A Child's History of England, Charles Dickens [best free novels .txt] 📗

ould leap out, deal blows about them with their swords likehail, leap on the horses, on the pole, spring back into thechariots anyhow; and, as soon as they were safe, the horses toreaway again.

The Britons had a strange and terrible religion, called theReligion of the Druids. It seems to have been brought over, invery early times indeed, from the opposite country of France,anciently called Gaul, and to have mixed up the worship of theSerpent, and of the Sun and Moon, with the worship of some of theHeathen Gods and Goddesses. Most of its ceremonies were keptsecret by the priests, the Druids, who pretended to be enchanters,and who carried magicians' wands, and wore, each of them, about hisneck, what he told the ignorant people was a Serpent's egg in agolden case. But it is certain that the Druidical ceremoniesincluded the sacrifice of human victims, the torture of somesuspected criminals, and, on particular occasions, even the burningalive, in immense wicker cages, of a numbe