383. Romans vs Druids: The War For Celtic Britain (Ep 1)

Summary

Empire: World History — Episode 383 Romans vs Druids: The War For Celtic Britain (Ep 1) Date: August 2, 2026
Hosts: William Dalrymple & Anita Anand
Guest: Professor Ronald Hutton, historian, University of Bristol

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Episode Overview

The episode launches a new mini-series chronicling the sacred history of pre-Roman Britain and Ireland, exploring the mysterious religions before Christianity and Rome. Dalrymple and Anand, with expert guest Professor Ronald Hutton, investigate ancient monuments, rituals, and especially the enigmatic Druids, examining the mythic versus the historic, the impact of invaders, and how religious traditions transform but leave echoes in the landscape and cultural memory.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Mysteries of Ancient Britain and Ireland

(03:00–04:41)

• The episode sets out to explore spiritual life before Christianity or Rome: gods of rivers, groves, and the dead; a landscape alive with sacred sites and rituals, sometimes involving human sacrifice.
• Over six episodes, the series promises to map "layering" of religious life over a thousand years: from Stonehenge and barrows to the Druids and the coming of the Vikings.

2. Monuments of the Ancients — Long Barrows and Megaliths

(04:43–07:30)

• Long Barrows (ancient burial mounds) are Europe's first widespread architectural tradition, stretching from Spain to Scandinavia, c. 8,000–5,000 years ago.
• These structures housed remains of the dead, serving both as tombs and religious monuments, creating an eye-catching presence in the landscape.
• Transition and Cataclysm: Around 3000 BCE, old barrow traditions end abruptly. Chambers are blocked or sealed, indicating a major religious transformation — perhaps a dramatic “Reformation.”
• The Victorian idea of the "Beaker People" replacing previous cultures is now questioned: DNA evidence shows a population shift c. 2500 BCE, but there's no sign of trauma or invasion archaeologically.

Quote:
"It's probably a religious reformation equivalent to that which swept Christianity in the 16th century."
— Prof. Ronald Hutton (07:30)

3. Genetics, Linguistics, and Indo-European Invasions

(10:36–12:42)

• The Indo-European language spread remains mysterious—no consensus between archaeology, linguistics, and genetic findings.
• Example: The Gundestrup Cauldron (Denmark), once thought solely Celtic, likely made on the Black Sea, features Indian artistic influences (notably, a Shiva-like yogic figure/elephant).

Quote:
"The original designs... were found in the Indus Valley. We're talking about Pakistan."
— Prof. Ronald Hutton (12:42)

4. Stonehenge: Logo in Stone

(13:58–15:21)

• Stonehenge arose after the barrow age, combining ditches, wood, and megaliths—a "unique, logo" monument made via "demented, megalomaniac carpenters."
• Its complexity and distinctiveness mean it was never repeated.

Quote:
"It's created by demented megalomaniac woodworkers... It's so impossibly difficult that nobody tried it again."
— Prof. Ronald Hutton (14:10)

5. Druids: Popular Imagination vs Historical Evidence

(15:21–16:34)

• Druids are not directly linked to Stonehenge; this is modern myth. Druidic tradition likely arose far later than the megalithic builders.
• Modern pagans adapt Iron Age "calendars" and festivals for relevance today; some celebrations (Beltane, Samhain) truly trace to ancient roots.
• Revivalist practices blend modern needs (feminism, environmentalism) with ancient motifs.

6. The Power and Persistence of Stonehenge

(17:59–19:55)

• Stonehenge remains a pilgrimage site for both curiosity and spiritual purposes. Its appeal connects people today with imagined ancestors and with nature’s cycles.

7. Sacred Waters and Rivers — Cross-Cultural Echoes

(21:08–23:09)

• British sacred sites focused on specific rivers, lakes, bogs—not all water.
• Offerings (shields, weapons) in rivers like the Thames parallel Indian river veneration.
• Such rites are mostly dated to 1000 BCE—Romanization/Christianization changed practices.

Quote:
"There are very clearly bits of water... sacred and others which are not."
— Prof. Ronald Hutton (21:59)

8. Bog Bodies: Ritual, Execution, or Sacrifice?

(24:28–27:31)

• Bogs preserve human bodies with remarkable detail (e.g., the Irish man whose nipples were cut off), fueling speculation.
• Explanations include: executed enemies, criminals, or human sacrifices to deities.
• All possibilities remain equally probable due to lack of definitive evidence.

Quote:
"Actually, all three of those explanations have equal probability. But there's a tendency to home in on human sacrifice because it's sexiest."
— Prof. Ronald Hutton (27:31)

9. The Otherworld in Celtic Beliefs

(27:31–29:54)

• The “Otherworld” — a land of fairies, spirits, or gods — appears across Celtic and other world belief systems.
• Irish medieval literature describes various routes to the Otherworld (by boat, entering mounds or hills), and its existence seemed obvious to ancient and even modern Irish authors.

10. Medieval Literature vs Pre-Christian Truth

(31:37–32:31)

• Irish medieval sources, though vivid, were written by Christian scribes and may be only partly based on earlier oral traditions.
• Similarities across the British Isles are inferred but not proven.

11. The Druids in Roman Eyes — Resistance, Propaganda, and Myth

(33:15–39:46)

• Druids, as described by Roman sources, were spiritual leaders, magicians, and keepers of knowledge.
• Romans attacked them as both dangerous resistors and human-sacrificers (see Tacitus on the sacking of Anglesey, AD 60).
• Roman and Greek sources are unreliable; much is “make believe,” serving propaganda.
• Mistletoe enters Druidic lore primarily via Pliny the Elder, writing about southern France, not Britain.

Quote:
"We can't trust a word that any Greek or Roman writes about the Druids... although everything may be correct."
— Prof. Ronald Hutton (34:54)

12. Bog Bodies and Mistletoe

(39:46–40:39)

• The famous “Lindow Man,” found with mistletoe pollen in his stomach, suggests a possible but unproven sacrificial link.

13. The Wicker Man Legend

(40:39–42:54)

• The iconic “wicker man” sacrifice is described in only two possibly derivative sources, Julius Caesar’s “Gallic Wars” (possibly added posthumously) and Strabo. Historical truth is dubious but powerful in modern imagination.

14. The Fate of the Druids in Ireland

(42:54–44:18)

• “Druid” means “expert in religion/magic.” Druids in Ireland or Gaul may not have had the same organization or functions. Irish medieval tales often use “druid” as shorthand for magician, with no clear link to actual pagan priesthoods.
• Any notion of continuity is speculative.

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• On barrow closures:
  “The mounds are not just deserted, the chambers are actually blocked up and in some cases very carefully closed against anybody trying to get in ever again.”
  — Prof. Ronald Hutton (07:30)

• On Indo-European language spread:
  “The answer is, we at present have no idea. So it’s open season on the facts.”
  — Prof. Ronald Hutton (10:58)

• On the "Otherworld":
  "Human beings across the planet believe in other worlds, in the sense of worlds in which spirits or deities live ... A lot of peoples think that worlds are on different levels." — Prof. Ronald Hutton (27:41)

• On history vs myth:
  “It’s so frustrating... there’s arrows pointing in certain directions. But we can’t say with certainty...”
  — William Dalrymple (32:31)

• On historical sources:
  “We can believe the Greeks and Romans when they talk about themselves ... [but] there’s no absolute continuity between ancient and modern pagans.”
  — Prof. Ronald Hutton (19:20, 38:12)

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Memorable Moments

• Shiva figure on a Celtic cauldron:
  The team’s surprise at Indian yogic imagery appearing on a “Celtic” artifact (12:42), hinting at vast pre-historic networks of ideas.

• Mistletoe & lore:
  The story of harvesting rare mistletoe on oak with golden sickles (38:12), a detail that continues to enchant—though may be legend.

• Tacitus’ epic scene:
  The only ancient account of Druids in Britain (36:06): robed figures, women with flaming torches, and the terror of Roman soldiers.

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Segment Timestamps (Key Content Only)

• 03:00 — Series overview and plan
• 04:43 — Introduction to Professor Ronald Hutton; Longbarrow significance
• 07:30 — The Beaker people, DNA, and “cat among pigeons”
• 10:36 — Indo-European spread and the Gundestrup/Indian connection
• 13:58 — Stonehenge’s phases and uniqueness
• 15:21 — Druid myths and modern pagan revivals
• 17:59 — Stonehenge’s modern spiritual appeal
• 21:08 — Sacred rivers and water offerings (British and Indian parallels)
• 24:28 — Bog bodies: preservation, ritual, and speculation
• 27:31 — The Otherworld—cosmology, fairy lore, Irish myth
• 31:37 — Use and limitations of Irish medieval literature
• 33:15 — Who were the Druids?
• 34:19 — Roman destruction of Druids (Anglesey, AD 60)
• 38:12 — Mistletoe, Pliny, and credibility of ancient sources
• 40:39 — The Wicker Man—myth or history?
• 42:54 — Druid roles in Ireland, legacy and meaning

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Tone & Takeaways

• The hosts and guest combine scholarly caution with enthusiastic curiosity, constantly balancing evidence with legend and acknowledging gaps, unanswered questions, and the allure of the unknown.
• The conversation demystifies popular images of Druids and ancient rites, but highlights how fragments of forgotten religion still shape, inspire, and intrigue today.

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Next Episode Teaser

The journey continues with the arrival of the Romans, the shifting religious landscape, and tangible evidence from Hadrian’s Wall—joined by historian Eleanor Barraclough.

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Transcript

[William Dalrymple]

If you want access to bonus episodes, reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat, community discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast ad, free listening, and a weekly newsletter, sign up to empire [e-mail].

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[William Dalrymple]

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[Anita Anand]

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[Professor Ronald Hutton]

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[Anita Anand]

Okay, I like this one, too. I'm rocking with it.

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[Anita Anand]

So we've got some very exciting news for you. We've sold out our first show, but we've got a second show at the Rest Is Fest in September.

[William Dalrymple]

And we have a brilliant lineup. Incredibly topical one, too. We're calling it Three Ayatollahs, An Iranian Dynasty.

[Anita Anand]

Delighted to say we're going to be joined by a great friend of the show, Ali Ansari, one of Britain's foremost experts on Iran Iranian history. He is an excellent storyteller. Ali, just tell us, what are we going to be chatting about?

[Ali Ansari]

Well, we will be exploring big questions like how has the influence of the Ayatollah shaped Iran since the 1979 revolution? Does the Islamic Republic's grip appear to be fracturing? And what role have other nations played in shaping Iran's fate?

[William Dalrymple]

And we're going to unpack one of the most fascinating and urgent stories in the world right now as the regime faces economic pressures, regional setbacks, and a disillusioned younger generation. But in many ways, a revitalized Revolutionary Guards Corps. What comes next for a great civilization that has outlasted many, many empires?

[Anita Anand]

Ali, we always, always love having you on this podcast. Cannot wait to have you join us on stage.

[Ali Ansari]

And I can't wait to get into the discussion.

[Anita Anand]

You can expect sharp analysis, you can expect vivid storytelling, and of course, you can expect the usual chaos that comes about when we're on stage chatting to each other.

[William Dalrymple]

The Rest is fest runs from the 4th to the 6th of September at London's South Bank Center.

[Anita Anand]

General sale is on now just head to southbankcentre.co.uk to find out more. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan.

[William Dalrymple]

And me, William D Rimple. And today we start a new series on the earliest gods and religions of the British Isles. Before Christianity, before Rome, before even the written word, the islands of Britain and Ireland were alive with gods. Gods of rivers and sacred springs, gods of the hilltop and the sacred grove, gods who demanded the most beautiful objects to be thrown into bogs and into water, and sometimes who demanded human beings. We're going to present an epic story over six episodes, taking us from Stonehenge through the Iron Age druids, through the painted Picts of Scotland, Saint Patrick in Ireland, and finally the arrival of the Vikings, their dragonships and the gods of the north.

[Anita Anand]

This story's got everything in it, I have to say. It is the story of Britain and Ireland and it isn't one of transformation, but really, you know, sort of the layering, several layers, one on top of the each other, across more than a thousand years. So in today's episode, we're going inside the mysterious sacred worlds of early Britain and Ireland. Britain's earliest religious buildings called long barrows. Then Stonehenge, the otherworld, the bog bodies, the pagan festivals, and of course, the Druids. And we do so with the finest guide available, Professor Ronald Hutton of the University of Bristol, author of Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles, Blood and Mistletoe, the history of the Druids in Britain and the Druids. Simply the Druids. Ronald, welcome to Empire. Delighted to have you.

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

I'm delighted to be with you both.

[William Dalrymple]

Ronald, 20 years ago, you and I met outside Longbarrow at West Kennet in Wiltshire, near Silbury Hill, near Avebury. And I've never forgotten our meeting and how you taught me something I hadn't realised that there was at West Kellet not one period and one religion, but two religions in conflict. So, Roland, maybe you could just explain to us what is West Kennett? Longbarrow, to those who haven't had a chance to see it yet? And what indeed is a Longbarrow? And when were they built?

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

A long barrow is the local southern English name for a particular type of monument that represents the first really widespr architectural tradition of the entire human race. There are around 40,000 of these structures still surviving in a great arc along the western seaboard of Europe, from southeastern Spain right round through the British Isles and Netherlands to southern Scandinavia and northern Germany. And this enormous area is covered in them from about 8,000 years ago to about 5,000 years ago. And that's before you have any widespread ceremonial architecture over any other region of the globe. So they matter.

[William Dalrymple]

So tell us what people did with them and what was the religious and spiritual world that they're associated with over

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

such a big area? There's an indigenous enormous variety both in the nature of the structures and what happened there. The basic idea with which people play is to build a chamber of huge stone, sometimes huge timbers covered by a mound that is usually much bigger than is needed to cover the chamber, in other words, which makes a statement in the landscape. And you usually find dead human beings or bits of them in the chamber. So at basis, this is a religion which has mediated at least partly through the dead and which creates enormous structures to which the eye is drawn wherever they're made.

[Anita Anand]

So, Ronald, I mean, I remember at school going on trips and looking at mounds and very sort of serious white haired teachers saying, well, you know, these long barrows, they're all sealed up. And, you know, it was the Beaker people that did it. The Beaker People. What's done it now? First of all, who are the Beaker people? And second of all, why would they seal up these barrows? And third of all, I think you've got something of an intellectual cat thrown among the pigeons when it comes to the Beaker people as well.

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

Okay, I'm a gentle self, so I don't throw cats among pigeons. It's bad both for the cats and the pigeons. What I can say is that for sure, the religion of the Long Barrow people and of this huge tradition of great mounds and internal megalithic chambers comes to a halt at different places, different times. But it really grinds to a halt round about 3,000 before the common or Christian era, and certainly in southern Britain. This is quite a traumatic change because the mounds are not just deserted, the chambers are actually blocked up and in some cases very carefully closed against anybody trying to get in ever again. This is probably because of a religious reformation equivalent to that which swept Christianity in the 16th century. We used to be told, well, we were told by the Victorians that this was the work of an invading force called the Beaker People, who brought a new cultural package like big drinking vessels and metals and stone circles and urban circles and so on. The Victorians thought that everything was due to invasions by new and superior races with new and superior technologies, because this was exactly the treatment the Victorians themselves were meting out to indigenous peoples all over the world as part of the imperialism with which both of you are historically so deeply interested. We, in the 1990s in Britain tended to abandon this idea largely because the changes associated with the so called Beaker people proved to have turned up in this country really slowly, spread over about a thousand years instead of arriving altogether. And the bodies you find in the burial places don't look ethnically much different from each other. However, there really is a cat among the pigeons at present, produced by geneticists, the DNA specialists who claim to have found that round about halfway through the third millennium, we're talking round about 2500 BC or BC, there's a genetic makeover. In other words, most of the people in Britain seem to be replaced by foreigners. The trouble is, there's no sign of invasion, no sign of warfare, no sign of trauma, no sign of any change in the way people live or worship, no sign of big change in their technology. So whatever this cataclysm is, it doesn't measure up to the archaeology and we're still trying to get our heads around it. So the message is, since the 1990s, the Beaker people are out and this has nothing to do with me.

[William Dalrymple]

How does this all relate to the waves of Indo European language speakers who seem to spread out from, you know, start off on the steppe and one lot of heading down to India and Iran, while others are crossing Anatolia into Western Europe? Where do this linguistic map fit into the DNA in the archaeology?

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

The answer is we at present have no idea. So it's open season on the facts. What we can say is that Indo European languages do engulf most of the Old World, but there's big argument over when. Some think they arrived with the long barriers with the megalithic tombs, others put them as late as the first millennium BC or bce, and there's no consensus. What we can say is that by the first millennium you have not just this linguistic zone which stretches all the way from the Far east to the Atlantic seaboard, but you have a wonderful exchange of art and ideas. And my great piece of evidence here

[William Dalrymple]

would be the Gundestdrop Cauldron, which I've seen in Copenhagen.

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

Yes, yes, that's right. It's found in a bog in Denmark, which is why it's in Copenhagen. It was said until recently to be a supreme example of Celtic art, because there are some similarities with Celtic designs. But we've got a double whammy now with it. First, the metallurgy shows it was made probably in the Ukraine, it's definitely on the shores of the Black Sea, and then traded westwards. And second, We've always been a bit puzzled by a goddess like figure on the side of it with the weird beast beside her who looks like an ele. And we're now sure that that's because it is an elephant. The original designs for some of the pictures and the cauldrons were found in the Indus Valley. We're talking about Pakistan.

[William Dalrymple]

And they get very excited about this in India because it's the figure of Shiva, isn't it?

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

Exactly.

[William Dalrymple]

The lord of the beasts, surrounded by these beasts and sitting in a yogic position.

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

That's it. I'm wearing pyjamas. You've got it perfectly.

[William Dalrymple]

I'm wearing mine now.

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

I'm dead impressed. You have perfect dedication to the subcontinent.

[Anita Anand]

Don't encourage him, Ron. Do not encourage him, Ronald. But, you know, if you've got that Indian influence, which it's just mind blowing that you'd have elephants there in the carving. Are there other parallels that you found between Brahminic traditions and, say, Druidic traditions in England?

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

The simple answer is we don't know enough about the Druidic traditions to say. But what we can say is if artistic designs travel with great precision across the highest mountains in the world and the vast open steppes of Eurasia as far as the Black Sea, then stories and ideas are going to travel even more easily because you don't actually have to pack them and carry them. So there's a huge amount of super racial, super cultural transmission going on across the old world before our bit of it gets anywhere near history.

[William Dalrymple]

And where does Stonehenge fit into this picture? Because we all know there are many different phases of Stonehenge. This big reformation that you talked about happens in the middle, doesn't it, between two phases?

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

Well, it happens at the beginning, which is why we get a Stonehenge at all. What people do when they give up making Meg tombs and communing with the dead inside them is to get out in the open air and worship inside circles of whatever happens to be easiest to hand. To make them in soft soil without big stones, you simply dig a ditch and pile up a circular bank. In areas where you have lots of trees, you put up rings of timber posts, and where you have big rocks lying around handy, you put them up on end and create a stone circle. And Stonehenge comes in. In this tradition, it has all three. It has the bank, it has the timbers, and eventually it has the stone circle. But the thing about Stonehenge is it's unique, it's a logo, nothing else like it. It's created by demented megalomaniac woodworkers, carpenters who take enormous stones and shape them, smooth them, and fit them together as if they were timbers. It's a brilliant idea. It's so impossibly difficult that nobody tried it again.

[Anita Anand]

Can I just ask, you know, I'm really struck by something you said just a moment ago, saying we really don't know very much about the Druidic traditions in popular culture. You always have Druids dancing around Stonehenge. You know, they're very much sort of wound together. You're saying, well, we don't know that. Or you're saying, no, that's not happening.

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

I'm saying, we don't know that it might have happened. Problem is, the Druids are the common names in Celtic languages for the priests and magicians who are in charge of Northwestern European society. When history begins, and before we had a realization of how immensely long prehistory is, we assume that anything prehistoric must therefore have been their work. But now you're going back over thousands and thousands of years with dramatic changes in the nature of monuments and therefore belief systems, it's most unlikely that the same kinds of feng shui with the same beliefs would have been around in the year zero in the commonal Christian reckoning than were about 3,000 years before.

[Anita Anand]

I mean, recently, New Age pagans who do believe very much that they are the inheritors of whatever the Druidic tradition might have been, they've embraced something called the Iron Age calendar, festivals, you know, celebrating things like Sir Awwen. Is that the way I say it? It's around Halloween. I've probably massacred the pronunciation of that. What is the real history behind the pagan calendar? And can you maybe talk us through some of the different festivals in the year?

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

Okay, Samhain, which is Irish, is Halloween, and it's the Irish name for the ancient festival that underlies Halloween. It's one of eight festivals which modern pagans celebrate, and six of those, that's the solstices, midsummer, midwinter, and the feast that open seasons, the beginning of spring, summer, autumn and winter are very ancient. The odd ones out are the equinoxes, which seem to have been less generally observed in ancient Europe, but are added at the present day for the sake of symmetry. And they work very well like that. So we now at the present day have the solstices and equinoxes and the quarter days that begin the seasons. And as said, at least six of those are really old and have an immense amount of. Of History and folklore attached to them.

[Anita Anand]

Ronald, why do you think it still has such currency? Stonehenge people still, you know, at the time of the equinox or the solstice, they beat a path to this particular Stonehenge stone circle.

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

Well, number one, it's the most famous prehistoric monument in the world. Number two, it's incredibly accessible, just off the A303, very nice for the home counties. Number three, there's a tremendous contemporary wish for reconnection with fundamentals, with community, with nature, with the land. And Stonehenge enables all three. It's a place in which people can worship as ancestors did up to around 5,000 years ago. There's a great spirit buzz there on solstice night. Lots of drumming, dancing, wonderful costumes, and a sense of linking together horizontally with everybody else who's there and vertically with things, whatever they were, that happened there a long time ago.

[William Dalrymple]

There's no historic link between either the Victorian Druids that are still around today and the ceremonies that the. That happened there historically. Or would you again sit out on that one?

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

We don't know what ceremonies happened there prehistorically at all. We have to imagine it, which we're entitled to do, even if we come up with different answers. There's no absolute continuity between ancient and modern pagans, but modern pagans are very sensibly reviving and have revived various images and ideas from the ancient world with relevance to modern needs like feminism, environmentalism and personal growth. They do serve those rather well in

[Anita Anand]

this sort of modern Druidic tradition, if you like. I mean, you know, there's talk of Beltane, the Great Fire Festivals. When you drive, they say you used to drive cattle between two fires for purification before taking them out to summer pasture. Are you saying actually that's a. A retrospective projection? Because we don't know.

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

No, it's not that. Some of the customs carried on are genuinely old, and there are some old customs at most of the festivals. These are recorded way back to the Middle Ages, often the early Middle Ages, sometimes in the ancient world. So that's part of the effect I spoke of, of taking genuinely ancient ideas and images and practices and making them relevant for a modern world. People these days who celebrate the opening of summer May Day, Beltane and Irish, do not mostly drive livestock between two fires, but they do accept the idea of fire as an exciting and purifying element. And they do often jump over the fires hand in hand for luck and for love, as people did long ago when they were also driving livestock around them.

[William Dalrymple]

Now you were Talking about these strange links with much, much further east. And one of these things seems to be this belief in sacred rivers. Now, obviously, that's something that's very current in India today. I live near the Yamuna and the Ganges. I went to the Kumbh Mela last year. Millions of people turning up to dunk themselves in rivers. And are we right to see echoes of that in. When we go to the British Museum and we see the batter she shield which someone deposited in the Thames 2,000 years ago, is that the same sort of body of ideas that a river is something that is alive and deserves worship and presence, whether it's coconuts or whether it's Iron Age shields, is there a link or are they just two completely different things?

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

I think there's such a strong link. It can also be called a complete identity with both. However, as in India and elsewhere, sacred waters are rather particular. It's not any river in Britain in which people deposit huge numbers of offerings. It's selected rivers in England flowing east, like the Thames and the Wyvern and the Thyme. It's also selected small lakes in Wales and selected lakes and bogs in Scotland. So there are very clearly bits of water which for some reason or another are sacred and others which are not. But also the veneration of water in particular in Britain is period specific. It's constricted mostly to round about 1000 BC or BCE, through to the coming of the Romans and a bit after, it's when the circles, the round circles are abandoned and before we get into Romanization and Christianization.

[Anita Anand]

I want to talk more about water, but actually I want to do a pivot and talk about bogs. We're going to take a break. After the break, can we come back and talk about the thing that. That I'm obsessed with, which is the bodies found in the bogs of Ireland. Join us after the break.

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[Anita Anand]

Welcome back. Now, just before the break, I was was talking about bogs. And the reason I'm obsessed with them is because actually they have this remarkable chemistry that preserves things so that we can see in enormous detail what went in at the time that it went in. Ronald, tell me about one of the most famous bog bodies that was found in Ireland. Because there is that sort of rather horrific detail that we know. His nipples were cut off. Why? Why? Why, Ronald?

[Podcast Advertiser]

Why?

[Anita Anand]

What do we know about this?

[William Dalrymple]

Tell us about the nipples.

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

Yeah, well, this is prehistoric. So, of course, we can't be sure. If we relate it to a medieval Irish text which stated that part of homage to an early Irish king is to suck his nipples as though he's acting as a kind of mother to you, then this is a form of homage, in which case your dead man could have been an unlucky king, deposed by his own people or killed by an enemy people who has his nipples cut off to destroy his royalty. On the other hand, it could just have been something really nasty being done to an enemy warrior whom you'd captured and were putting to death horribly, or a warrior on your side, or just a man of your tribe who'd committed a heinous crime and was being stripped of his dignity and his place in the community before being killed and tipped into the bog.

[William Dalrymple]

But there's reason to believe that just as we've got all these beautiful shields and swords that are thrown into the Thames, that these bodies are put into the bogs ritually, that this is part of a religious ceremony, not just a random dumping of some fellow into the bog at the back of the settlement.

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

No, it's certainly not random, but ritual can cover an enormous number of different things. One is the slaughter of enemies. In other words, you've had a successful war. You execute selected prisoners as part of weakening the enemy, and then you ritually dump them in a place in which they are out of the community. Explanation two is they're executed criminals. They're people who have offended the community and are from the community, and they are then sentenced to death. And they are placed outside the bounds of the community in order to rid them of the malefactors in death, as in life. And the third one is human sacrifice. That these people are actually offered up to deities, like material objects, and they're put into the bogs because the bogs are portals, liminal places, gateways to other worlds. Actually, all Three of those explanations have equal probability. But there's a tendency to home in on human sacrifice because it's sexiest.

[Anita Anand]

Ronald, just tell us a little bit about the otherworld. You know, this space between life and death. I mean, who believes in it and what is it exactly?

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

Human beings across the planet believe in other worlds, in the sense of worlds in which spirits or deities live. Sometimes humans can go there and the spirits and deities can pretty well always cross into our world. A lot of peoples think that worlds are on different levels. You have the terrestrial one and then the heavens and the underworld are for the non human beings. Other cultures believe that there are parallel dimensions on Earth which you can access by going into water or sailing across it, or by moving through gateways into hollow hills or through portals in woods, and then you're simply moving sideways and encountering the fairies, the elves, the gnomes or the gods.

[William Dalrymple]

And we have Irish sources particularly, which kind of illuminate this. This idea of the land of youth, the Tirnan Og.

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

Oh, yes. The Irish aren't alone in this, but they produce this fantastic medieval literature which talks about the other world or other worlds. Once again, they're not consistent in where it is. To some you have to get into a curragh, a boat, and sail into the ocean and then you start landing in the other world.

[William Dalrymple]

My favourite object in the National Museum of Ireland, that gorgeous golden boat. That must be some sort of reference to that.

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

Absolutely. So to others you go into hollow hills, like the enormous Neolithic burial mounds in the Boyne Valley, or into natural hills. So the Irish are not sure where the otherworld is and how you reach it, but they're absolutely sure that somehow, or rather, it's there.

[Anita Anand]

There's a wonderful woman who makes just brilliant television, Derry Girls is one of her babies, Lisa McGee, and she's just done another one, which is fantastic. How to get to Heaven from Belfast. And she has this, you know, other world where the veil lifts at a certain time and it is in between sort of rubble, you know, sort of the. What was stone circle. So it's still very much present in the minds of the Irish as part of, you know, their inheritance, who they are.

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

It's found absolutely everywhere. And it's related to a fact which traditional peoples incorporate into their everyday culture and the modern west tries desperately to ignore, which is that there is a substantial minority of people in every society who simply see and hear things that the majority don't, who encounter visibly non human beings that are like humans. Call them fairies, elves, if you like and sometimes actually have interchanges with them.

[Anita Anand]

So Ronald, I mean, you're saying that there's two way traffic that in the minds of the people that, you know, you can go across and you can meet these fantastical creatures, but they can also come. And what is the purpose? Who comes back in folklore and what do they give us?

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

Well, it's chosen people chosen usually by the other beings who get to meet them and tend to cross into their world. Some spend a long time there, some actually form romantic relationships with the other beings. Mostly, and especially in modern times, the apparent meetings with these fairy like beings are very brief and very transitory. But there's an enormous literature and an enormous folklore of more extended contacts. These contacts used to be essential to humanity in that traditional peoples who are utterly dependent on a very often hostile and difficult natural environment for survival will be forever negotiating with the spirits of it. Otherwise they don't believe they can survive.

[William Dalrymple]

Ronald, how far do you think you can use this rich Irish medieval literature which talks about all this wonderful mythology and stories and of cattle raids and warrior aristocracy? Is that good evidence for what people were believing in mainland Britain centuries ago?

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

Or maybe not, maybe, maybe not. Because we have no idea how similar British and Irish beliefs were. But it should be pointed out that medieval Irish literature isn't even really solid evidence for what people believed in pre Christian Ireland. Ireland, because it's all the work of medieval Christian Irish writers and storytellers and we've no idea how good their information was. It may be very accurate about pagan Ireland or it may be all made up by them.

[William Dalrymple]

It's so frustrating as well, because there's so much that's so thrilling and exciting and there's arrows pointing in certain directions. But we can't say with certainty any more than these things may have existed. And nowhere is this more true than the Druids. When I was growing up, I used to read Nora Chadwick who claimed that the classical sources on the Druids were nonsense and we shouldn't believe a word that Caesar or Pliny or Tacitus says. You take them rather more seriously now, don't you? You think that you can say things about Druids, but maybe they're very different. Different to what the people in Stonehenge at the solstice think the Druids are. So maybe we should just start with the simple question, who were the Druids and what do we know about them?

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

The Druids were the experts in spiritual matters, religion and magic, the spiritual professionals of the peoples of Northwestern Europe when they first emerge into history 2,000 years ago in what we call the Iron Age.

[William Dalrymple]

And we have this extraordinary description of this in AD 60 and it's worth maybe lingering here because we do actually have something solid that is well recorded by the Roman sources. And they talk about the Roman governor of Britain, Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, leading his legions to the shores of the Menai Strait in North Wales and crossing over to the far bank on Anglesey where there is this sort of slaughter of the priesthood. Those who knew the law and retained it but never wrote it down, frustratingly for us. Tell us about that. What were the Romans? What was their beef with the Romans, with these people?

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

The Romans outlawed Druids largely because they regarded them as leaders of the resistance to Roman conquest. They also used them as a justification for that conquest by accusing them of beastly religious practices, above all, human sacrifice. Problem here is we've no idea how accurate the Roman propaganda was and how far they distorted or even made up things. We can't trust a word that any Greek or Roman writes about the Druids.

[William Dalrymple]

You're more on the Nora Chadwick end

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

of the there's nothing changed there. Nora was right. It must be said that Greeks in particular wrote lots of very admiring things about Druids which we can't trust either. Although everything may be correct with the case of the famous image of the Druids of Anglesey. Anglesey is a center of resistance to Roman conquest, which is why the Romans, Romans go there to take it out. And the famous story of the Druids and Anglesey is found in just one Roman writer, Tacitus the historian. And it describes how the Romans discovered that the island of Anglesey, mon in Welsh, which lies off the northwest coast of Wales, was becoming a major center of resistance to Roman conquest. So the Roman governor decided to take it out. And when his army reached the shore opposite the island, they saw an enemy army drawn up to fight it with tall druids shrieking curses and black robed women like furies with flaming torches.

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[William Dalrymple]

We want more of that.

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

Well, you don't get any more of that because it's the only mention. And the Roman soldiers were paralysed with shock and terror. They'd never seen anything like this, which does seem to indicate that druids cursing Romans was something they hadn't encountered before. And the strapping hero of the governor, square jawed, probably went to a good school, steps forward and encourages his men by telling them they're cowards if they run away from magicians and women and the Roman legions, heartened by their general, crossed the water and indeed slaughter the enemy army, including, one assumes, the druids and the women, and expose the fact that a religion dedicated to human sacrifice had been carried out in the island. This is the only mention of Druids in Britain. It's a spectacular story. We've no idea where the truth lies on a spectrum with at one end that this is a totally accurate account taken from an eye witness, witness who was on the spot, shading through. Tacitus met a superannuated drunken legionary in a bar in Rome who spun him this story too. And this is possible. Tacitus invented the whole episode himself because his history was getting dull and he needed a moral account which showed Rome and the Roman general whom he admired in the best light.

[William Dalrymple]

You old cynic, Ronald.

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

No, I'm not a cynic. I'm following what the experts say. The latest book on Tacitus as a historian has the title the History of Make Believe. That's really quite telling, Ronald, Just bearing

[Anita Anand]

in mind your advice, and I would never argue don't believe the Greeks, don't believe the Romans, but you know, they talk about mistletoe being really important, and you also ascribe a great deal of importance to mistletoe. So first of all talk about that. What role does mistletoe play and why do we believe them when they talk about mistletoe?

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

Well, we can believe the Greeks and Romans when they talk about themselves and when they describe particular native customs that have no obvious propaganda value to them, then we're more inclined to take that seriously. Mistletoe is connected with the peoples of northwestern Europe only in one passage in the Roman natural historian Pliny the Elder, where he says that the tribes of the extreme south of France venerated mistletoe as sacred when they found it growing on an oak tree, which, as anybody who knows the countryside knows, hardly ever happens. So it's a big deal when it's found on the oak. And then six days after the next new moon, they have this ceremony which Pliny describes, in which a white robed priest, he doesn't call him a druid, goes up with a golden sickle, cuts down the mistletoe, it's caught in midair, and then they sacrifice white cattle and the mistletoe is made into a potent healing drink. Now, we presume that the priest is a druid because these are tribes from southern France who spoke the language in which priests are called druids. But you May note that there's no indication that anybody but the tribes of southern France did this. There's no connection with mid winter. There's no connection with fertility or kissing under it.

[William Dalrymple]

But there is mistletoe found in the belly of one of our bog bodies. Lindo Mann has mistletoe pollen in his stomach, doesn't he? And, and so the idea is that he was given a mistletoe to ingest before you sacrifice, maybe.

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

First, we're not sure if Lindow Man's a sacrifice. He may have been a mugging victim or he may have been an executed criminal. Second, we found four grains of mistletoe in his tum. That's really very little. And it could just be that mistletoe pollen blew onto his last meal.

[William Dalrymple]

Mistletoe is quite specific. You don't find it. I mean, you know, I was. If I was mugging victim tomorrow, I wouldn't necessarily have mistletoe in my tummy.

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

No, not necessarily. Would not have it. This could be just a complete accident, a freak of nature produced by the breeze that was blowing through particular vegetation when this occurred.

[William Dalrymple]

Now, Ronald, given your very measured support for the sources that we have, I suspect you're not going to be a fan of of Druids, burning bodies and Wicker Men, much as I enjoyed the movie. Now, one iconic image people have of the Druids is the Wicker man, thanks to Robin Hardy's 1970s horror film where huge human shaped figures are burnt by sort of wicked Scottish islanders who've adopted a type of Celtic paganism. Is there any truth to the idea of the Wicker man being used, used in Druid spirituality? Or is that again very, very improbable?

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

Well, we all love the movie the Wicker Man. Who can turn down Christopher Lee in drag? But the image of the Wicker man is possible as history, but it's unstable. It occurs in just two sources, one of which may have taken it from the other. The big one is Julian Caesar, who actually campaigned among tribes that had Druids. He knew somebody whom somebody else says was a Druid. The trouble is that the passage in which he describes Druids is an odd one in Caesar's book. It doesn't fit in with the rest. It's actually contradicted in places by things that Caesar himself said. We know that Caesar left his book unfinished when he got knifed. And so it could be that his successor, the guy who finished the book, decided he was getting boring at that stage and chucked in extra material of unknown reliability. The person who finished his book didn't go to Gaul with Caesar and so his knowledge would have been very sketchy. And that's the only place where you find the burning alive in big wicker images. There's a later Greek geographer called Strabo.

[William Dalrymple]

He's in Alexandria, wasn't he?

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

Yes, that's right. He may have got as far as Sicily, but that's still a very long way from druids. And he repeats the same information, maybe from an independent source, maybe from Caesar. So it's all very shaky, Ronald.

[Anita Anand]

It does seem as if, you know, the tradition of the druids was completely wiped out or drowned in blood in Anglesey, but it survives in Ireland. What do we put that down to?

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

The problem for us is that the word druid just means an expert in religion and magic. It's not as if there's an international training program for druids. Druids in Ireland are unlikely to be like druids in Gaul, which is now France, where Caesar, correctly or not, says, did have a 20 year training program and a supra tribal meeting place. So they were a kind of priestly caste, rather like Brahmins in India. Whereas in the medieval Irish literature, which may or may not have any contact with pre Christian reality, a druid is a magician and druidcraft is just the Irish word for magic. And so anybody who's working a magic spell is a druid at the moment at which they're working it. However, there are full time magicians who are full time druids and do act as advisors to kings and wise people and Merlin figures. But whether, as I've said, this actually is anchored in any kind of pagan reality, we simply don't know.

[William Dalrymple]

Ronald, as frustrating as this dark cloud over this period is, it's fascinating to talk to you. We're going to move in the next episode to a world that is more brightly illuminated and that is the how the religion of these islands changes once the Romans arrive. And we're going to go to Hadrian's Wall where we actually do have solid evidence with inscriptions for the names of the gods, many of them local, who were worshipped there. And we're going to have the wonderful Eleanor Barraclough, last seen with us last year in Greenland, coming with us to the the marches of Hadrian's Wall to explore the religion of the Celts up there. Thank you very much for listening to Empire. Goodbye from me, William Durimpel.

[Anita Anand]

And goodbye from me, Anita Arnan.

[Professor Ronald Hutton]

And goodbye from me.

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