I’m writing this on the summer solstice – the longest day of the year. And tonight (despite the megalithic monument having orange paint sprayed over it only yesterday), thousands of people will start to gather at Stonehenge to celebrate the midsummer sunrise tomorrow. Some of them will call themselves Druids.
I’m not going to go into the full history of Druidism ancient and modern here – the place to go for that is undoubtedly folklore wizard Professor Ronald Hutton’s book Blood and Mistletoe: The History of the Druids in Britain (Yale, 2009). And when I started wondering when the first known Druid ceremony at Stonehenge was, it was his book that led me to the answer. We have no idea whether the ancient Druids enacted their rites at the site – and not that much about them generally, with a fairly small number of ancient Roman sources mentioning them – and certainly the association with Stonehenge only began in the 17th century, suggested by antiquarian John Aubrey and then amplified by William Stukeley in the 18th.
Bur we certainly know when the first modern Druidic ceremony there was: it was 1905. and we know lots of fun details thanks to a London journalist who blagged his way in.
The local newspaper, the Wiltshire and Devizes Gazette, was clearly miffed about not being invited, noting sniffily in its report on 31st August 1905:
No representative of this journal was instructed to attend the gathering of the “Druids” at Stonehenge. We anticipated that it would be a private ceremony, in theory at least, at which journalists would not be welcomed. And it appears that it was so: a Salisbury contemporary, whose representative had an outside view, observes that “the representatives of the Press were treated with scant courtesy.” Certain London halfpenny journals, scenting readable “copy,” overcame the difficulty by the simple expedient of having their representatives included in the candidates for initiation, and to that expedient we are indebted for the clever piece of work which we have taken the liberty to reproduce.
Anyway: to the events. The report that the Gazette reproduced was in the London Morning Leader on Friday 25th August – the ceremony itself taking place on the Thursday (and not anywhere near the summer solstice, you might note – though Stukeley had spotted the alignment with the midsummer sun). The day before, the reporter set the scene:
In the cloistered calm of the ancient city of Salisbury a few strange people were wandering about. They wore high and antiquated top-hats and looked mysterious. They were understood to be some of the elect of the Ancient Order of Druids; and as such they are looked upon with intense suspicion by the townsfolk… The principal attraction will be the induction of Sir Edmund Antrobus as a real live Druid. Sir Edmund is the owner of Stonehenge, and has put a wire fence round it, until it looks something like a neolithic chicken run… The common or garden Druids will simply swarm to the spot. They have all been ordered to bring their collars, robes, beards, and crooks. A Druid without his beard is like a peacock without his tail. Most of the Druids’ beards are grown in the make-up establishment of Mr. Willie Clarkson…
(William Clarkson was a famous theatrical costumier of the era – who later turned out to be a insurance fraudster, and was one of the legions of people who have been suspected of being Jack the Ripper. But I digress.)
Ronald Hutton observes that “There was a flurry of alarm in 1911 when it was suspected that borrowed beards might harbour tuberculosis germs, but this was soon allayed.” He also hints that the ceremony of 1905 might have been what today we would describe as a marketing exercise. The Antrobus family became the owners of Stonehenge in 1825, and the latest Sir Edmund (the fourth in a row) inherited it in 1901, promptly becoming the first person to charge an entry fee. Was his joining of the Ancient Order of Druids1 perhaps a trifle strategic?
But let’s now join our intrepid Morning Leader ‘special correspondent’ (whose name is also unknown) and peer over his shoulder…
Hundreds and hundreds of curious people, including myself, journeyed by coach and motor and char-á-banc and every other kind of conveyance by devious ways to Stonehenge to witness the first official descent of the Ancient Order of Druids upon that immemorial spot.
Waggons conveyed tremendous piles of food and barrels of liquid refreshment across the Plain, and there were all the signs of revelry by morn.
What was really going to happen nobody outside the mystic circle knew, and at the barbed wire gateway with which Sir Edmund Antrobus guards the historic chunks of stone stood fierce-eyed Druid sentinels, demanding the Password…
“No admission unless you’re One of Us,” said the fiercest Druid to me. “There’s going to be a great Initiation Ceremony; but if you happen to have the money handy we might strain a point and initiate you!” So I took my courage in both hands and determined to be fashioned into a Druid.
It was quite easy. There was an enormous tent in which the elect (and I) dined sumptuously on cold but cheerful fare. There were mysterious speeches which I dare not report; and at the end of the banquet the cloths were whisked away and the Boss of the Show—Most Noble Grand Arch Brother G. A. Larnder—gave orders for all the advanced Druids and Bards to put their whiskers and their nightshirts on and prepare for the fray.
We initiates—there were 259 of us, including Sir Edmund Antrobus—were bundled into the kitchen, among scrap-ends of fowls and ducks and ham bones and bread crumbs; and told to wait until we were Called. Presently we were ushered in to the nightshirts which enclosed the fat forms of the individuals called Bards.
Mysterious hands held us whilst others bound our eyes and deafened our ears with tightly-wrapped handkerchiefs.
“Got ’em all fixed up!” said the Grand Arch, most nobly; and some shadowy voice from the faraway said, “Aye, brother.”
And there we stuck for fifteen long, dreadful minutes, while the band played Druidical dirges, and the Procession of Nightshirts and cotton-wool beards marched stolidly to the silent slaughtering-place. There was a smell of Murder in the air; and the longer we waited the funkier we grew.
At last we were ordered to follow; and, two and two, we placed our hands upon the shoulders of brothers before us, and stumbled, blind as bats and foolish as owls, into the sunshine.
A scream of delirious laughter greeted us as we emerged from that dreadful tent. Thousands of spectators—rigorously railed off—were watching us as we pottered along; and the further we went the more they laughed.
The first indication that I had reached the sacred circle was a shin abrasion caused by stumbling against one of those unsympathetic monoliths. Then millions of assembled Druids burst into weird melody, led by the bandsmen, who were blowing their eternal souls into the brass.
Next, in cimmerian darkness, we could hear, faintly, the most Noble Grand Arch telling us the most awful things through his beard, and administering an Oath as binding as sealing-wax, and twice as lasting.
Stars swam before my eyes; meteors were flashing in my brain, the World was rocking in pre-creational heaves, when the Most Noble cried:
“And what is it now that ye all desire beyond all things?”
“Light !” we all gasped; and I heard an Ancient and Honourable Druid standing behind me whisper, “Uncover the gentlemen, William!”
At that signal our gags were whisked off, and we stood blinking before as strange a mixture of humanity as I ever saw.
The Most Noble—the very image of Father Christmas—stood before an altar, upon which a mysterious blue fire, fed by saltpetre and methylated spirit, burned fitfully and gruesomely.
He was holding a battleaxe threateningly in his right hand, whilst all round him were grouped lesser Arches—against one of which I bumped my head—playing a sort of stationary Roger de Coverley with a festoon of golden sickles over the flaming altar.
In a long avenue, enclosing us, and completely sheltering us from the gaze of the vulgar herd, stood grim Bards with their white robes (labelled N. for nightshirt) and their cotton wool whiskers gleaming in the sun.
They all had especially sharpened sickles for prodding the too inquiring public. And they were singing at the top of their voices:2
See, see the flames arise!!! Brothers now your songs prepare! And ere their vigor droops and dies Our mysteries let him share! Let him share! With evergreens his brow entwine, And hail him with your songs divine, And let him know the mistletoe And Togo Dubiline! Dubiline!
As there were not enough evergreens to go round, I didn’t get one. But I felt the spirit of it right enough.
In due order came another imposing ditty with a chorus, “All round the oak.”
To the scoffer this brought back the dear old memories of “Here we go round the mulberry bush”—but, of course, it was much more sublime and solemn.
Togo was the gentleman who was found as a babe under a sacred oak, and who was afterwards respon sible for many of the exhilarating ordeals I had to go through to-day. There happened to be a Japanese present athong the elect, and when they all sang about Togo his eyes blazed.
Of the secret ceremonial which followed whilst the Most Noble Arch stood upon a bottled-beer case behind the altar and waved his battle-axe across the Plain, of course I can say nothing. Mum’s the word—I’m a Druid.
But it all went off splendidly, whilst the distant crowd roared with cheering—and laughter.
Sir Edmund Antrobus was “inducted” by my side—as his name happens to begin with the same letter. He bore the fearful ordeal most bravely, never for one moment heeding the hilarious laughter from his friends, who watched the show from his private carriage.
Afterwards we had tea, including FOUR KINDS OF THE BEST CAKE, and, as the laughing sun climbed down lazily to bed, the Bards unhitched their beards and took off their “nighties” and became ordinary humans once more. I must say that I found the Brethren most cheerful and convivial souls, full of the milk of human kindness. But the grand Procession and the Solemn Ceremonial are not meant to happen in blazing sunshine.
You want mysteries, dimly-lit chambers where the incongruities of a white beard and a flowing black moustache cannot be so easily seen—and laughed at.
It should be noted that Ancient Order continues today and overtly says it is “not a religious organisation” – and is therefore quite distinct from the pagan and neodruidic groups of sincere worshippers at Stonehenge today.
Founded in 1781, and not dissimilar to the Freemasons. Winston Churchill was a member.
According to the British Museum, the founder of the Ancient Order, believed to be a mysterious ‘Mr Hurle’, “constructed an elaborate legend that traced the origins of the AOD back to a fictional ‘Togo Dubellinus’, the son of a Druid priestess, in the first century AD”.