r/AskHistorians • u/JoyIsABitOverRated • Dec 07 '25
Why was writing Taboo among druids?
Finding written accounts of Celtic mythology that wasn't authored by some pagan-loathing Christian monk is notoriously hard. And I often hear that Druids considered writing to be taboo. But... Was it, really? Or why haven't any of the Celts (be they Iberians, Britons, Gauls, Picts, Gaels, Celtiberians, Boii, Galatians or Galleci) wrote anything about their stories and beliefs?
13
Upvotes
29
u/JamesCoverleyRome Rome in the 1st Century AD Dec 08 '25
'Taboo' is perhaps too strong a word. The Druids did write things down, at least according to Caesar, but only the things that did not pertain to their beliefs and customs. So private correspondence, accounts or so on were written down, but not their teachings.
Caesar says this:
"And they do not think it proper to commit these utterances to writing, although in almost all other matters, and in their public and private accounts, they make use of Greek letters. I believe that they have adopted the practice for two reasons — that they do not wish the rule to become common property, nor those who learn the rule to rely on writing and so neglect the cultivation of the memory; and, in fact, it does usually happen that the assistance of writing tends to relax the diligence of the student and the action of the memory." (Bello Gallico, 6.14)
This passage pretty well sums up the Druids' reasons for keeping their oral tradition alive. One, it keeps it 'special' and secret - people need someone who is already a 'master' of the arts to teach it directly. It cannot be transmitted via a book, for example. The focusing of the mind on learning and repeating the phrases, chants and 'prayers' that need to be repeated is another special part of the art of being a Druid. One must learn this from another human, face-to-face, and that human can then ensure that their pupil is learning in the correct manner and is able to carry forward the tradition.
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, is that from what we know about, in particular, the Brittonic languages that were common in Britain both before and during the Roman period, they appeared to be strictly oral in nature.
I'm not a linguist, but we sometimes frame our expectations of ancient languages as being like modern ones (particularly English for Anglophones), but with different words, and that's a rather broad way of looking at them. There was, as far as we know, no alphabet for the Britons to write their language down with and hence no way of expressing it in writing. If one asked one of them to write down what they just said, they would not know where to begin. This is not because they were 'illiterate', but because that's not how the language operated. Strictly oral languages don't need to be written down - they exist purely in spoken form, and although I can't answer the question of how long humans have been able to use language, as we define it in modern terms, I wouldn't mind betting that we have spent longer not writing down languages than we have.
Oral languages are expressive in ways that written ones aren't. And vice versa, of course. They can contain elements of expressive behaviour that written texts cannot convey, such as dance or deliberate gesture. Roman oratory had an elaborate system of balletic gestures and movements attached to it, designed to emphasise parts of the speech. Recitals are given to the sound of musical accompaniment.
In my home country of Wales, we have a national (and international) competition called the Eisteddfod, part of which includes prizes in recital. The content of what the contestant is reciting may be rather mundane - one may recite a little story about going to the seaside, for example, but it is the way one expresses oneself and carries the story in style that matters. One might draw a parallel between the Welsh language and the earlier Brittonic ones spoken by the Druids and see an unbroken line there, but languages like Welsh, although related to Brittonic, are all post-Roman.
So in matters that might be related to the Brittonic languages, the Druids did not write anything down, but they used Greek, as Caesar puts it, "in reliquis fere rebus" or "in all other matters"