| Well let's see --
The Druids were a Celtic group of priests, who supervised shrines,
sacrad sites, and sacrifices (including, apparently, human sacrifice),
kept lore, educated the nobles and settled disputes. They believed
that it was improper to commit lore to writing. Some acted as scribes
using the Greek alphabet. Early in their history their sacrad spots
were associated with groves, especially with oak groves, but by the
time the Romans came this was rarely the case. They apparently did
*not* do much divination, since that was the responsibility of a different
social group (whose name escapes me). Most of what we know of the
Druids comes by way of the writings of Julius Caeser.
Ogham was an alphabet used in inscriptions, much as runes were. It
was a true alphabet in that each letter represented a sound which were
put together to form words. There is scholarly disagreement as to
whether it was derived from the Latin alphabet or from the Eutruscan.
Existing samples are short inscriptions, words or phrases, most of
which are peoples names. They were put on stones, on pieces of wood
and occasionally on shields or other battle gear. Most samples are
accompanied by Latin transliterations. There were a number of variants,
including the "tree Ogham". Their exact use is obscure but Graves in
"The White Goddess" claims to have discovered by direct poetic
revelation as being a secret language of poetry (which, given Graves
view of the poet as mystic and magician, would be consistent with
divinitory use). Could be I suppose.
Topher
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| Just out of curiosity, I was wondering if any of you folks have
happened upon any one of three books written by Havard professor Barry
Fell. They are entitled: "America B.C."; "Bronze Age America"; and,
"Saga America".
In the books, Fell does a great job in linking evidence found through-
out the eastern portion of the U.S. - and especially in and around
New England - to ancient Celtic, Phoenician, Iberian, and even Egypt-
ian origins. Offhand, one of most popular sites in the area is known
as "Mystery Hill" in Salem, N.H.(not ten minutes away from where I'm
sitting here writing this!) Mystery Hill is renowned for it's stone-
henge like solstice observatory, labyrinthine tunnels hewn of granite,
and sacrificial altar. In fact, above the opening to one of several
small temples is inscribed in ogam: "Dedicated to Baal of the Canaan-
ites".
Paul.
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I glanced over "America B.C." once at a friends house, but wasn't
interested enough at the time to read it. I've been to some so-
called "stone huts" in Woodstock, VT a couple of times and got
weird vibes and photos. I was told (by a rather unsavory source)
that the huts were holding pens for the people that were to be
sacrificed and that the nearby hills were haunted. The ghosts
had even come close to driving off local woodcutters by driving
their trucks around and such. I don't believe that, but it is
an interesting place to check out. I'll give a tour if anyone's
interested.
Guy
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