The Drood

'Druid' is the Latin form of Keltic 'drui', possibly related to Greek 'drus' (tree).  Charles Dickens wrote a novel titled The Mystery of Edwin Drood-- his Drood could have derived from 'druid' and/or German 'drude' (witch), probably a Christian inflection of  'druid', and Drood sounds like 'dread', giving overall a dark effect.  The Church routinely tarred pagan gods and wights as agents of the Devil, or the Devil himself, leaving out those figures who could be converted to their holy host as saints and angels and fellow-travellers.  Similarly, the Druids, apparently a priestly/scholarly class related to the Brahmin caste of Hinduism, were converted into magicians, sorcerors, and witches.  Old English 'dry(mann' (sorceror, magician) probably derives from the Celtic form of  'druid'.  In legend, then, we have a disreputable, sinister figure.  Post-medieval Europe rediscovered the ancient Druid, and strains of Romanticism often converted the legendary druid-sorceror back into a holy man, of sacred oak groves and henges, despite  the Romans having written that the Druids  presided over human sacrifices. Now, with the contemporary Romantic Pagan resurgence, we have a further conversion-- the druid of the masonic priesthood of the modern druidic orders melded to the iconic Merlin and the Pan-Celtic holy man and the Pagan magician and the New Age shaman, making a very large amorphic presence.

I always found Merlin the only interesting character in the Arthurian legends.  Pagan Druidry, especially Eco-druidry, has a great appeal for me-- except the ancient Celtic druidry as a hierarchical order of priestly functionaries doesn't.  And I have never really gotten that whole Celtic mystique.  But since I'm obsessive about germanic vocabulary, the Old English and German offshoots of 'druid' allow me to embrace Dickens' Drood as a non-Celtic equivalent, though the only figures in the Shaggy Mythos I could fit to it would be the Twayne-- Bilwit and Wildiar (Bill and Will, vulgarly).  A 'shaggy' Drood would have to be something like the forest-god/holy man Herne in the 1980's Robin of Sherwood TV series.  Bilwit would be more of a Celtic druid, or even a Sacred King, as Arthur is now held to be, which taken together would resemble somewhat  a Norse Godhi (priest-chieftain).  Wildiar would be more of a Mad Merlin (Myrddin Wyllt)-- a wild man- shaman-magician.  So Bilwit is druidic 'Light' to Wildiar's magic-shamanic 'Darkness', and together they form the 'balance of Light and Darkness' of which TV-Herne would often speak.