any process be
taken back to one original source.

This fact of definite antagonism between different sets of surviving
beliefs existing together in one country leads to several very
important conclusions. This is the case with the Irish Sids. These
beings are said to be scattered over Ireland, and around them
assembled for worship the family or clan of the deified patron. While
there were thus a number of topical deities, each in a particular spot
where he was to be invoked, the deities themselves with the rest of
their non-deified but blessed brother spirits had as their special
abode "Lands of the Living," the happy island or islands somewhere far
away in the ocean. Now this Sid worship, we are told by Irish
scholars, "had nothing to do with Druidism--in fact, was quite opposed
to it," the Sids and the Druids being "frequently found at variance
with each other in respect to mortals."[471]

This is the commencing point of the evidence which proves Druidism to
have belonged to the pre-Celtic people, though finding an adopted home
among them. This is so important a subject and has been so strangely
and inconsistently dealt with by most authorities that it will be well
to indicate where we have to search for the non-Celtic, and therefore
pre-Celtic, origin of Druidism. The Druidism revealed by classical
authorities is, for the most part, the Druidism of continental peoples
and not of Britain, and I hesitate to accept off-hand that it is
proper to transfer the continental system to Britain and say that the
two systems were one and the same. There is certainly no evidence from
the British side which would justify such a course, and I think there
is sufficient argument against it to suspend judgment until the whole
subject is before us. If Professor Rhys is right in concluding that
Druidism is at its roots a non-Celtic religion,[472] we must add to
this that it was undoubtedly a non-Teutonic religion. Celts and
Teutons were sufficiently near in all the elements of their
civilisation for this want of parallel in their relationship to
Druidism to be an additional argument against the Celts having
originated this cult. And then the explanation of the differences
between continental and British Druidism becomes comparatively easy to
understand. The continental Celts, mixing more thoroughly with the
pre-Celtic aborigines than did the British Celts, would have absorbed
more of the pre-Celtic religion than the British Celts, an