"The sum of the condemnation of me Anne Askew, at the Guildhall. They said to me there that I was an heretick, and condem"ned by the law, if I would stand in my own opinion. I answered, "that I was no heretick, neither yet deserved I any death by the law of "God. But as concerning the faith which I uttered and wrote to "the Council, I would not (I said) deny it, because I knew it true. "Then would they needs know if I would deny the sacrament to "be Christ's Body and Blood. I said, yea. For the same Son of "God that was born of the Virgin Mary is now glorious in Hea<< ven, and will come again from thence at the latter. day like as " he went up, Acts i. And as for that ye call your God, it is a piece of bread; for a more proof thereof (mark it when you list) let it lie << in the box but three months, and it will be mouldy, and so turn to nothing that is good, wherefore I am persuaded it cannot be God. "After that they willed me to have a Priest, and then I smiled. "Then they asked me if it were not good? I said I would confess my "faults unto God; for I was sure he would hear me with favour; " and so we were condemned with a quest."

The confession which she sent to the Council, and which is alluded to in the above, was in brief, upon the article of the eucharist, "That "the sacramental bread was left us to be received with thanksgiving, in remembrance of Christ's death, the only remedy of our soul's recovery: and thereby we also receive the whole benefits and fruits of his most glorious passion."

From the Guildhall she was remanded to Newgate as a destined victim for the stake. But the malice of her persecutors was not to be satisfied with the horrors of this fiery trial without preparatory tortures. Our young heroine was therefore doomed to endure the agonizing pains of the rack, and that too heightened by peculiar circumstances of cruelty.

[To be concluded in our next.]

W.

AN

ACCOUNT OF DRUIDISM.

BY MR. POLWHELE.

(Continued from Page 182.)

HE Druid rites come next to be considered.

The principal

TH times of devotion among the Druids were either mid-day or

midnight. The officiating Druid was cloathed in a white garment that swept the ground; on his head he wore the tiara; he had the anguinum or serpent's egg, as the ensign of his order; his temples were encircled with a wreath of oak-leaves, and he waved in his hand the magic rod. As to the Druid sacrifice, we have various and VOL. II.

U u

contradictory representations. It is certain, however, that the Druids offered human victims to their gods. And there was an awful mysteriousness in the original Druid sacrifice. Having descanted on the human sacrifices of various countries, Mr. Bryant informs us, that among the nations of Canaan the victims were chosen in a peculiar manner their own children, and whatsoever was nearest and dearest to them, were thought the most worthy offerings to their gods! The Carthaginians, who were a colony from Tyre, carried with them the religion of their mother country, and instituted the same worship in the parts where they settled. It consisted in the adoration of several deities, but particularly of Kronus, to whom they offered human sacrifices, the most beautiful victims they could select. Parents offered up their own children as dearest to themselves, and therefore the more acceptable to the deity they sacrificed "the fruit of their body for the sin of "their soul." Kronus was an oriental divinity-the god of light and fire; and, therefore, always worshipped with some reference to that element. He was the Moloch of the Tyrians and Canaanites, and the Melech of the East. Philo-Biblius tells us, that in some of these sacrifices there was a particular mystery, in consequence of an example which had been set these people by the god Kgovos, who, in a time of distress, offered up bis only fon to his father Ougaves. When a person of distinction brought an only son to the altar, and slaughtered him by way of atonement, to avert any evil from the people-his was properly the mystical sacrifice, imitated from Kgovos, or from Abraham offering up his only son Isaac. Mr. Bryant is of opinon, that this mystical sacrifice was a typical representation of the great vicarial sacrifice that was to come. At first, there is no doubt but the Druids offered up their human victims with the same sublime views. The Druids maintained, quod pro vita hominis nisi vita hominis reddatur, non passe aliter deorum immortalium numen placarie *. This mysterious doc trine is not of men, but of God! It evidently points out THE ONE GREAT SACRIFICE FOR THE SINS OF THE WHOLE WORLD! But after the Phenician colonies had mixed with the primeval Britons, this degenerated priesthood seem to have delighted in human blood: and their victims, though sometimes beasts, were oftener men: and not only criminals and captives, but their very disciples were inhumanly sacrificed on their altars; whilst some transfixed by arrows, others crucified in their temples, some instantly stabbed to the heart, and others impaled in honour of the gods, bespoke, amidst variety of death, the most horrid proficiency in the science of murder. But the Druid holo-caust, that monstrous image of straw, connected and shaped by wicker-work, and promiscuously crouded with wild beasts and human victims, was, doubtless, the most infernal sacrifice that was ever invented by the human imagination. These cruelties were certainly not attached to primitive Druidism; they are to be ascribed to the Phenician colonists of a subsequent period. Among the Druid cercmonies, may be reckoned also the turnings of the body during the

* Cæsar, p. 124.

times of worship. The numerous round monuments in Danmonium were formed for the purpose of this mysterious rite. In several of the Scottish Isles, at this day, the vulgar never approach "the fire hallowing karne," without walking three times round it from east to west, according to the course of the sun. The Druids probably turned sunways, in order to bless and worship their gods; and the contrary way, when they intended to curse and destroy their enemies. The first kind of turning has been called the deisol; the second the tuaphot. Tacitus alludes to the latter in a very remarkable passage: Druidæque circum preces diras, sublatis ad cœlum manibus, fundentes, novitate afpectus perculere milites. The Roman soldiers, we see, were terrified by the novelty of this rite-a plain proof that it was unknown in those countries which had been subjected to the Roman yoke. The holy fires of the Druids may also deserve our notice; we have, at this day, traces of the fire-worship of the Druids in several customs, both of the Devonians and the Cornish: but, in Ireland, we may still see the holy fires in all their solemnity. The Irish call the month of May, bel-tine, or fire of Belus; and the first of May, la-bel-tine, or the day of Belus's fire. In an old Irish Glossary, it is mentioned, that the Druids of Ireland used to light two solemn fires every year; through which all four-footed beasts were driven, as a preservative against contagious distempers. The Irish have this custom at the present moment; they kindle the fire in the milking-yards-men, women and children pass through or leap over it; and their cattle are driven through the flames of the burning straw, on the first of May: and, in the month of No. vember, they have also their fire feasts; when, according to the custom of the Danmonian as well as the Irish Druids, the hills were enveloped in flame. Previously to this solemnity (on the eve of November) the fire in every private house was extinguished; hither, then, the people were obliged to resort, in order to rekindle it. The ancient Persians named the month of November, Adur, or fire. Adur, according to Richardson, was the angel presiding over that element; in consequence of which, on the ninth, his name-day, the country blazed all round with flaming piles, whilst the magi, by the injunction of Zoroaster, visited, with great solemnity, all the temples of fire throughout the empire; which, on this occasion, were adorned and illuminated in a most splendid manner. Hence our British illuminations in November had probably their origin. It was at this season that Baal Sambam called the souls to judgment, which, according to their deserts, were assigned to re-enter the bodies of men or brutes, and to be happy or miserable during their next abode on the earth. But the punishment of the wicked, the Druids taught, might be obliterated by sacrifices to Baal. The sacrifices of the black sheep, therefore, was offered up for the souls of the departed, and various species of charms*

* The primitive Christians, attached to their pagan ceremonies, placed the feast of All Souls on the La Samon, or the second day of November. Even now the peasants in Ireland assemble on the vigil of La Samon with sticks and clubs, going fro.n house to house collecting money, bread-cake, butter, cheese, eggs, &c. for the feast; repeating verses in honour of the solemnity, and calling for the black sheep. Candles are

exhibited. Baal-Sumbaim, a Phenician appellation of the God of Baal, in Irish signifies the planet of the fun." Meni is an appellation of

sent from house to house and lighted up on the Samon (the next day). Every house abounds in the best viands the master can afford; apples and nuts are eaten in great plenty, the nutshells are burnt, and from the ashes many strange things are foretold. Hemp-seed is sown by the maidens, who believe that, if they look back, they shall see the apparition of their intended husbands. The girls make various efforts to read their destiny; they hang a smock before the fire at the close of the feast, and sit up all night concealed in a corner of the room, expecting the apparition of the lover to come down the chimney and turn the smock: they throw a ball of yarn out of the window and wind it on the reel within, convinced that if they repeat the paternoster backwards, and look at the ball of yarn without, they shall then also see his apparition. Those who celebrate this feast have numerous other rites derived from the Pagans. They dip for apples in a tub of water, and endeavour to bring one up in their mouths; they catch at an apple when stuck on at one end of a kind of hanging beam, at the other extremity of which is fixed a lighted candle, and that with their mouths only, whilst it is in a circular motion, having their hands tied behind their backs. A learned correspondent thus writes from Ireland: "There is no sort of doubt but that Baal and fire was a principal object of the ceremonies and adoration of the Druids. The principal seasons of these, and of their feasts in honour of Baal, were New-Year's day, when the sun began visibly to return towards us; this custom is not yet at an end, the country people still burning out the old year and welcoming the new by fires lighted on the tops of hills, and other high places. The next season was the month of May, when the fruits of the earth begun, in the Eastern countries, to be gathered, and the first fruits of them consecrated to Baal, or to the sun, whose benign influence had ripened them; and I am almost persuaded that the dance round the may-pole in that month is a faint image of the rites observed on such occasions. The next great festival was on the twenty-first of June, when the sun, being in Cancer, first appears to go backwards and leave us. On this occasion the Baalim used to call the people together, and to light fires on high places, and to cause their sons, and their daughters, and their cattle, to pass through the fire, calling upon Baal to bless them, and not to forsake thein. This is still the general practice in Ireland; nor, indeed, in any country, are there more Cromlechs, or proofs of the worship of Baal or the sun, than in that kingdom; concerning which I can give you a tolerable account, having been myself an eye-witness to this great festival in June. But I must first bring to your recollection the various places in Ireland which still derive their names from Baal, such as Baly-shannon, Bal-ting-las, Balcarras, Belfast, and many more. Next I must premise that there are in Ireland a great number of towers, which are called firetowers, of the most remote antiquity, concerning which there is no certain history, their construction being of a date prior to any account of the country. Being at a gentleman's house about thirty miles west of Dublin, to pass a day or two, he told us, on the 21st of June we should see an odd sight at midnight; accordingly at that hour he conducted us out upon the top of his house, where, in a few minutes, to our great astonishment, we saw fires lighted on all the high places round, some nearer and some more distant. We had a pretty extensive view, and, I should suppose, might see near fifteen miles each way. There were many heights in this extent, and on every height was a fire; I counted not less than forty. We amused ourselves with watching them, and with betting which hill would be lighted first. Not long after, on a more attentive view, I discovered shadows of people near the fire, and round it, and every now and then they quite darkened it. I enquired the reason of this, and what they were about, and was immediately told they were not only dancing round, but passing through the fire; for that it was the custom of the country, on that day, to make their families, their sons and their daughters, and their cattle, pass through the fire, without which they could expect no success in their dairies, nor in the crops that year. I bowed, and recognised the god Baal. This custom is chiefly preserved among the Roman Catholics, whose bigotry, credulity, and ignorance, have made them adopt it from the ancient Irish, as a tenet of the Christian religion. The Protestants do not observe it, but it was the universal custom in Ireland before Christianity."

the same deity. "Ye are they that forget my holy mountain (says Isaiah), that prepare a table for Gad, and furnish the drink-offering unto Meni." According to Jerom and several others, Gad signifies fortune, or good fortune, and in this sense is used in the 11th verse of the 30th chapter of Genesis. Those passages in Jeremiah, where the prophet marks the superstition of the Jews, in making cakes for the queen of heaven, are very similar to this of Isaiah. At this very day we discover vestiges of the festival of the sun on the eve of All-Souls. As, at this festival, the Pagans "ate the sacrifices of the dead" so our villages, on the eve of All-Souls, burn nuts and shells to fortune, and pour out libations of ale to Meni. The Druids, who were the Magi. of the Britons, had an infinite number of rites in common with the Persians. One of the chief functions of the Eastern Magi, was divination; and Pomponius Mela tells us, that our Druids possessed the same art. There was a solemn rite of divination among the Druids from the fall of the victim and convulsion of his limbs, or the nature and position of his entrails. But the British priests had various kinds of divination. By the number of criminal causes, and by the increase or diminution of their own order, they predicted fertility or scarceness. From the neighing or prancing of white horses, harnessed to a consecrated chariot-from the turnings or windings of a hare let loose from the bosom of the diviner (with a variety of other ominous appearances or exhibitions), they pretended to determine the events of futurity *. Of all creatures, however, the serpent exercised in the most curious manner the invention of the Druids. To the famous Anguinum they attributed high virtues. The Anguinum, or serpent's egg, was a congeries of small snakes rolled together, and incrusted with a shell, formed by the saliva or viscous gum or froth of the mother serpent. This egg, it seems, was tossed into the air by the hissings of its dam, and before it fell again to the earth (where it would be defiled) it was to be received in the sagus, or sacred vestment. The person who caught the egg was to make his escape on horseback, since the serpent pursues the ravisher of its young, even to the brink of the next river. Pliny †, from whom this account is taken, proceeds with an enumeration of other absurdities relating to the Anguinum. This Anguinum is in British called Glain-neider, the serpent of glass; and the same superstitious reverence which the Danmonii universally paid to the Anguinum, is still discoverable in some parts of Cornwall. Mr. Llhuyd informs us, that "the Cornish retain variety of charms, and have still, towards the Land's-end, the amulets of Maen-Magal and Glain-neider, which latter they call a Melprev, and have a charm for the snake to make it, when they have found one asleep, and stuck a hazel wand in the centre of her spire." Camden tells us, that" in most parts of Wales, and throughout all Scotland and Cornwall, it is an opinion of the vulgar, that about Midsummer-eve

or

* Mr. Polwhele might also have told us, that it is even now considered as ominous in Devonshire and Cornwall, if a bare crosses a person on the road.

+ Lib. 29. c. 3.

In his letter to Rowland, 1701.

W.