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Combines fact and folklore in exploring the history and culture of the mysterious Celtic priests.
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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Stuart Piggott probably did not realise at the time of writing this book that it would remain the finest and most scrupulous record of all the evidence we have on the Druids for the next 37 odd years. The study of Druids is restricted to the evidence available, which is, given a background knowledge of Iron Age European societies, fragmentary enough to be covered completely in one decent reading session. The only time this book strays away from historical references is to detail some of the archaeological evidence for religious or spiritual practices of the period without doing anything so rash as to immediately link anything considered 'ritual' to the Druids themselves.
If you can get past chapter one, which deals with the self imposed limitations of interpreting such fragmentary data, and is a little hard going if you're looking for immediate facts and figures, you will learn a great deal about the current state of knowledge about the Druids even if, as I said at the begining, the data is a minimum of 37 years old.
More books should be written with the same level of self imposed rigidity.
If you can get past chapter one, which deals with the self imposed limitations of interpreting such fragmentary data, and is a little hard going if you're looking for immediate facts and figures, you will learn a great deal about the current state of knowledge about the Druids even if, as I said at the begining, the data is a minimum of 37 years old.
More books should be written with the same level of self imposed rigidity.
32 of 37 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is an excellent introduction to the druids. It is a serious but enjoyable book for anyone interested in the druids or the Celtic world. It is not a new-age mystical book and therefore deserves reading by all who take this area seriously.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Stuart Piggott, a widely respected and authoritative archaeologist, sets out to produce a book which will act as a scholarly survey of druidism for the intelligent layman. Just over half the book is taken up with the druids of the late Iron Age.
The first chapter sets out the sources and discusses their reliability and the problems in relating them to one another. Piggott then methodically takes the reader through the archaeological record, in a survey generously illustrated with photos and maps, all helpfully keyed to the text by margin numbers. He is at pains to point out the difficulties in assessing how far the wealth of monuments and artefacts can be tied to druidic ritual. Then we are taken through the contemporary written sources. Here he emphasises the problems in separating the classical authors' own political agendas from their description of druidic practise, especially in relation to human sacrifice. Though the prose is dense, we are left with a complex and rewarding understanding of the subject.
The last 40% of the text is taken up with the "afterhistory" of druidism, from the rediscovery of druidism during the antequarian enthusiasms of the 16th and 17th centuries, through the neo-druidism of Iolo Morganwg (Edward Williams) and Dr William Price, to the 1960s. As an archaeologist, Piggott finds the claims of neodruidism to represent the true spirit of ancient Celtic religion irritating and self-deluding, and in describing the later proliferation of sub-cults he is reduced to occasional outbursts of exasperation. In the intervening years since publication, neo-druidism has come on leaps and bounds, and a whole sub-culture of paganism has evolved. Readers coming from this background will probably hate this book, although the scholarship in the first part is not contaminated by the author's distaste for later developments.
This would perhaps have been a better book if Piggott had restricted himself to the Iron Age Druids. He could then have taken the space to make the text more accessible for the general reader, and indulged in and more illustrations. There is enough material in the subject for a whole book to be written on the rise of modern druidism from the antequarian movement on, but Piggott is probably not the best man to write it, and it asks for a different kind of scholarship to do it justice.
The first chapter sets out the sources and discusses their reliability and the problems in relating them to one another. Piggott then methodically takes the reader through the archaeological record, in a survey generously illustrated with photos and maps, all helpfully keyed to the text by margin numbers. He is at pains to point out the difficulties in assessing how far the wealth of monuments and artefacts can be tied to druidic ritual. Then we are taken through the contemporary written sources. Here he emphasises the problems in separating the classical authors' own political agendas from their description of druidic practise, especially in relation to human sacrifice. Though the prose is dense, we are left with a complex and rewarding understanding of the subject.
The last 40% of the text is taken up with the "afterhistory" of druidism, from the rediscovery of druidism during the antequarian enthusiasms of the 16th and 17th centuries, through the neo-druidism of Iolo Morganwg (Edward Williams) and Dr William Price, to the 1960s. As an archaeologist, Piggott finds the claims of neodruidism to represent the true spirit of ancient Celtic religion irritating and self-deluding, and in describing the later proliferation of sub-cults he is reduced to occasional outbursts of exasperation. In the intervening years since publication, neo-druidism has come on leaps and bounds, and a whole sub-culture of paganism has evolved. Readers coming from this background will probably hate this book, although the scholarship in the first part is not contaminated by the author's distaste for later developments.
This would perhaps have been a better book if Piggott had restricted himself to the Iron Age Druids. He could then have taken the space to make the text more accessible for the general reader, and indulged in and more illustrations. There is enough material in the subject for a whole book to be written on the rise of modern druidism from the antequarian movement on, but Piggott is probably not the best man to write it, and it asks for a different kind of scholarship to do it justice.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
A Druidical Curate's Egg ...
Good in parts. Stuart Piggott was an archaeologist, so it should come as no surprise that the best parts of the book are those that deal with archaeology. Read more
Published on 25 Jan 2010 by Greywolf
A somewhat dry, scholarly account
This book (successfully) seeks to give as much insight as possible into the Druids and their world within the parameters of the very limited archaelogical and textual evidence... Read more
Published on 25 Sep 2009 by Pablo
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