The insular Druids opposed the legions in Southern Britain, and in Mona in 62 A.D. they made a last stand with the warriors against the Romans, gesticulating and praying to the gods. But with the establishment of Roman power in Britain their fate must have resembled that of the Druids of Gaul. A recrudescence of Druidism is found, however, in the presence of _magi_ (Druids) with Vortigern after the Roman withdrawal.[1080] Outside the Roman pale the Druids were still rampant and practised their rites as before, according to Pliny.[1081] Much later, in the sixth century, they opposed Christian missionaries in Scotland, just as in Ireland they opposed S. Patrick and his monks, who combated "the hard-hearted Druids." Finally, Christianity was victorious and the powers of the Druids passed in large measure to the Christian clergy or remained to some extent with the _Filid_.[1082] In popular belief the clerics had prevailed less by the persuasive power of the gospel, than by successfully rivalling the magic of the Druids.
Classical writers speak of _Dryades_ or "Druidesses" in the third century. One of them predicted his approaching death to Alexander Severus, another promised the empire to Diocletian, others were consulted by Aurelian.[1083] Thus they were divineresses, rather than priestesses, and their name may be the result of misconception, unless they assumed it when Druids no longer existed as a class. In Ireland there were divineresses--_ban-filid_ or _ban-fáthi_, probably a distinct class with prophetic powers. Kings are warned against "pythonesses" as well as Druids, and Dr. Joyce thinks these were Druidesses.[1084] S. Patrick also armed himself against "the spells of women" and of Druids.[1085] Women in Ireland had a knowledge of futurity, according to Solinus, and the women who took part with the Druids like furies at Mona, may have been divineresses.[1086] In Ireland it is possible that such women were called "Druidesses," since the word _ban-drui_ is met with, the women so called being also styled _ban-fili_, while the fact that they belonged to the class of the _Filid_ brings them into connection with the Druids.[1087] But _ban-drui_ may have been applied to women with priestly functions, such as certainly existed in Ireland--e.g. the virgin guardians of sacred fires, to whose functions Christian nuns succeeded.[1088] We know also that the British queen Boudicca exercised priestly functions, and such priestesses, apart from the _Dryades_, existed among the continental Celts. Inscriptions at Arles speak of an _antistita deae_, and at Le Prugnon of a _flaminica sacerdos_ of the goddess Thucolis.[1089] These were servants of a goddess like the priestess of the Celtic Artemis in Galatia, in whose family the priesthood was hereditary.[1090] The virgins called Gallizenæ, who practised divination and magic in the isle of Sena, were priestesses of a Gaulish god, and some of the women who were "possessed by Dionysus" and practised an orgiastic cult on an island in the Loire, were probably of the same kind.[1091] They were priestesses of some magico-religious cult practised by women, like the guardians of the sacred fire in Ireland, which was tabu to men. M. Reinach regards the accounts of these island priestesses as fictions based on the story of Circe's isle, but even if they are garbled, they seem to be based on actual observation and are paralleled from other regions.[1092]