Whose Druidry Is It Anyway? (Part 1)

Examining the sometimes forgotten roots of modern Druidry

The other night in a Glastonbury pub, I found myself trying – unsuccessfully – to finish a sentence. I was saying that modern Druidry, particularly as practised in groups like OBOD, owes as much to the English Druid Revival as it does to Welsh cultural tradition. But before I could finish the thought, I was met with a series of good-humoured objections. Iolo Morganwg’s name was invoked almost immediately (because of course it was), and I was told – more than once – that Druidry is Welsh. Full stop. End of debate.

Except it isn’t. That version, as poetic and proudly Cymric as it may sound, leaves out half the tale. This post is the train of thought I didn’t get to finish…

There’s no question that Welsh language, mythology, and poetic tradition have left an indelible mark on Modern Druidry¹. The Mabinogion, the symbolic richness of the Awen, and the Bardic structure of many contemporary Druid orders all draw directly from Welsh cultural roots. Much of this influence flows though the work of Iolo Morganwg, whose poetic reimaginings, ceremonial structures, and founding of the Gorsedd of Bards in 1792² shaped much of what we now recognise as Druid ceremony. While some of Morganwg’s writings were imaginative forgeries³, presented as ancient when they were in fact his own inventions, his contribution remains both vital and beautiful – and illustrates how revival, creativity, and cultural pride have all played their part in shaping modern Druidry.

But what often gets lost in this celebration is where the Druid Revival itself actually began. And to find that, we need to look east of the River Severn.

The English Revival Takes Root

The earliest stirrings of the Druid Revival began not in the hills of Cymru but in the libraries and green lanes of England. In the 17th and early 18th centuries, English antiquarians developed a fascination with Britain’s pre-Christian past. Oxford-educated John Aubrey speculated, in his Monumenta Britannica⁴ (written in the 1660s), that Stonehenge and Avebury were the work of the ancient Druids^{5 6}. This imagiative leap set in motion a way of thinking about ancestry, landscape and identity.

In the next century, clergyman and antiquarian William Stukeley sharpened this vision. In Stonehenge: A Temple Restor’d to the British Druids (1740)⁷ and Abury: A Temple of the British Druids (1743)⁸, he portrayed the Druids as noble philosophers, proto-Christians in communion with nature, reading sacred geometry in the stones themselves⁹. Importantly, Stukeley made Druidry feel native to England – his rituals and writings sanctified the soil of his homeland, even while they extended across mythic time.

By 1781, this idea had moved from theory into life. The Ancient Order of Druids (AOD) was founded in the King’s Arms taven in London by Henry Hurle¹⁰¹¹. It was a fraternal brotherhood, not a spiritual church, yet it used Druidic symbols and ceremony as social and charitable pageantry¹². In fact, a proto-order had existed as early as 1717 under John Toland, another English-based philosopher whose early Druid Order was one of the first to attempt reconstructing Druidry as a living system¹³.

Over the next century, similar orders spread across England and the British Empire, including groups like the United Order of Ancient Druid and the Grand United Order of Druids. These weren’t typically spiritual or pagan, but functioned as mutual aid societies that used Druidic symbols and titles. In doing so, they kept the Druid concept alive, keeping open the door for deeper developments in later centuries.

Morganwg’s Reach – A Mythic Bridge

None of this erases the Welsh thread – it deepens it. Iolo Morganwg wasn’t simply reviving a Welsh tradition; he was reaching further back: beyond the boundaries of modern nationhood, into the shared Brythonic cultural memory of ancient Britain itself.

Before the arrival of the Romans, there was no such thing as “English” or “Welsh.”¹⁴ The island was home to multiple tribes of Brythonic-speaking Celts, whose languages, myths, religious practices, and social structures were broadly shared across what we now divide into England and Wales. As Barry Cunliffe writes: “Before the Roman conquest, the whole of southern Britain can be regarded as culturally unified within the framework of the Atlantic European Iron Age.”¹⁵ These tribes had their own local identities – the Silures, the Iceni, the Catuvellauni, and many others – but these were regional and political, not civilisational divisions in the way later national identities would emerge.

The scholar Simon James cautions against any attempt to project modern ethnic or national categories backward onto this period, describing Iron Age Britain instead as what he calls “…a patchwork of communities, not a single people.”¹⁶ They spoke closely related dialects of Common Brittonic, which would only much later differentiate into the Welsh, Cornish, and Breton languages^{17 18}. The cultural world Iolo was trying to reconstruct belonged to this broadly shared Brythonic past.

It was only after the Roman occupation, and far more sharply following the Anglo-Saxon settlement beginning in the 5th century, that any clear distinction begins to emerge. As Ronald Hutton notes: “The Welsh are the direct descendants of the Britons, whose lands were eroded by Anglo-Saxon settlement.” Even the term Welsh itself derives from the Anglo-Saxon word wealas, meaning “foreigners” or “strangers” – a name imposed by Germanic newcomers, not one claimed by the Britons themselves.

When Iolo reimagined the Druids, he did so through the Welsh language and bardic tradition, but the spiritual ancestors he invoked were never solely Welsh. They were Britons in the fullest sense – island people whose stories, gods, and sacred places flowed like rivers across the landscape, untroubled by borders that did not yet exist.

Much of Morganwg’s material – including his now-famous Barddas – remained unpublished during his lifetime, with the first edition appearing posthumously in 1862-63¹⁹. By that point, various English fraternal Druid orders had already been operating for decades, and Morganwg’s work entered a developing tapestry of revival Druidry rather than founding it outright.

By the 19th century, as English political power tightened its grip on Wales, an aggressive campaign of cultural suppression unfolded. The systematic Anglicisation of language, education, law, and religion sought to marginalise Welsh identity and erase the Welsh language from public life. In response, Welsh cultural leaders rallied to reclaim and defend their national identity. Morganwg’s Gorsedd, integrated into the Eisteddfod, became both a proud act of revival and a quiet form of resistance: fusing language, myth, and ceremony into a living assertion that Welsh culture would not be extinguished²⁰.

Here, Druidry was not mere fantasy: it was a reclaiming of voice, land, and identity in the face of cultural oppression. Yet this response unfolded after earlier English fraternal orders had begun reimagining Druidry for the modern era, blending antiquarianism with ceremonial pageantry long before Morganwg’s work reached its full public flowering.

Weaving the Threads – Modern Druidry’s Mosaic

The English Revival gave us symbols, societies, and the seed of reimagined antiquity. Morganwg gave us ceremony, myth, and a national voice. Ross Nichols, an Englishman steeped in both lineages, founded OBOD in 1964 and wove them together with nature spirituality and neo-pagan practice.

Modern Druidry – whether in Britain or beyond – draws from all of these. It is neither English nor Welsh; it is both – leaning on a mythic past that predated both, and blossoming into a spiritual path that embraces relationship with land and story.

This isn’t about who “owns” Druidry, or who’s right during a chat in the pub. It’s about learning to honour the complexity of our roots; to remember that this living path sprouted in English study, bloomed in Welsh ceremony, and now thrives wherever people seek a spiritual connection with the sacred, the seasonal, and the ancestral.

And yes, next time someone declares modern Druidry is “Morganwgian,” I might smile, sip my cider, and let them enjoy their national pride.

[EDIT] After feedback and comments from fellow Druids, this post is now part 1 in a series that will examine the various cultural threads that make up the tapestry of modern Druidry. Part 2 coming soon…

1. Ronald Hutton, Blood and Mistletoe: The History of Druid in Britain, New Haven & London: Yale Univeristy Press, 2009, introductory chapters. ↩︎
2. Ronald Hutton, Blood and Mistletoe, chapter 5. ↩︎
3. Geraint H, Jenkins, A Rattleskull Genius: The Many Faces of Iolo Morganwg (in the series Iolo Morganwg and the Romatic Tradition in Wales), University of Wales Press, 2005 (edited volume) ↩︎
4. John Aubrey, Monumenta Britannica: Or, A Miscellany of British Antiquities (manuscripts written c. 1665-1693; published and edited, two volume edition by John Fowles & Rodney Legg, Sherborne: Dorest Publishing Company, 1980) ↩︎
5. Ronald Hutton, Blood and Mistletoe. ↩︎
6. Stuart Piggott, The Druids, London: Thames & Hudson (Ancient Peoples & Places Series), 1968. ↩︎
7. William Stukeley, Stonehenge: A Temple Restor’d to the British Druids, London, 1740. ↩︎
8. William Stukeley, Abury: A Temple of the British Druids, London, 1743. ↩︎
9. Stuart Piggott, The Druids. ↩︎
10. Adam Stout, Creating Prehisgtoric Britain: Ancient Monuments and the British Public 1720-1920, Stroud: Tempus, 2008. ↩︎
11. Ancient Order of Druids, wikipedia article ↩︎
12. British Museum, entry on AOD ↩︎
13. John Toland’s Cosmic Mass ↩︎
14. Simon James, The Atlantic Celts: Ancient People or Modern Invention? London: British Museum Press, 1999 ↩︎
15. Barry Cunliffe, Britain Begins. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. ↩︎
16. Simon James, The Atlantic Celts, pp. 58.63 ↩︎
17. John T. Koch (ed.), Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia. 5 Voumes. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2006. ↩︎
18. Patrick Sims-Williams, The Celtic Inscriptions of Britain: Phonology and Chronology, c. 400-1200. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell (Publications of the Philological Society), 2003. ↩︎
19. John (ab Ithel) Williams (ed.), Barddas: A Collection of Original Documents Illustratve of the Theology, Discipline and Usages of the Bardo-Druidic System of the Isle of Britain. 2 Vols. Llandovery: J. Pryse, 1862-63. ↩︎
20. John Davis, A History of Wales. London: Allen Lane (Penguin Press), 1993. ↩︎