[24] _G. B_. iii. 449; _Æn_. vi. 203, _et seq._
[25] See Professor Barrett's two works on 'the so-called Divining Rod,' in _Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research._
[29] Mr. Frazer notices that Pliny derived 'Druid' from Greek _drūs_, oak. 'He did not know that the Celtic word for oak was the same, _daur_, and that therefore Druid, in the sense of priest of the oak, was genuine Celtic, not borrowed from the Greek.' With other authorities Mr. Frazer cites J. Rhys's _Celtic Heathendom_, p. 221 _et seq._ Principal Rhys informs me that he is inclined to think that 'Druid' is of the same origin as the Celtic word for oak. Mr. Stokes seems to think otherwise, and to interpret _dru_ to be the equivalent to 'true,' and to make the word Druid mean 'soothsayer,' to which Principal Rhys sees phonetic objections. He himself sees the difficulty, in both theories, that they make the word 'Druid' Aryan, whereas the whole Druidical business may be non-Aryan and 'aboriginal,' Pictish, or whatever we like to call it.
[32] The story of mistletoe as the 'life-token' of the Hays of Errol (iii. 449) seems to rest on a scrap of recent verse, cut from a newspaper of unknown name and date. I suspect that it is from the pen (_circ_. 1822) of 'John Sobieski Stolberg Stuart,' _alias_ John Hay Allan, author of other apocryphal rhymes on the Hays of Errol, and of their genealogy.
[39] _Fortnightly Review_, April 1899, p. 652.
The provisional hypothesis by which I try to explain the early stages of religion may be stated in the words of a critic, Mr. Hartland. 'Apparently it is claimed that the belief in a supreme being came, in some way only to be guessed at, first in order of evolution, and was subsequently obscured and overlaid by belief in ghosts and in a pantheon of lesser divinities.'[1] I was led to these conclusions, first, by observing the reports of belief in a relatively supreme being and maker among tribes who do not worship ancestral spirits (Australians and Andamanese), and, secondly, by remarking the otiose unworshipped supreme being, often credited with the charge of future rewards and punishments, among polytheistic and ancestor-worshipping people too numerous for detailed mention. The supreme being among these races, in some instances a mere shadow of a children's tale, I conjectured to be a vague survival of such a thing as the Andamanese Puluga, or the Australian Baiame.