stianized Ireland: converted
the kings and established the church; and left the bulk of the
people pagan-hearted and pagan-visioned still,--as, glory be to
God, they have been ever since. I mean by that that under all
vicissitudes the Irish have never quite lost sight of the Inner
Life at the heart of things, as most of the rest of us have.
Time and men and circumstance, sorrow and ignorance and falsity,
have conspired to destroy the race; but there is a vision there,
however thwarted and hedged in,--and the people do not perish:
their woods and mountains are still full of a gay or mournful, a
wailing or a singing, but always a beautiful, life. Patrick was
a great man; but he never could drive out the Danaan Gods, who
had gone into the hills when the Milesians came. He drove out
the serpents, they say; and a serpent was a name for a Druid
Adept: Taliesin says, in one of his poems, _'Wyf dryw, wyf
sarff,'_ 'I am a druid, I am a serpent'; and we know from H.P.
Blavatsky how universal this symbol was, with the meaning of an
Initiate of the Secret Wisdom. So perhaps Patrick did evict his
Betters from that land of evictions; it may be so;--but not the
God-life in the mountains. But I judge from the clean and easy
sweep he made of things that Druidism was at a low pass in
Ireland when he came. It had survived there five centuries since
its vital center and link with the Lodge had been destroyed at
Bibracte by Caesar; and, I suppose, thus cut off, and faced with
no opposition to keep it pure and alert, might well, and would
naturally have declined. Its central light no longer burning,
political supremacy itself would have hastened its decay;
fostering arrogance for spirituality, and worldliness for true
Wisdom. How then about the theory that some life and light
remained or was revivable in it in Britain? Why claim that for
Britain, which one would incline to deny to Ireland and Gaul?--
Well; we know that Druidism did survive in Gaul a long time
after the Romans had proscribed it. But Gaul became very
thoroughly Romanized. The Romans and their civilization were
everywhere; the Celtic language quite died out; (Breton was
brought in by emigrants from Britain;)--and where the Celtic
language had died, unlikely that Celtic thought would survive.
But in Britain, as we have seen, while the Romans and their
proscription were near enough to provide a salutary opposition
and constant peril, there were many places in whic