Druid wars: How a drunken row over 4,000-year-old bones is causing chaos in pagan circles



Druid dispute: King Arthur Pendragon is mightily annoyed

The last time I met King Arthur Uther Pendragon — at a summer solstice ceremony at Stonehenge — he was staggering about blind drunk, sword in one hand, warm can of Stella in the other, his long white robes rather worse for wear.



He proudly told me that he had loads of children, but couldn’t remember exactly how many — ‘the King’s a bit of a tart, you see’ — and very thoughtfully invited me to join his harem if I ‘fancied a bit’. He then made a great show of pretending to grab my right breast.



So as I park on a stretch of muddy grass next to his very small and tatty caravan which overlooks the famous pagan site, I am a little nervous.

Not just because he’s a randy old lush, but because he has a pretty fearsome reputation as a self-styled warrior, political activist, new age militant, very enthusiastic demonstrator — he’s camped out here on some sort of protest about the Stonehenge Visitor Centre — and Battle chieftain of the Council of British Druid Orders, or COBDO.



Happily, this year, he’s sober (if very keen to get down the pub) and extraordinarily chatty, with a tendency to ramble.

‘I’m a spiritual warrior. I’m here to bang heads together to get everyone on the same side and I’m prepared to fight for what I believe in. . .



‘Like this huge row over the skeletons — don’t whatever you do listen to that other bunch of idiots who make up COBDO West. No one bothers with them, I’m Battle chieftain, I decide the policy and what I say goes — I think we should let those who lay at rest, stay at rest. You wouldn’t want someone digging up your grandma from the churchyard, would you?’



It’s difficult to know where to start...

The ‘skeletons’ are the 4,000-year-old remains of a young girl called ‘Charlie’ and seven other sets of prehistoric bones, excavated near the ancient stone circle in Avebury, Wiltshire, and now on display at the Alexander Keiller Museum in the village.



The ‘row’ concerns a small breakaway group of druids (known to some as COBDO West) who’ve requested the museum release the remains so they can rebury them where they came from. King Arthur and mainstream COBDO want the same thing — but are upset that COBDO West have taken matters into their own hands. ‘COBDO West are just a joke — three men and a dog, without even the dog,’ splutters King Arthur. ‘I’ve got thousands of members in my Arthurian War Band all round the world and loads more in the UK. I could field hundreds of activists at the drop of a hat. Bunch of idiots.’



Gosh. Silly me, I thought druids were just a bunch of tree-huggers who wore flowing robes, paid homage to the sun and were full of peace and love. I couldn’t be more wrong. Because the Council of British Druid Orders is at war.

Or, more accurately, a few key members are at war, after a punch-up in a pub and a horribly acrimonious split back in 2006.



Today, no one seems able to remember exactly what it was all about but for the past two years, they’ve been busy slinging mud, insults and the odd fist at each other.



The bones at the centre of the row were found at Stonehenge

On one side is my old friend King Arthur, an ex-soldier, ex-builder and ex-Hell’s Angel who changed his name by deed poll to King Arthur Uther Pendragon in 1976. He sports long grey locks, a big grizzly beard and a slew of tattoos.



On his ‘team’ are Rollo Maughfling, alias the Elder Arch Druid of Stonehenge, and his COBDO supporters.



On the other, the breakaway COBDO West, is Paul Davies, Druid Chief Reburials Officer, who lives on a narrow boat in Bath and started all this fuss about the skeletons, and the very hirsute Archdruid of Exmoor, who merely identifies himself as ‘Steve’.



The latter, now 53, is teetotal and claims King Arthur is a drunken, self-invented, aggressive fraud who has a nasty tendency to throw up in sacred circles and is a hazard with his faithful sword — ‘I’ve seen him wave it about when he’s p***ed and nearly decapitate people.’



‘A lot of people are embarrassed by it all — very embarrassed,’ says Emma Restall Orr, a druidic teacher and priestess from Warwick-shire. ‘They’re feisty, burly lads who are very much on the edge of druidism but are rowing in public and giving druids a bad name.’



And there are an awful lot of druids out there — according to Professor Ronald Hutton (a leading authority on paganism) there are more than 10,000 in the UK. There are countless cults, covens and orders, and with meetings (or moots) just as likely to be down the pub now as in a moonlit wood, this 9,000-year-old branch of paganism is becoming more and more mainstream.

Peacemaker: Terry Dobney, aka Chief Druid of Avebury, is calling for a Druid code of conduct

But the definition of druidism is also pretty vague. It has been described alternately as the ‘nature religion of Albion’; ‘the sacredness of the earth and nature and all living things’; and a ‘natural spiritualism’.



Terry Dobney has been a druid for 50 years and has been Chief Druid and Keeper of the Stones at Avebury for the past 11. He wears long white robes and an antler on his belt, clasps a hazel staff and has a rook’s feather in his cap.



‘Druids are supposed to have a balanced view and see both sides of the argument,’ he explains. ‘But there are some strong egotistical characters who need keeping in check. We’re drawing up a code of conduct for being a druid.



‘There are very few actual time-served druids. It takes a minimum of 21 years before you can call yourself a druid.’



According to Terry, it starts with a year and a day learning all the ceremonies with a mentor druid. The next seven practising what you’ve learned — ‘it’s an oral tradition, so you’re not supposed to write it down’. Seven more dressed in blue, getting a handle on the poetry and music. And, finally, the white robes and a political role.



Which, if you believe King Arthur as he sits nursing a pint of Strongbow in the pub with his girlfriend Kazz, 49, is where he is now.



‘I work out the political tactics for the druids. My order is the political arm. We’re the guys in white frocks, up the trees. We’re the ones trying to stop the Newbury by-pass.’



Hasn’t that been open for a few years?



‘Whatever — we’re at the sharp end. We’re the political arm of the whole spiritual movement.’



But it’s tricky to get a handle on what this lot actually believe in. Terry’s take is: ‘We’re born, we reproduce if we’re lucky, and we die. I certainly don’t believe in any sort of goddess.’



For the Archdruid of Exmoor it’s all about helping and healing, though he dismisses Terry’s 21-year druidic training scheme as ‘a complete load of rubbish — no need to take any notice of that because every druid is different’.



Paul Davies, for example, says: ‘It’s all about respecting nature as a living being, and beauty and power and love of nature — the ceremonies help us become part of nature and the local landscape.’



King Arthur, meanwhile, seems more preoccupied with his passport, which he produces in the pub. ‘Look — look! I’m the only subject of Her Majesty the Queen who is allowed to wear a crown on his passport photo!’



There does seem to be a certain lack of spiritualism among some Council members.



Which is a terrible shame for the rest of Britain’s druids, quietly getting on with their lives, planting trees, performing ceremonies and trying their utmost to live at one with nature.



And finally, the skeletons — what’s that all about?



Paul Davies kindly explains. ‘It’s very simple. Christian remains are automatically reburied if they are exhumed for any reason and it seems reasonable that non- Christians should have the same rights.’



Which, on the face of it, seems pretty reasonable. Indeed, pretty much the only sensible thing I’ve heard all day and the only thing they all seem to agree on.



Meanwhile, back in his local, I buy King Arthur another pint and make my farewells to him and Kazz.



‘Sorry about the summer solstice,’ he mutters. ‘It’s always quite a long night,’ adds Kazz, diplomatically.

