Professor Ronald Hutton

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248 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Aug 2026 last heard 2 Aug

Professor Ronald Hutton’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Empire: World History · 383. Romans vs Druids: The War For Celtic Britain (Ep 1) · 2 Aug 2026 podcast

And when they describe particular native customs that have no obvious propaganda value to them, then

we're more inclined to take that seriously.

Mistletoe is connected with the peoples of northwestern Europe only in one passage in the Roman natural historian Pliny the Elder, where he says that the tribes of the extreme south of France venerated mistletoe as sacred when they found it growing on an oak tree, which

as anybody who knows the countryside knows, hardly ever happens.

So it's a big deal when it's found on the oak.

And then six days after the next new moon, they have this ceremony which Pliny describes, in which a white-robed priest – he doesn't call him a druid –

goes up with a golden sickle, cuts down the mistletoe, it's caught in mid-air and then they sacrifice white cattle and the mistletoe is made into a potent healing drink.

Now we presume that the priest is a druid because these are tribes from southern France who spoke the language in which priests are called druids.

But you may note that there's no indication that

Anybody but the tribes of southern France did this.

There's no connection with midwinter.

There's no connection with fertility or kissing under it.

First, we're not sure if Lindo mans the sacrifice.

He may have been a mugging victim or he may have been an executed criminal.

Second, we found four grains of mistletoe in his tum.

That's really very little.

And it could just be that mistletoe pollen blew onto his last meal.

Yeah, not necessarily would not have it.

This could be just a complete accident, a freak of nature produced by the breeze that was blowing through particular vegetation when this occurred.

Well, we all love the movie The Wicker Man.

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