WE HAVE SEEN how the Druids emerge out of the mists of prehistory as possibly the proto-Druidic builders of stone circles, until they enter written history as the Druids of the classical authors, flourishing for as long perhaps as a thousand years, until in the sixth century they seem to disappear as Christianity becomes the sole religion.

The Romantics loved this, and the Druids came to represent an indigenous lineage of noble philosophers that had previously been thought to exist only on foreign soil – in the classical worlds of Greece and Rome.

This theory would hold that Druidry is the native religion of Britain.