tween the price at the date of sale and that of delivery, it will readily be understood that during the few hours in each day when regular business is done, the Board of Trade is a lively corner. And it is a lively place. The Paris Bourse is a peaceful retreat compared with the Chicago Board of Trade when there is a "corner in wheat." Yet in the middle of their greatest excitement, they are ever ready for fun. If an unfortunate stranger in the balcony set apart for visitors who are not taken on the floor by a member commits the mistake of throwing himself back on his seat and putting his feet on the railing in front of him (a favourite attitude with Americans) every Broker on the floor forgets business, and turns round to yell " Boots, boots, boo-booboots!" until the astonished visitor, who usually has no conception that this is not a part of the mad performance he has been previously watching, either, more by accident than design, shifts the offending members to the floor, or, keeping them too long in the objectionable position, is gently but firmly expelled, for shocking the feelings of the gentlemen beneath. Such is the Chicago Board of Trade as it struck a stranger; but what of Chicago itself? We shall see in our next.

(To be continued.)

K. M'D.

THE LITERATURE OF THE CROFTER QUESTION.-In Good Words Sheriff Nicolson gives a graphic sketch of "The Last Cruise of the Lively;" and we note with special satisfaction the kindly and sympathetic tone in which he speaks of the crofters. Their representatives everywhere, he says, with occasional exceptions, merited the compliment which was paid to their predecessors by Sir John M'Neill in 1851, when he reported that they gave their evidence "with a politeness and delicacy of deportment that would have been graceful in any society, and such as, perhaps, no men of their class in any other country could have maintained in similar circumstances.' Sheriff Nicolson says "the only persons whom the chairman of the Commission had to admonish anywhere for objectionable expressions were not crofters but educated men.' Yet it is this valuable class of the community upon whom a leading Liberal journal [the Scotsman] is constantly pouring contempt and scorn, and who are driven to such extremities by the Highland lords of the soil, that there is no alternative for them save starvation or exile. "The Isle of Skye in 1882 and 1883," a new volume by Mr A. Mackenzie, of Inverness, gives a detailed account of evictions in that island which affected directly no fewer than seven hundred families, each, on an average, representing at least five persons, thus making a grand total of more than 3500 souls, not less than two thousand of whom were evicted, during the last half century, from the property of Macleod of Macleod. "What physical misery," exclaims Mr Mackenzie, "what agony of soul, these figures represent, it is impossible even to imagine!" Nor does this exhaust the woeful story; for a terrible amount of suffering has been indicted, apart altogether from the cases of expatriation, on the hundreds of poor people removed from one portion of the island to another-many of them robbed of their hill pasture, and left to comparative starvation, with their cattle, on wretchedly small and unprofitable patches among the barren rocks on the sea-shore. And all this misery and agony have been inflicted to gratify the inhuman selfishness of some two or three persons, who, by the mere accident of birth, enjoy a power which they could never have otherwise secured for themselves.— Christian Leader.

CELTIC

MYTHOLOGY.

BY ALEXANDER MACBAIN, M.A.

VII. DRUIDISM-(Continued.)

SUCH is the history of Druidism in Gaul and early Britain: of its course in Ireland we have no direct information. It is only when Christianity has been long established, and Druidism a thing of the remote past, that we have writers who speak of the Druids; and in their eyes the Druids were but magicians that attended the courts of the pagan kings. The lives of the pioneer saints, Patrick and Columba, are full of contests between themselves and the royal magicians, who are called in the Gaelic Druid and in the Latin versions Magi. But in all the numerous references to them in Irish chronicles and tales there is no hint given of Druidism being either a system of philosophy or religion the Druids of Irish story are mere magicians and diviners, sometimes only conjurors. But as such-as magicians-the Druids play a most important part in Irish pagan history, as chronicled by the long posterior Christian writers. From the primæval landing of Partholan with his three Druids, to the days of Columba, we have themselves and the bards exercising magic and divining powers. The second fabled settlers of Ireland, the Nemedians, meet the invading Fomorians with magic spells; but the fairy host of the Tuatha De Dannan are par excellence the masters of Druidic art. Their power over the forces of Natureover sea, wind, and storms—shows them plainly to be only degraded gods, who allow the sons of Miled to land after showing them their power and sovereignty as deities over the island. The kings and chiefs had Druids about them to interpret omens and to work spells; but there is no reference to these Druids being a priestly class, and their power was limited to the functions of mere divination and sorcery. Two of the most famous Druids were Cathbadh, Druid of Conchobar Mac Nessa, the instructor of Cuchulain, who, among many other things, foretells the fate of Deirdre and the sons of Uisnach, even before Deirdre was born ; and Mogh Ruith of Munster, who single-handed opposed Cor

mac and his Druids, and drove them by his magic fire and stormspells out of Munster. The Druids of King Loegaire oppose St Patrick with their magic arts; one of them causes snow to fall so thickly that men soon find themselves neck-deep in it, and at another time he brings over the land an Egyptian darkness that might be felt. But the saint defeats them, even on their own ground, much as Moses defeats the Egyptian magicians. St. Columba, in Adamnan's life of him, is similarly represented as overcoming the spells of the Northern Druids. Broichan, Druid to King Brude, caused such a storm and darkness on Loch-Ness that the navigation appeared impossible, until the saint gave orders that the sails should be unfurled and a start made. Then everything became calm and settled. We are also told in many instances how the Druids worked these spells. A wisp of hay, over which an incantation was made, when cast on a person, caused idiocy and deformity. The Druidic wand plays an important part, a blow from it causing transformations and spells. It must be remarked, too, that the wood used for wands and Druidic rites and fires was not the oak at all, as in Gaul: sacred wood among the Irish Druids would appear to have been the yew, hawthorn, and, more especially, the rowan tree. Divination was an important feature of Druidic accomplishments, and there were various forms of it. Pure Druidic divination sometimes consisted in watching the Druidic fire-how the smoke and flame went. Sometimes the Druid would chew a bit of raw flesh with incantation or “oration” and an invocation to the gods, and then generally the future was revealed to him. Sometimes, if this failed, he had to place his two hands upon his two cheeks and fall into a divine sleep, a method known as "illumination by the palms of the hands." Fionn used to chew his thumb when he wanted any supernatural knowledge. The bards, too, were diviners at times, a fact that would appear to show their ancient connection with the Druids. The bardic divination is known as "illumination by rhymes," when the bard in an ecstatic state pours forth a flood of poetry, at the end of which he brings out the particular fact that is required to be known. Connected with this is the power of poetic satire. If a man refused a gift, the bard could satirise him in such a way that personal injury would result, such as blisters and deformities.

Irish Druidism consists, therefore, merely of magic and divination; it is not a philosophy, nor a religion, nor a system. It is quite true that we have, at least, an echo now and then of the time when Druidism in Ireland and Scotland was something different, and when even human sacrifices were offered. Columba, in commencing the building of his church at Iona, addressed his followers in words which clearly point to human sacrifice. "It is good for us," says he, "that our roots should go under the earth. here; it is permitted that one of you should go under the clay of this island to hallow it." The story goes on to say that Odran arose readily, and spoke thus: "If thou shouldst take me, I am ready for that." Columba readily accepted his offer, and "then Odran went to heaven, and Columba founded the church of Hi.” It is said that a human being was slain at the foundation of Emain, the mythic capital of Ulster; and in Nennius we have a remarkable story told of King Vortigern. He was trying to build a castle on Snowdon, but somehow, though he gathered ever so much material, every time it was "spirited" away during the night. He sought counsel from his "magi" (the Irish translation calls them Druids), and they told him that he must find a child born without a father, and must put him to death, and sprinkle with his blood the ground where the castle was to stand. Nor is tradition of the present time silent on this matter. It is said that Tigh-a-chnuic, Kilcoy, in the Black Isle, had its foundation consecrated by the slaughter of a stranger who chanced to be passing when the house was to be built, but unfortunately his ghost used to haunt the house until he was able to disburden his woes to somebody, and he then disappeared.

The sum and result of our inquiry into Druidism may be given in the words of Professor Rhys :-" At the time of Cæsar's invasions, they were a powerful class of men, monopolizing the influence of soothsayers, magicians, and priests. But in Gaul, under the faint rays of the civilization of Marseilles and other Mediterranean centres, they seem to have added to their other characters that of philosophers, discoursing to the youths, whose education was entrusted to them, on the stars and their movements, on the world and its countries, on the nature of things, and the power of the gods." Whether the doctrine of the transmigration of souls was really of native origin or borrowed from

the Greeks, must remain an open question. Some think it unlikely that the central doctrine of Druidism should have been derived so late in the history of the nation, or derived at all, from a foreign source, and they appeal to the fact that Britain was the home of Druidism, a country which could have had little intercourse with Marseilles. But in connection with this idea of its British origin, it must be remembered that at a certain stage of culture, nations are apt to consider their neighbours, provided they are in a lower stage of civilization, much more religious than themselves. The Romans always believed the Etrurians to be more versed in religious matters than themselves. So, too, the Gauls probably looked on British Druidism, with its "pristine grimness" of practices, as the source of their own, while in reality their own was doubtless an independent but more enlightened development. Professor Rhys considers Druidism to be of a non-Aryan character, and calls it the religion of the pre-Celtic tribes, from the Baltic to Gibraltar. Now, in what we have left. us recorded of Druidism there is absolutely nothing that can be pointed to as non-Aryan. The strong priestly caste presented to us in Cæsar, as divided off from the nobles and the commons, can be somewhat paralleled in the Hinduism of India with its rigidly priestly caste of Brahmans, who monopolised all religious rites. And Brahmanism is an Aryan religion. Among the Gauls, from the superstitious cast of their minds, a priestly class was sure to rise to a position of supreme power. Their human sacrifices can be matched, in some degree, by actual instances of such, and by rites which pointed to them as previously existent, among other Aryan nations, including those of Greece and Rome; only here, as before, the impressionable and superstitious character of the Gauls drove them to greater excesses. The doctrine of the transmigration of the soul is a tenet of both Brahmans and Buddhists, of Aryan India, and it found its classical development in the views of the Greek Pythagoras. The position and fame of the Druids as magicians is, as Pliny points out, of the same nature as those of the Magi of Aryan Persia. Some again think it absurd that if the Druids were such philosophers, as they are represented to have been, they would be so superstitious as to practise human sacrifices, and other wild rites. But there is no incongruity in at once being philosophic and superstitious;