the Britons were put to flight, and the sacred groves of Mona were cut down. Tacitus is also the only primary source that gives accounts of druids in Britain, but maintains a hostile point of view, seeing them as ignorant savages. Irish and Welsh records In the Middle Ages, after Ireland and Wales were Christianized, druids appear in a number of written sources, mainly tales and stories such as Táin Bó Cúailnge, and in the hagiographies of various saints. These were all written by Christian monks. Irish literature and law codes In Irish-language literature, druidsdraoithe, plural of draoiare sorcerers with supernatural powers, who are respected in society, particularly for their ability to do divination. Dictionary of the Irish Language defines druí (which has numerous variant forms, including draoi) as 'magician, wizard or diviner'. In the literature the druids cast spells and turn people into animals or stones, or curse peoples' crops to be blighted. When druids are portrayed in early Irish sagas and saints' lives set in pre-Christian Ireland, they are usually given high social status. The evidence of the law-texts, which were first written down in the 7th and 8th centuries, suggests that with the coming of Christianity the role of the druid in Irish society was rapidly reduced to that of a sorcerer who could be consulted to cast spells or do healing magic and that his standing declined accordingly. According to the early legal tract Bretha Crólige, the sick-maintenance due to a druid, satirist and brigand (díberg) is no more than that due to a bóaire (an ordinary freeman). Another law-text, Uraicecht Becc ('small primer'), gives the druid a place among the dóer-nemed or professional classes which depend for their status on a patron, along with wrights, blacksmiths and entertainers, as opposed to the fili, who alone enjoyed free nemed-status. Welsh literature While druids featured prominently in many medieval Irish sources, they were far rarer in their Welsh counterparts. Unlike the Irish texts, the Welsh term commonly seen as referring to the druids, , was used to refer purely to prophets and not to sorcerers or pagan priests. Historian Ronald Hutton noted that there were two explanations for the use of the term in Wales: the first was that it was a survival from the pre-Christian era, when dryw had been ancient priests; the second was that the Welsh had borrowed the term from the Irish, as