" Indeed the very name of Druids is believed
by good authorities to mean no more than "oak men."
In the religion of the ancient Germans the veneration for sacred
groves seems to have held the foremost place, and according to Grimm
the chief of their holy trees was the oak. It appears to have been
especially dedicated to the god of thunder, Donar or Thunar, the
equivalent of the Norse Thor; for a sacred oak near Geismar, in
Hesse, which Boniface cut down in the eighth century, went among the
heathen by the name of Jupiter's oak (_robur Jovis_), which in old
German would be _Donares eih,_ "the oak of Donar." That the Teutonic
thunder god Donar, Thunar, Thor was identified with the Italian
thunder god Jupiter appears from our word Thursday, Thunar's day,
which is merely a rendering of the Latin _dies Jovis._ Thus among
the ancient Teutons, as among the Greeks and Italians, the god of
the oak was also the god of the thunder. Moreover, he was regarded
as the great fertilising power, who sent rain and caused the earth
to bear fruit; for Adam of Bremen tells us that "Thor presides in
the air; he it is who rules thunder and lightning, wind and rains,
fine weather and crops.
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