popular audience and hopes to influence the broader imagination.

That's all well and good, but some of his research has been challenged and Ellis has had to make at least one major retraction in his career. He is a Celto-centric writer and people of Celtic heritage should be glad to know there is still a dedicated flag-waver around. But in the end, no matter how well he writes, no matter how thorough his research, Ellis must be regarded only as a popular historian. In that respect, he is one of the finest popular historians I've had the pleasure to read.

24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Continuing our dialogue with the past, March 4, 2000

By 

"plantpeepl" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Druids (Paperback)

Celtic spirituality seems to be a buzz word among Christians and pagans alike, and efforts to define it abound. I recommend this book to readers who are more willing to be challenged rather than soothed by things Celtic. P.B. Ellis states his mission as "an introductory argument about the reality and the legend of the Druids" (p 21). He succeeds quite well in this mission, distilling what can be known from primary sources with very thorough research. Ellis also asks the questions that we would dearly like to ask of these mysterious people, who unfortunately seem to have had a prohibition against committing their scholarship to writing, leaving historians to piece together their philosophy and practices from the works of other observers. Ellis does an exceptional job of revealing the probable biases of these secondary sources, although his style of argument becomes somewhat convoluted at times.

Ellis pulls no punches in criticizing the scholarly positions of other writers on the subject -- an approach which can seem abrasive or refreshing, depending on one's taste. His obvious disdain for the New Age, soft-focus and romaniticized view of Druids may seem harsh as well. But his genuine love for and fascination with Celtic peoples perhaps justifies the contempt he displays for those who call themselves "New Age Celts...preaching harmony with nature, who have stared in incomprehension when it has been pointed out to them that the Celtic civilization itself is struggling in a last ditch attempt to survive" (p 280). Ellis concludes his work by pointing out the "uncomfortable reality for those who would conjure Druids and ancient Celts to their new concepts of 'spiritual enlightenment'" while ignoring the fact that Celtic languages and cultures are in decline in our increasingly homogenized modern world.

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enigmatic, May 27, 2003

By 

FrKurt Messick "FrKurt Messick" (Bloomington, IN USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Druids (Paperback)

Who were the Druids? This group, surrounded by legend and folklore for millenia, continues to fascinate moderns, perhaps because of the enigmatic character of their identity. Probably most of the popular images of Druids -- of being tree worshippers, of being itinerant poets and prophets, of being priests who practiced human sacrifice and built strange structures such as Stonehenge -- are generally misperceptions, perhaps even deliberate 'character assassination' attempts by the victorious political and religious authorities that moved into Druid areas. Indeed, the bulk of Classical information on the Druids comes from anti-Druid writings of the Romans.

`By the time the Celts themselves came to commit their knowledge to writing, they had become Christianised and, not surprisingly, the Druids continued to get "a bad Press". Their portrayal remains an extremely biased one.'

In this very readable book on The Druids, Peter Berresford Ellis presents an examination of the archaeological, etymological and historical evidence to give an account of the identity and importance of the Druids in early Celtic societies.

`The Druids emerge as the intellectual caste of ancient Celtic society. They were the doctors, the lawyers, the ambassadors, the advisors to kings. They also had a religious function.'

One historical fact that is often overlooked is that the early Celtic 'empire' was as expansive as the Roman Empire, stretching from Britain and Ireland in the northwest, through Gaul and central Europe north of the Alps, stretching as far as Turkey to the east, and also extending down into Iberia. The Celtic language group includes influences on all major European languages as well. However, the Celtic empire had no imperium, no central structure or organisation, but was rather a loose confederation, in which the Druids, as the intellectuals, helped to keep a cohesion of social life if not political and economic life.

The Druids operated largely without writing, following the tradition of many early peoples by using an oral tradition of learning and history. Thus the earliest appearances of the Druids come from Greek and Roman writings. The Druids were seen as a philosophising, priestly caste, also somewhat of a civil authority. Indeed, both Julius Caesar and Cicero mention the Druids in their writings, and one Druid ambassador even addressed the Roman Senate in search of an alliance against the barbarian Germanic tribes (Caesar, however, with intent to conquer Gaul, persuaded the Senate to support the Germans so as to facilitate the conquest of Gaul -- of course, shortly thereafter the Germans became the enemies of Rome, and would remain so for the most part for the rest of Roman history).

Ellis examines the Druids from many vantage points, looking at the writings about the Druids by both insiders (Celts) and outsiders. Ellis also examines the religion, rituals, and wisdom of the Druids, which includes subchapters on schools, books, philosophy, law, history, poetry, music, medical knowledge, art, astronomy and astrology, and mysticism.

Ellis argues in his final chapter that the Druids never truly disappeared. As a social class, rather than as a narrowly-defined group of wizards and priests, the Druids as an intelligensia remained under a new classification, but this social strata was slowly destroyed by the nations who conquered the Celts and made strides to assimilate or eliminate the Celtic peoples. Ellis traces the literary/historical chain of events that led to the identification of the Druids as a small subset of this intelligensia, mostly those dealing with religion and the arts, most commonly associated with secret rites or witchcraft, which is present in today's thinking about the Druids.

`Celtic and Druidic "truth" of every description -- from "arcane knowledge", "karmic destiny", "the true path", to "mystic awareness" -- are solicited in the commercial deluge of New Age philosophies. The Druids and the Celts were there when our seventeenth and eighteenth century ancestors sought "Romanticism" as a counter-balance to the "Age of Reason" and industrialisation. It is not surprising that they are still being reinvented at this time because, in our sad and sorry contemporary world, people still want a quick fix on spirituality.'

This is a fascinating and highly readable text on the history of the Druids, and the history of the way the Druids have been portrayed (and misrepresented).