‘A Druid Land’: Druid Identities and Practices in Contemporary Ireland

In William Butler Yeats’ poem ‘Fergus and the Druid’, King Fergus tells a druid that he wishes to “learn the dreaming wisdom that is yours”. In literature, art, and popular culture, druids are associated with dreams, secrets, mystical wisdom, and power. They are also associated with antiquity and traditions long forgotten. What, then, does it mean to be a Druid today in a Celtic region of the world? This chapter attempts to answer this question by drawing on ethnographic research with Druids in Ireland and by examining how romantic notions of the Celtic are utilised in modern identities. Thus, the ways in which modern-day Druids in Ireland engage with history, local culture, the natural environment, myth, and language will be examined against a backdrop of romanticism. Draíocht (‘druidry’) is the modern Irish-language word for ‘magic’, and modern practitioners connect to the past, through archaeological and mythological sources, while also disassociating themselves from practices or ideas that in their view don’t fit with their modern spiritual movement.