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fragments of antiquity, and equivalent to our os y, peth, meistreaid, i. e., if the, anything, masters,' &c., to select, gratia exempli, some old Umbrian or Oscan verb which was either lost, unknown, or, accidentally I will say, un-employed by Roman invaders and Latin writers of that period, to settle this question more decisively. Such a verb will be found in fust, and translated fuerit by grammarians on an uncertain context conjecture.

The letters B and F are mutable and indiscriminately used in Cimbric conversation, according to euphony of expression. The double form of the perfect indefinite 'I have been' is as follows: Sing.-1. Bum; fuais: I was; or, I have been

2. Buost; fuiast

3. Bu, buodd; fues, fuest, fûst

Plur.-1. Buom; fuasom: We were; or, we have been
2. Buoch; fuasoch

3. Buont; fuant, or fuasant.

I have thus deviated so far from our ovatian course in order to show you that Cimmerians can, under all circumstances, maintain a tolerably good, if not a better, understanding than any learned un-Celtic element whatever, with the old primeval roots of early and later latinity-not to say anything, at present, of the languages of Greece, Palestine, Chaldea, India, and the world. What then? Audite et judicate!—

In all sober consciousness, did not the Umbrian vates or ofyddion of primeval Italy, or those of Hellas and the east, communicate something more tangible, more philosophic, more doctrinal to succeeding generations than the bare enunciation of general terms—than a simple enumeration of druidical classifications? Else, how are we to account for the lucid statements respecting the internal developments of druidical institutions that are to be found in classic records? yea, more, not unknown to "the man of Uz, whose name was Job," as I will prove bye-and-bye, from the Hebrew text.

Strabo, in his observations of western Europe, seems to have been conversant with the contents of certain druidical triads, as is evident from the following remarks respecting the incorporated order of druidism. Was this information acquired? or communicated? Was this order of instruction compatible with a condition of a people steeped in alleged barbarism?

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Παρ' απασι δε και επιπαν τρια φυλα των τιμωμενων διαφέροντες εστι βαρδοι, τε και ουατες, και δρυιδαι. Βαρδοι μεν υμνηται και ποιηται ουατες δε ιεροποιοι και φυσιολογοι δρυιδαι, τε προς τη φυσιλογια την ηθικην φιλοσοφιαν ασκουσιν.”

"But among all these there are three classes of men who are still held in especial honor, bards, ovates, and druids. The bards

are singers and poets; the ovates, sacred ministers and natural philosophers; the druids to physiology and the study of moral philosophy."

Did the author of the New Zealand legendary lore and his normal admiring class of Sandwichianæ, vel Pacificœ noctes (I wont insult the Arabianæ), procure manuscript copies of a Maori natural and moral philosophy from a Tamehameha, or of a lecture on astronomy, from the ballads of an Ialoff, chanting the victories of a Damel over the tyrant of Toota Torra; or was the sterling comparison acquired from the researches of a Cook, a Wakefield, or a Selwyn, and collated so as to complete his antipodean antithetical resemblances of idealised character. If such doctrinal lectures, with other prominent indications of civilization, be published for general circulation, I accept the comparison with pride and thankfulness for the sake of humanity, if not, I hurl the impotent, unmeaning elegantiæ sententiarum to the four winds of heaven, and to the brains that gave them birth, or to the cheers that echo them afar, as mental food unworthy of a virile age-Augustan if you will-as chaff or learned dross, to catch applause, beguile and lead astray from home' the youthful mind untilled, unversed in ancient tomes of flat denial and unrebutting charge.

Allowing such anti-historical cavillers time for reflection, if not for repentance, I now proceed to examine the institutional phase of the third class, namely, the Druids, "notre Ecole, qui, pendant des siecles entiers, etait des arts et des sciences le modele et l'appui presque unique."

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THE term derwydd is derived from derw, an oak (from the elements de, separation, and rhw, what grows out of '), and ydd, a masculine terminal implying action or volition. Some, as Pliny

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and Salmatius, would anti-chronologically derive it from opus; whereas, Picard, similarly imbued, imagines it to have sprung from Drius or Dryius, the fifth king of Gaul. The Teutonic school, as if by magic spell, force it from the Saxon root of dry, a magician, a term of a comparatively modern coinage. The Jewish doctors, probably from ocular or acoustic experience of the order, derive it from , or darash, as, one 'employed in study and contemplation.' Does not this Hebrew etymology, even on this assumption of posterior date, convey something more than a conjecture that the Hebrew and Cimmerian languages could not have been, at some pre-historic period, strangers to the internal economy of each other? or that the elements of each other were not unattainable and not misunderstood by Noachidic or prepolytheistic druids and priests, and the generations of a Terach? Be this as it may, the oak was immemorially dedicated to Iau (or Jah, or, more phonetically correct, Yah, as Yehovah, not Jehovah), as glans Chaonii patris, and was ever regarded as a peculiar gift or emanation sent from heaven itself, in order to celebrate his religious rites with no other canopy than that of its own sacred foliage and the azure heaven above.

De cœlo tacitas memini predicere quercus.

It received an additional air of veneration in its connection with the awyrbren or misletoe, when clinging to its majestic and shady branches.

"Ad viscum druidæ, druidæ clamare solebant."

"Run, druids, to the misletoe, the druids used to cry."

Ancient records state, that, whenever the misletoe reached the upper brances of the ilex, a druid, dressed in white linen garments, would ascend the tree, and cut it with a gold reaping-hook (a'i thorri a chryman aur), and drop it carefully into a species of sach, a sagum or woollen mantle that was spread round the trunk by officiating priests, to prevent the misletoe from touching the ground. Virgil also alludes to the viscus in connection with the oak

"Quale solet silvis brumali frigore viscum

"Fronde virere novâ, quod non sua seminat arbos
"Et croceo fætu teretes, circumdare truncos,

"Talis erat species auri frondentis opacâ

"Ilice, sic leni crepitabat bractea vento."

Let us now, my friends,

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Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man,
"A mighty maze! but not without a plan."

The united talents of these Cimmerian and learned orders formed the first Hyperborean institute or philosophical society on

record, and was the venerable parent of all the Royal and British universities, colleges, or societies of Prydain and the world at large. No university, however egotistic its views may now be, need be ashamed of, or deny, the primeval teaching of its unknown and venerable parent.

The institute had its penderwydd or pontifex maximus, elected out of the body corporate, or college of cardinals so to speak, and held in reverential esteem throughout the length and breadth of druidism, for his pre-eminent worthiness-excellit dignitate—and his presidential dignity, as admitted even by Cæsar in the following passage:

"Autem omnibus his druidibus unus præest, qui habet summam auctoritatem inter eos." 66 But over all these druids one presides, who holds the chief authority over them.”

It had also its vice-presidents and other officers, en rôle, of distinguished merit, elected by suffrage, adleguntur suffragio druidum.' In those days they gave merit its due. No forced, or squeezing patronage to clan, or kin, or creed was there. No favour under the sun was there, as in the Ecole Politechnique of modern France, and in our own Eisteddfodau !!

Questions of deep import were discussed and adjudicated in these prehistoric literary reunions. Treasure them in your memories. Amongst them would be found, according to Diodorus Siculus and Cæsar: "Professors of different sciences, as that of astronomy, augury or astrology, geography, moral philosophy, ethics and divine disquisitions, lyric poetry, and musical compositions." What more do modern professorial curricula insist upon?

Of this learned assembly Pomponius Mela thus writes: "They profess to know the magnitude and figure of the earth and of the universe; the motion of the firmament and fixed stars; also that they have their own school of eloquence and professors of philosophy." Think of Cambridge, Greenwich, and their troiau!

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The same author also appears to be acquainted with the contents of some of the triads, for, in reference to the institute, he confirms the doctrine of the pre-existence and immortality of the soul inculcated by them in their schools to the vast numbers' of Cimbric or European youths who used to resort to them for doctrine and discipline, "ut forent ad bella meliores, æternas esse animas vitamque alteram ad manes." Contrast the tenets of Greece and Rome.

Taliesin, a most illustrious 'fellow' or ovate of this order, corroborates the external testimony of the outer world with regard to the doctrine of the metempsychosis, in the following allegorical, or symbolical, yet mysterious, passage:

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In this religious and astronomical formula, reference is distinctly made to the rhith or roth, form, or sign, i. e., the mutable guise, or external instability of the enaid, or anima, as having been a domiciled or zodiacal guest in various bodies, whether theogonic or heroogonic, whether celestial or terrestial, whether human or or animal in its symbolism.

The lux alma vita-the genial spark of life, had represented, during this oft-recurring state of transmigration, varied signs, or forms of intelligencies or of brute force. At one time that of a legislator, as dysgryfrith; at another that of a warrior or hunter with a sword in his hand, as cleddyf culfrith, as a measure of deified recompense for the display of certain patriotic achievements or warlike virtues. Sometimes even that of an aerial, tearful emotion,' as deigr yn awyr; at others that of an astronomer, as serwau syr. This floating essence of humanity would float along the Rhodle Huan poeth,' or 'Huan's scorching path,' (Huan being the bardic symbol of the haul, (from hau, to strew, and wl, what is fine and subtle,) the root of n-os, sol, or Phaeton (the latter possibly borrowed from Huan s epithet of poeth, or phoeth), on either side of Caer Guiddon ffaeth y nef,' or

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heaven's

luxuriant milky way.' Here the 'via lactea' is represented as a formation of gwiddon, or rotted and mited particles' among the Serwau Syr, the 'stellas ardentes,' or 'brilliant stars' in the atmospheric ethers, beyond y gyfan-drefn heulog,' or solar system, whether of an Orion or Oroian in aerial space above, or of a Dolffwn in the depths of oceanic life below.

"There is none like unto Al, O Jesherun !
"He bestrideth the heavens for thy help,

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"And for His own triumph the atmospheric æthers."
Deut. xxxiii, 26.

The expression 'bum deigr yn awyr,' fui lacryma in aura, seems also to indicate another doctrine which the world would scarcely expect to discover in druidical or paganistic tenets, and which subsequently constituted a part of the Pelasgic creed, namely, the doctrine of contrition and its consequent reward among the starry signs of heaven, as a 'being living in heaven in human form, a theogonic being.'

According to the opinion of a Greek historian, "tears shed in secret were deemed solemn acts of religion, as sincere evidences of contrition to appease the anger of heaven." In connection with this idea let us compare the Hebrew lament, “O that mine

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