that the Druids had or had not sway over them, but the presumption is that they had.  Nor is there any historical evidence to show that the Druids were originally a non-Celtic priesthood.  Everywhere they appear as the supreme and dominant priesthood of the Celts, and the priests of a conquered people could hardly have obtained such power over the conquerors.  The relation of the Celts to the Druids is quite different from that of conquerors, who occasionally resort to the medicine-men of the conquered folk because they have stronger magic or greater influence with the autochthonous gods.  The Celts did not resort to the Druids occasionally; ex hypothesi they accepted them completely, were dominated by them in every department of life, while their own priests, if they had any, accepted this order of things without a murmur.  All this is incredible.  The picture drawn by Caesar, Strabo, and others of the Druids and their position among the Celts as judges, choosers of tribal chiefs and kings, teachers, as well as ministers of religion, suggests rather that they were a native Celtic priesthood, long established among the people.

Sir G.L.  Gomme supports the theory that the Druids were a pre-Celtic priesthood, because, in his opinion, much of their belief in magic as well as their use of human sacrifice and the redemption of one life by another, is opposed to “Aryan sentiment.”  Equally opposed to this are their functions of settling controversies, judging, settling the succession to property, and arranging boundaries.  These views are supported by a comparison of the position of the Druids relatively to the Celts with that of non-Aryan persons in India who render occasional priestly services to Hindu village communities.[1008] Whether this comparison of occasional Hindu custom with Celtic usage two thousand years ago is just, may be questioned.  As already seen, it was no mere occasional service which the Druids rendered to the Celts, and it is this which makes it difficult to credit this theory.  Had the Celtic house-father been priest and judge in his own clan, would he so readily have surrendered his rights to a foreign and conquered priesthood?  On the other hand, kings and chiefs among the Celts probably retained some priestly functions, derived from the time when the offices of the priest-king had not been differentiated.  Caesar’s evidence certainly does not support the idea that “it is only among the rudest of the so-called Celtic tribes that we find this superimposing of an apparently official priesthood.”  According to him, the power of the Druids was universal in Gaul, and had their position really corresponded to that of the pariah priests of India, occasional priests of Hindu villages, the determined hostility of the Roman power to them because they wielded such an enormous influence over Celtic thought and life, is inexplainable.  If, further, Aryan sentiment was so opposed to Druidic customs, why did Aryan Celts so readily accept the