One advantage of explaining the ancient Celtic sacrifices
in this way is that it introduces, as it were, a harmony and
consistency into the treatment which Europe has meted out to witches
from the earliest times down to about two centuries ago, when the
growing influence of rationalism discredited the belief in
witchcraft and put a stop to the custom of burning witches. Be that
as it may, we can now perhaps understand why the Druids believed
that the more persons they sentenced to death, the greater would be
the fertility of the land. To a modern reader the connexion at first
sight may not be obvious between the activity of the hangman and the
productivity of the earth. But a little reflection may satisfy him
that when the criminals who perish at the stake or on the gallows
are witches, whose delight it is to blight the crops of the farmer
or to lay them low under storms of hail, the execution of these
wretches is really calculated to ensure an abundant harvest by
removing one of the principal causes which paralyse the efforts and
blast the hopes of the husbandman.
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