osition, and as no sacrifice
was complete without the intervention of Druids, they must also have
assisted at the lavish sacrifices which occurred at Celtic funerals.

Pliny's words, "the Druids and that race of prophets and doctors",
suggest that the medical art may have been in the hands of a special
class of Druids though all may have had a smattering of it. It was
mainly concerned with the use of herbs, and was mixed up with magical
rites, which may have been regarded as of more importance than the
actual medicines used.[1059] In Ireland Druids also practised the
healing art. Thus when Cuchulainn was ill, Emer said, "If it had been
Fergus, Cuchulainn would have taken no rest till he had found a Druid
able to discover the cause of that illness."[1060] But other persons,
not referred to as Druids, are mentioned as healers, one of them a
woman, perhaps a reminiscence of the time when the art was practised by
women.[1061] These healers may, however, have been attached to the
Druidic corporation in much the same way as were the bards.

Still more important were the magical powers of the Druids--giving or
withholding sunshine or rain, causing storms, making women and cattle
fruitful, using spells, rhyming to death, exercising shape-shifting and
invisibility, and producing a magic sleep, possibly hypnotic. They were
also in request as poisoners.[1062] Since the Gauls went to Britain to
perfect themselves in Druidic science, it is possible that the insular
Druids were more devoted to magic than those of Gaul, but since the
latter are said to have "tamed the people as wild beasts are tamed", it
is obvious that this refers to their powers as magicians rather than to
any recondite philosophy possessed by them. Yet they were clear-sighted
enough to use every means by which they might gain political power, and
some of them may have been open to the influence of classical learning
even before the Roman invasion. In the next chapter the magic of the
Druids will be described in detail.

The Druids, both in Gaul (at the mistletoe rite) and in Ireland, were
dressed in white, but Strabo speaks of their scarlet and gold
embroidered robes, their golden necklets and bracelets.[1063] Again, the
chief Druid of the king of Erin wore a coloured cloak and had earrings
of gold, and in another instance a Druid wears a bull's hide and a
white-speckled bird headpiece with fluttering wings.[1064] There was
also some special tonsure used by the D