{"id":5916,"date":"2013-08-16T16:50:20","date_gmt":"2013-08-16T22:50:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5916"},"modified":"2013-08-16T16:50:20","modified_gmt":"2013-08-16T22:50:20","slug":"on-the-keeping-of-pet-hermits-and-druids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5916","title":{"rendered":"On the Keeping of Pet Hermits and Druids"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some of the eighteenth-century hermits employed by rich landowners<\/a> were in fact characterized as “Druids.”<\/p>\n

Campbell clearly had fun with his quest for real hermits. At Hawkstone in Shropshire, a bare-footed and venerable Fr Francis regularly posed with his stock-in-trade: a skull, an hourglass and book. Although replaced at times by an automaton, Hawkstone\u2019s hermit \u2013 a hereditary post \u2013 may have survived into the twentieth century. The impecunious Charles Hamilton reputedly advertised for a hermit for his Gothic hermitage at Painshill in Surrey, offering a fee of 700 guineas (some reports say 500) to anyone able and willing to meet his stringent conditions over seven years: to go barefoot in a woollen robe, never to cut beard or nails, or to speak with the servant who brought his food. Although the advertisement cannot now be traced, the hermit undoubtedly existed, and Campbell\u2019s exhaustive enquiries confirm how ubiquitous hermits were in Georgian Britain.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Maybe there is still a niche waiting to be exploited here, for either philosophy majors or designers of animatronic hermits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some of the eighteenth-century hermits employed by rich landowners were in fact characterized as “Druids.” Campbell clearly had fun with his quest for real hermits. At Hawkstone in Shropshire, a bare-footed and venerable Fr Francis regularly posed with his stock-in-trade: a skull, an hourglass and book. Although replaced at times by an automaton, Hawkstone\u2019s hermit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[20,85,21,222,22],"class_list":["post-5916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-archaeology","tag-druids","tag-england","tag-romanticism","tag-weirdness"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1xq","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2640,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2640","url_meta":{"origin":5916,"position":0},"title":"Quick Review: Caesar’s Druids","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 12, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I am a little more than halfway through Miranda Aldhouse-Green's Caesar's Druids: Story of An Ancient Priesthood. As the British archaeologist Stuart Piggott pointed out back in the 1960s, there are no texts written about Druids by Druids. The sum of what ancient writers of the Greco-Roman world wrote would\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"Cover image of Casar's Druids by Miranda Aldhouse-Green","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ecx.images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/51AAWVY--yL._AA160_.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":22,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=22","url_meta":{"origin":5916,"position":1},"title":"Druids","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 8, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been working on a section about American Pagan Druids today. First, let me say that I am so glad that I do not have to do anything on British Druids, since in the UK there are two hundred years' worth of self-proclaimed various Druidic groups of all sorts, from\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Druidry\"","block_context":{"text":"Druidry","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=druidry"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1257,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1257","url_meta":{"origin":5916,"position":2},"title":"Blogging Hermits","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 26, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"What is it with blogging hermits\u2014or quasi-hermits?Would Henry David Thoreau have had a blog? I am sure of it. Anyone who would edit his autobiography so that two years of experience fit neatly into one literary year has demonstrated the capability of self-romanticizing that blogging requires.Sunday's Denver Post had a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"blogging\"","block_context":{"text":"blogging","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6205,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6205","url_meta":{"origin":5916,"position":3},"title":"UK Druids Restore Damaged Ley Lines","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 31, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"A major effort is underway: The council of British Druids have been working through the night to restore ley lines which have been damaged by recent storms. Many households have been without spiritual energy throughout the Yuletide holiday which has affected psychic connections in many parts of the country. A\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Druidry\"","block_context":{"text":"Druidry","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=druidry"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1179,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1179","url_meta":{"origin":5916,"position":4},"title":"Druidry and Made-up History","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 21, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Here is the YouTube trailer for a new documentary on British Druidry. Yes, that is Ronald Hutton at the beginning (long hair, glasses). (If the YouTube link does not work, try this one.)And here is the video clip dissected with a sharp knife by a different British Pagan academic.It's true:\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Druids\"","block_context":{"text":"Druids","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=druids"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=chascli-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0300144857","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":743,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=743","url_meta":{"origin":5916,"position":5},"title":"Who’s a Celt now? – 3","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 20, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"\"Celtic Spirituality\" as religious outbidding.During the recent Spanish Peaks Celtic Music Festival, St. Benedict Episcopal Church in La Veta, Colorado, took out a small ad in the program for their Celtic Spirituality weekend.Yes, before the contemporary Pagan movement was underway, various Anglicans were pushing \"Celtic spirituality\" as a way to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5916"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5918,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5916\/revisions\/5918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}