omans to became initiated, Tiberius
banished the priestly clan and their adherents from Gaul, and
Claudius utterly stamped out the belief there, and put to death a
Roman knight for wearing the serpent's-egg badge to win a lawsuit.
Forbidden to practise their rites in Britain, the Druids fled to
the isle of Mona, near the coast of Wales. The Romans pursued them,
and in 61 A. D. they were slaughtered and their oak groves cut
down. During the next three centuries the cult was stifled to
death, and the Christian religion substituted.

It was believed that at Christ's advent the pagan gods either died
or were banished.

"The lonely mountains o'er
And the resounding shore
A voice of weeping heard, and loud lament.
From haunted spring and dale,
Edged with poplar pale,
The parting genius is with sighing sent.
With flower-inwoven tresses torn
The nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn."

MILTON: _On the Morning of Christ's Nativity._

The Christian Fathers explained all oracles and omens by saying
that there was something in them, but that they were the work of
the evil one. The miraculous power they seemed to possess worked
"black magic."

It was a long, hard effort to make men see that their gods had all
the time been wrong, and harder still to root out the age-long
growth of rite and symbol. But on the old religion might be grafted
new names; Midsummer was dedicated to the birth of Saint John;
Lugnasad became Lammas. The fires belonging to these times of year
were retained, their old significance forgotten or reconsecrated.
The rowan, or mountain ash, whose berries had been the food of the
Tuatha, now exorcised those very beings. The trefoil signified the
Trinity, and the cross no longer the rays of the sun on water, but
the cross of Calvary. The fires which had been built to propitiate
the god and consume his sacrifices to induce him to protect them
were now lighted to protect the people from the same god, declared
to be an evil mischief-maker. In time the autumn festival of the
Druids became the vigil of All Hallows or All Saints' Day.

All Saints' was first suggested in the fourth century, when the
Christians were no longer persecuted, in memory of all the saints,
since there were too many for each to have a special day on the
church calendar. A day in May was chosen by Pope Boniface IV in 610
for consecrating the Pantheon, the old Roman templ