Druids and Birds

Historian P.W. Joyce had this to say about the divinatory practices of the druids:

Divination by the voices of birds was very generally practised, especially from the croaking of the raven and the chirping of the wren: and the very syllables they utter, and their interpretation, are given in the old books. The wren in particular was considered so great a prophet that, in an old Life of St. Moling, one of its Irish names, drean, is fancifully derived from drui-e'n, meaning the 'druid of birds.' When St. Kellach, Bishop of Killala, was about to be murdered, the raven croaked, and the grey-coated scallcrow called, the wise little wren twittered ominously, and the kite of Cloon-O sat on his yew-tree waiting patiently to carry off his talons-full of the victim's flesh. But when, after the deed had been perpetrated, the birds of prey came scrambling for their shares, everyone that ate the least morsel of the saint's flesh dropped down dead. The Welsh birds of prey knew better when they saw the bodies of the slaughtered druids

Far, far aloof th' aiffrighted ravens sail;

The famished eagle screams, and passes by.

--A Social History of Ancient Ireland, 1908.