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THE ROUND TOWERS OF IRELAND




[Illustration: Henry O’Brien

_Author of “The Round Towers of Ireland.”_]




  THE ROUND TOWERS OF IRELAND
  OR
  THE HISTORY OF THE TUATH-DE-DANAANS


  BY HENRY O’BRIEN


  A NEW EDITION

  _WITH INTRODUCTION, SYNOPSIS, INDEX, ETC._


  LONDON: W. THACKER & CO., 2 CREED LANE, E.C.
  CALCUTTA: THACKER, SPINK & CO.
  1898
  [_All Rights Reserved_]




_750 Copies only of this Edition have been printed for Sale and the Type
distributed, of which this is No. 324._




CONTENTS


                                                      PAGE

  INTRODUCTION                                         vii

  SYNOPSIS                                          xxxvii

  DEDICATION (FIRST EDITION)                           lxi

  PREFACE (FIRST EDITION)                            lxiii

  DEDICATION (SECOND EDITION)                        xciii

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS                                xcv

  AUTHOR’S TEXT (SECOND EDITION)                         1

  LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL IRISH TOWERS AND CROSSES       525

  INDEX                                                529




INTRODUCTION

    “When all is dark, who would object to a ray of light, merely because
    of the faulty or flickering medium by which it is transmitted? And if
    those round towers have been hitherto a dark puzzle and a mystery,
    must we scare away O’Brien, because he approaches with a rude and
    unpolished but serviceable lantern?”--_Fraser’s Magazine_ for August
    1835.


Henry O’Brien, the most daring and ingenious explorer of that recondite
mystery, the origin and purpose of Irish Round Towers, was born in 1808.
On both his father’s and his mother’s side he came of good descent,[1]
being connected with two of the oldest and most influential families in
the west of Ireland. At the time of his birth that branch of “the
O’Briens” to which he belonged were settled in Kerry, where his father
resided in a wild, mountainous district, known as Iveragh, forming a
portion of the Marquis of Lansdowne’s Irish estates. That his family were
in affluent circumstances is improbable, for up to the age of twelve the
boy’s education seems to have been neglected in a way very uncommon with
Irish people who are well off. “Though I could then tolerably well express
myself in English,” he says,[2] referring to this portion of his life,
“the train of my reflections always ran in Irish. From infancy I spoke
that tongue; it was to me vernacular. I thought in Irish, I understood in
Irish, and I composed in Irish”; and again, “I was twelve years of age
before ever I saw a Testament in any language.” From this unusual neglect,
coupled with the fact of his becoming a private tutor soon after he had
settled in London, and an obscure reference to certain “difficulties” at
the outset of his career as an author, we are probably justified in
assuming that money was a rather scarce commodity in the paternal home.
There is, however, reason to suppose that when he had reached the age of
twelve, or thereabouts, his education was taken in hand, though how, or by
whom, does not appear. Evidence of his having been sent to school and
placed under systematic and qualified instruction is not forthcoming. In
fact, circumstances go to negative that supposition. His acquaintance with
Greek and Latin authors seems to have been more extensive than accurate,
and his quotations from them are marked by solecisms which any properly
taught schoolboy would avoid, but in which the self-educated are prone to
indulge. It is true that (at p. 481) he describes in terms of unqualified
praise a “tutor” with whom he commenced the study of the Greek Testament;
but there is internal evidence in the same passage that such praise was
not wholly deserved, and that the tutor in question was certainly not the
person referred to in Father Prout’s statement that O’Brien had been
“brought up at the feet of the Rev. Charles Boyton.”[3] Mr. Boyton was at
the time a highly distinguished Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, who, in
addition to holding the position of Greek Lecturer at that University, was
the most eminent mathematical “coach” of his day; and the only connection
likely to have existed between him and young O’Brien was that of
college-tutor and undergraduate _in statu pupillari_. The probability is,
therefore, that any instruction which the boy received at this early
period of his life was of a very elementary character, and that his
education was mainly conducted by himself, a probability which is
certainly not discounted by the wide and promiscuous character of his
reading. From the outset of his introduction to letters he is known to
have been an omnivorous reader of all books that came in his way, nor was
his mode of studying classical authors that by which the scholastic
proficiency essential to aspirants for success at college examinations is
usually attained. O’Brien did not resemble the ordinary boy-student, to
whom Roman or Greek classics represent merely a given quantity of “text”
possessing certain peculiarities of diction or allusion which have to be
nicely dissected, analysed, and mastered, but who regards the
subject-matter of each work as being of very minor importance. On the
contrary, he manifestly read them as authors, or rather authorities upon
the subjects with which they respectively dealt, paying, so far as we can
perceive, little or no attention to the diction or distinctive literary
character of their writings. The result was what might be expected. If,
whilst an undergraduate of Dublin University, it be true that he was
regarded by many of his fellow-students as a prodigy of learning, their
seniors appear to have been less enthusiastic about his scholarship, for
we have not been able to discover his name in the college archives.[4]
Still, from the fact of his having obtained, after he took his degree in
1831, the appointment of private tutor to the sons of the then Master of
the Rolls,[5] it is possible that he may have distinguished himself
previously.

What seems absolutely certain is, that during his stay at the University
he must have availed himself to the full of opportunities presented by the
library for which Trinity College is famous. Here, no doubt, he laid the
foundation of that Oriental learning in which he was second to no Irishman
of his day, and probably to few Englishmen. It is hardly too much to say
that in the early part of the century Orientalism was comparatively
untrodden ground. Sir William Jones had indeed, many years before,
thoroughly explored this field of knowledge, but the results of his
splendid labours had not as yet been properly assimilated by the general
mass of readers, or supplemented to any remarkable extent by other workers
in the same field. Hence the scope of European knowledge of the East was
by no means so extensive then as now; and an enthusiastic student thereof,
which O’Brien undoubtedly was, had it in his power to acquire an almost
complete mastery of the subject, so far as it was then known. It was one
peculiarly fitted to his ardent, dreamy, and speculative nature. He read,
he pondered, he divined, he foresaw. Dark places in the history of his own
country began to grow clear in the light of this Eastern dawn. Hitherto,
like so many of his compatriots, he had found no way of accounting for the
extraordinary contrast between the distinctive superiority of “the Ireland
that _was_” and the relative obscurity of “the Ireland that _is_.” To
what, he must apparently have asked himself, was the fact to be
attributed, that a people who in days of old were admittedly pre-eminent
in learning and civilisation, should have afterwards lost all claim to
such distinction; or how was it that, in a land covered with the ruins of
structures evincing the ripest skill and most fanciful artistic device,
architecture should have sunk to a level that was almost barbarous? Why
was it that this decadence did not take place gradually, as one would
expect, but was plainly the result of a sudden check that stopped the
erection of such edifices at once and for ever? Why were the materials,
structure, and conformation of the edifices in question so different from
those of other ancient buildings found in their immediate neighbourhood?
Why had their sculptured ornamentation reference to what was unconnected
with, nay even opposed to, the teachings of that religious faith to which
its execution was attributed; and why did the peasantry, inheriting the
tradition of bygone ages, not recognise them as identified with that
religion? Questions like these are very stimulating to inquisitive young
souls, which usually become fired with an ambition to solve them; and as
O’Brien pored over Sir William Jones and _The Asiatic Researches_--not to
mention his beloved, though decried, Herodotus--it was only natural that
he should draw certain conclusions from the undoubted affinity that exists
between the languages, folk-lore, customs, superstitions, and modes of
thought of his own country and those of the Orient. Similar conclusions
had forced themselves upon older people who did not possess a tithe of his
Eastern lore. Moore, that versatile Anacreontic, in his ill-fitting
disguise of an Edinburgh Reviewer, avowed “That there exist strong traces
of an Oriental origin in the language, character, and movements of the
Irish people, no fair inquirer into the subject will be inclined to deny;”
and it is further instanced by the same reviewer how the famous traveller,
Bishop Pococke, on visiting Ireland after his return from the East, was
much struck with “the amazing conformity” he observed between the Irish
and the Egyptians.[6] From early childhood the questions to which we have
referred seem to have been present to O’Brien--even from the time when he
gazed upon the stunted ruin of Bally-Carbery Round Tower, not far from his
father’s house, and had been told by awestruck peasants that the real name
of that desolate and unsightly object was _Cathoir Ghall_, or “The Temple
of Delight” (p. 48). Since then he had seen other and complete round
towers; had noticed that all were of the same peculiar shape, and possibly
had detected for himself, or learned from other sources, the existence of
that phallic analogy upon which he so strongly insists. He must have read
in Sir William Jones and elsewhere how, in Eastern lands, the idea which
lay beneath this same analogy formed the basis of a widespread religious
faith, and was expressed in structures devoted to public worship. His next
step was, almost inevitably, one of conjecture. If, as the voice of
national tradition asserted, the round towers are “temples,” and if
certain analogous associations are connected with them, might they not
have been temples of a kindred religious belief? Having settled this to
his own satisfaction, the speculation would naturally rise--How came that
particular form of belief to prevail in Ireland? Was it native to the
soil; or if not, by whom was it introduced, and when? His book being
mainly an answer to these questions, we need not continue to follow the
various stages by which conjecture may have passed into theory, and theory
into conviction. With men of O’Brien’s temperament the hypothetical
interval is rarely of long duration. Before he had assumed the _toga
virilis_ of a full-fledged graduate, he probably felt confident that in an
Eastern origin lay the true solution of the mystery of the round towers;
and the more he studied the subject, the stronger grew his belief. Being
an ambitious man, too, he had no intention to forego the honour which he
was persuaded must accrue to the discoverer of this key to a problem that
had baffled so many generations of inquirers, and longed for an
opportunity to display his acquisition.

That opportunity soon came. In December 1830, the Royal Irish Academy
offered the prize of a gold medal and fifty pounds to “the author of an
approved essay on the Round Towers, in which it is expected that the
characteristic architectural peculiarities belonging to all those ancient
buildings now existing shall be noticed, and the uncertainty in which
their origin and uses are involved be satisfactorily removed.”
Unfortunately, the advertisement of this offer escaped O’Brien’s notice,
and he did not join in the competition which it evoked. But on the 21st
February 1832 the advertisement was repeated, and this time it caught his
attention. It declared that none of the essays which had been sent in
“satisfied the conditions of the question,” and extended the period of
competition for another three months (_i.e._ until 1st June 1832), in the
alleged hope “of receiving other essays on said subject,” and also for
allowing the authors of the essays already sent in “to enlarge and improve
them.” Considering the task that was set, new competitors were thus placed
at a singular disadvantage--being expected to do in three months what the
others had been unable to accomplish in two years. With all due respect to
the Royal Irish Academy, it is difficult to believe that its members can
have fully realised the nature of their own conditions. There still exist
some scores of round towers in a more or less perfect state; and they are
scattered all over Ireland, being situated for the most part in remote and
not easily accessible places. The work of visiting and inspecting
these--which was, surely, a necessary preliminary to describing “the
characteristic architectural peculiarities belonging to all”--would
require much time, after which candidates must apply themselves to the by
no means trifling task of dispelling “the uncertainty in which their
origin and use are involved,” and all within three short months.[7]
O’Brien was not, however, to be deterred by considerations of time or
space when confronted with such a chance of winning deathless fame.
Besides, he was, in one respect at any rate, well equipped for the
enterprise, having already made up his mind as to the “origin and uses” of
the Round Towers. That he had examined them all is not to be supposed, nor
is it at all likely that at his age he could have possessed sufficient
technical knowledge of architecture, in its historical and scientific
aspects, to profit much by their inspection. Still, he was probably
acquainted with whatever had been written on that branch of the subject,
and had actually made an examination of some towers, which would give him
a fair general idea of the whole. Moreover, he had a formidable quantity
of Eastern learning to fall back upon, in which latter respect he would
have enjoyed an immense advantage over all other possible competitors, if
his judges had only been qualified to appreciate that learning as it
deserved. Be his equipment for the enterprise what it might, the
enthusiastic young Irishman saw no rocks ahead, felt no mistrust, and
rushed into the fray. “I grappled with the question,” he assures us, “with
all the ardour of my nature; and, _heaven_ and _earth_, _night_ and _day_,
_in difficulties and in sorrow_, I laboured until I finished my ‘essay’
against the appointed hour, when--a brain blow to their (_sc._ the
Academy’s) expectation--I sent it in--fully satisfied, from the
consciousness of its imperturbable axioms, that all the powers of error
and wickedness combined could not withhold from it the suffrage of the
advertised medal.”[8] The meaning of this passionate reference to malign
influences in the background will appear later on; as yet, he had no cause
for misgiving on the subject of fair play, and his overweening
self-confidence precluded any anticipation of failure. Bad omens seem to
have attended his venture from the very outset. The Academy had requested
that each essay should be inscribed with some motto; and it would appear
that the motto appended to O’Brien’s was “Φωνη εν τη ερεμω” (_sic_[9])--a
sorry introduction to the notice of learned Academicians.

The heartburnings of suspense, with which most young authors are familiar,
soon began. Four days after his essay had been sent in, the Academy issued
a _third_ advertisement, requiring all the essays to be taken back, and
extending the period of preparation by an additional month, “so as to
admit of the receiving of other essays on said subject, and for allowing
the authors of essays already given in to improve and enlarge them.”
O’Brien afterwards saw fit to attribute this fresh delay to a cause very
different from that alleged; but just then, being persuaded that his
triumph was merely postponed, he reconciled himself as best he could to
the infliction, and calmly waited for apotheosis. Six months more passed
by--wearily enough, we may be sure; and then, one direful morning, just at
the close of 1832, came news that the premiums had been adjudged as
follows:--“£50 and the gold medal to George Petrie, and £20 to Henry
O’Brien, Esq.”

It may be stated here that an additional premium of £100, which had been
placed by Lord Cloncurry at the disposal of the Academy, was also awarded
in its entirety to Mr. Petrie, and that the essay sent in by that
gentleman was, by order of the Academy, printed in their _Transactions_.
It further appears that O’Brien’s essay was at first accepted for
publication in the _Transactions_, but afterwards rejected on the ground
of having been made too lengthy by the insertion of additional matter,
though in its most enlarged form it never attained to the dimensions of
Mr. Petrie’s work, and, presumably, must have been smaller in its original
than in its present shape. The true reason for its exclusion from the
_Transactions_ (as will, we think, appear from what follows) was that the
Academy took offence at the way in which O’Brien received their decision.
Nor was such resentment to be wondered at. So confidently had our author
reckoned upon an overwhelming triumph for the revelation which, as we have
seen, he believed to be not only unprecedented, but given to the world
with flawless perfection of statement, that the award seems to have almost
maddened him. Belonging to a race which has never been remarkable for the
silent endurance of wrongs, he lost no time in giving expression to his
feelings of disappointment. At first came distant mutterings of the storm
that was brewing. “On hearing of the decision,” he informs us, “I wrote
off to the secretary, tendering, in indignant irony, my thanks for their
adjudication, taking care, however, to tell them that I had expected an
issue more flattering to my hopes.” This dignified attitude having
apparently failed to imbue the Academy with a desire to remedy his
grievance, he flung off the mask of satire, and rushed into downright,
unmistakable personalities of a kind rarely addressed to august and
learned associations. He declared that, from information which had come to
his knowledge, he was prepared to prove “that the Royal Irish Academy, at
the very moment in which they published their second invitation (_i.e._
that by which the time for receiving essays was extended to 1st June
1832), had actually determined to award the gold medal and premium to _one
of their own Council_.”[10] He then went on to denounce the successful
essay as “a farrago of anachronisms and historical falsehoods.” He
prophesied that when both essays were published, and the public given an
opportunity of seeing “the truth,” in the shape of his own essay, there
would be a general acclamation of “This alone is right.” He warned the
Academy that, “though separated from them by a roaring sea” (he was living
in London at the time), his eye was on their plans, and he demanded from
them an opportunity for making his _ascription_ of the Round Towers “a
mathematical demonstration by all the varieties and modes of proof”; and
further, that upon such demonstration they should at once award _him_ the
gold medal and premium, “or, if that could not be recalled, an equivalent
gold medal and premium”--not that, as he is careful to assure them, this
offer was to be construed as an admission that his original essay was not
“all-sufficient, all-conclusive, all-illustrative, and all-convincing.” As
was only to be expected, the reply sent to this challenge ran to the
effect that, “whatever might be the merits of any additional matter
supplied to them after the day appointed by advertisement, the Academy
could not make any alteration or revocation of their award.” Then came
the rejoinder,--“I do not want them either to ‘alter’ or ‘revoke’ their
award; but simply to vote me ‘an equivalent gold medal and premium’ for my
_combined essay_, or, if they prefer, the _new portion_ of it. Should this
be refused, I will put my cause into the hands of the great God who has
enlightened me, and make Him the Umpire between me and the Academy.”[11]
One is not surprised to learn that “no answer was received to this
communication,” which, as already pointed out, may have afforded one of
the reasons why the Academy declined to publish the essay in their
_Transactions_. We may sympathise with O’Brien’s disappointment, and even
go further in deprecation of the attitude assumed by the Academy; but it
is impossible to deny that his conduct showed a want of dignity and common
sense, excusable only on the ground of youth.

As regards the Academy’s decision, assuming that the competition was
conducted fairly,--and, _a priori_, everything seemed in favour of that
assumption,--it is not easy to see how it could well have been other than
it was. With all possible admiration for O’Brien’s talents and learning,
candour obliges us to own that his essay--taken merely as a literary
performance--was inferior to that of his rival. Apart from the question as
to whether his theory was the true one, and that of Dr. Petrie the
reverse, the Academy were in a manner bound by regard for their own
dignity, and by the literary standard then prevailing, to withhold the
meed of their unqualified approval from a composition which violated in so
many respects the established precedents of literary “form,” not to
mention the canons of good taste. Besides, O’Brien was, in archæological
matters, so far in advance of his generation, that a body of elderly
gentlemen, who simply represented the standard of knowledge prevalent at
the time, might well be excused for declining to follow him. They had, in
fact, to decide between the respective merits of two essays,--one of
which was well put together, conforming, at least in appearance, to the
stipulated conditions, expressing the most approved views, bearing the
marks of careful and systematic investigation and of superior technical
knowledge, also of literary skill much above the average; the other,
daring, novel, incoherent, propounding views which were not only
unfamiliar, but even shocking, to grave and reverend seignors, rambling in
method, deficient in proof, and slipshod in language. Was it not, then,
almost inevitable that they should have preferred the former? But if one
has to pronounce upon the way in which the competition was started,
carried on, and finally decided, we are by no means sure that O’Brien had
not some reason to complain. First of all, with regard to his charge of
the Academy having awarded the prize to a member of their own Council, the
evidence to support it is _primâ facie_ strong. Upon turning to vol. xvi.
of the _Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy_, we find the names of
“The Committee of Antiquities of the Council” for the year 1830 (that in
which the competition was first invited) given as follows:--“Isaac
D’Olier, LL.D.; Thomas Herbert Orpen, M.D.; Hugh Ferguson, M.D.; Sir
William Betham; John D’Alton, Esq.; _George Petrie, Esq._; and the Rev.
Cæsar Otway.” In the next volume of the _Transactions_, extending to 1837,
the above list is given without any alteration, except that Mr. D’Alton’s
name is omitted, that of the Dean of St. Patrick’s being substituted. From
this the inference seems only natural that “George Petrie, Esq.,” was a
member of the Council (being likewise, as we find, “antiquarian artist to
the Academy”) at the time when the idea of offering a prize for an essay
on the Round Towers was first started; that he continued to be a member
while the competition was in progress, and was actually one when the said
prize was adjudicated. Next, as to the charge that the Academy had
predetermined to award the prize to a member of its own Council, we have
the very compromising letter of the Rev. Mr. Otway (himself a member of
the Council) to the editor of the _Dublin Penny Journal_, which is cited
in the Preface to the first edition of this work,[12] coupled with those
repeated postponements of the date for sending in essays, which O’Brien
assures us were inexplicable on any other ground than that of giving Mr.
Petrie time to finish _his_ essay. We are far from contending that the
reasons adduced in support of both these charges should weigh against the
high repute which the Royal Irish Academy has always enjoyed from the time
of its foundation; still, it is impossible to deny that, in the absence of
all satisfactory explanation,--at least so far as we have been able to
discover any,--they wear a rather ugly look.

O’Brien was resolved that, as the Academy would not publish his essay, he
must do so himself; but in the meantime he had been engaged upon a
translation of Dr. Villanueva’s _Ibernia Phœnicia_, which appeared in
1833. Personal liking for the author must have been his motive for
undertaking this task, as his own views do not always harmonise with those
of the Spanish _savant_; and certain letters which are quoted in the
“Translator’s Preface” show that the two were very intimate. Having made
this concession to friendship, he busied himself with the production of an
enlarged and amended version of his essay. The first edition of this was
published, early in 1834, by Whittaker & Co. of London, and J. Cumming of
Dublin. It seems to have met with a ready sale, for a second edition
appeared during the same year, bearing the imprint of Parbury & Allen,
London, and J. Cumming, Dublin. Both editions are in octavo, and to
outward appearance uniform, but differ in some respects. On the title-page
of the first it is described as the “Prize Essay of the Royal Irish
Academy, enlarged”--a description omitted in the second. Further, the
title itself is given as “The Round Towers of Ireland (or the Mysteries of
Freemasonry, of Sabaism, and of Budhism, for the first time unveiled)”;
but the words within brackets are absent from the title-page of the
second. A few corrections, too, appear in the latter edition; but, upon
the whole, it is not much more carefully edited than the first--the
curious omission of chapters vii. and xxxii. being common to both. What is
known in the book-trade as “The Long Preface,” together with an amusingly
comprehensive “Dedication,” is omitted from the second edition, a much
more commonplace dedication to the Marquis of Lansdowne (described, of
course, as “The Mæcenas of his age”) being substituted for the latter. As
the second, and last, edition is that which had the author’s latest
revisions, it has been thought advisable to reproduce it in the present
issue. No interference with its text has been attempted--typography and
pagination being alike preserved. Nor has anything in the shape of comment
been inserted. A few supplementary additions to the original work will
probably not be considered out of place. Together with this Introduction,
they comprise a “Synopsis,” of which the object is to assist readers in
following the track of the main argument--not always an easy task in the
face of the author’s numerous divagations, annotated lists of the
principal Round Towers and crosses, and an Index to the body of the work.

The reception accorded to the book by those whose verdict was most
important to its success, was decidedly hostile, and--what must have been
especially galling to a man like O’Brien--took the shape of ridicule.
Though it cannot be said that he had given no occasion for the latter, it
is equally apparent that much of it was owing to ignorance; for there is
not to be found among all the censorious judgments of those “irresponsible
reviewers” a single attempt at sterling criticism. They attacked his
style, and they laughed his theory out of court, but they never resorted
to anything that deserved to be called refutation; and showed plainly by
the character of their strictures that they were quite in the dark with
respect to the nature of the evidence which he adduced in support of his
statements. It was profanely said of the late Professor Jowett, that
whatever he did not happen to know was held by him not to be _knowledge_;
and such was the view which his critics seem to have taken of O’Brien’s
dependence upon Eastern authorities, with which they themselves were
unfamiliar. As occasionally happens in Irish affairs, a countryman of his
own led the attack. In one of the weakest articles that ever appeared in
the _Edinburgh Review_,[13] Moore, the poet, accused O’Brien of plagiarism
and other misdeeds. Considering the extent of Moore’s acquaintance with
Oriental literature, and the character of his mind, it is perhaps not
surprising that he mistakes the whole drift of O’Brien’s argument, fails
to perceive the force of those analogies upon which the latter chiefly
relied, and, in fact, only succeeds in proving his own incapacity as a
critic. But it is less conceivable that he should seek to overwhelm a
young aspirant for literary honours, who was of his own nationality, and
with whom he was on terms of at least nominal friendship, with unfounded
charges and clumsy ridicule. The secret of this otherwise unaccountable
severity is disclosed to us by “Father Prout,” in his article on “The
Rogueries of Tom Moore.” From it we learn that Moore had endeavoured
unsuccessfully to secure the co-operation of O’Brien in his forthcoming
History of Ireland, and that, upon the negotiation falling through, a
“coolness” ensued between the two. As “Father Prout” had the whole
correspondence laid before him, the story does not rest upon O’Brien’s own
version of what took place. But, be it reliable or not, there is no
denying that the poet went out of his way--and out of his depth, too--in
the effort to crush a young author, who might fairly be supposed to have
some claim upon his sympathy. The scent which Moore thus struck was
followed up by the whole critical pack. The _Gentleman’s Magazine_, for
instance,[14] without attempting anything like serious criticism, quizzed
O’Brien unmercifully. He committed the fatal indiscretion of sending a
lengthy, but for him most temperate, reply, in which he is fain to cite
the _Freemason’s Quarterly Review_ as his solitary backer. The
_Gentleman’s Magazine_ reserved its answer until he was no more; when, in
an obituary notice (November 1835), it flung back this retort: “Fondly
imagining that he was the author of most profound discoveries, and as it
were the discoverer of a new historical creed, Mr. O’Brien was always in a
state of the highest excitement; and when his lucubrations were treated
with ridicule instead of serious refutation, he was acutely
irritated”--which last observation somehow reminds one of that fastidious
man-o’-war’s man, who, whether the bo’sun “hit him high or hit him low,”
took no pleasure in being flogged. In fact, there was no real scholarly
criticism of the book from any quarter, though its eccentricities of style
and treatment received due attention. Superficially regarded, indeed, it
bristled with salient points for attack, and of these the gentlemen of the
press naturally availed themselves. They described it as “wild and
extravagant”--and no one could say them nay; but they failed to point out,
probably because they failed to see, that under this same wildness and
extravagance lay profound knowledge of a most unusual kind, powerful if
somewhat erratic reasoning, and the only theory as to the genesis of
ancient Irish proficiency in the arts of civilisation which is consistent
with the traditions, customs, superstitions, folk-lore, and antiquities of
the country.

O’Brien had now settled in London, where such time as could be spared from
his tutorial duties was spent in the study of his favourite literature. It
appears that he had at least two works then in contemplation--one a
Dissertation on the Pyramids, partly written, and the other a Celtic
Dictionary--which latter project excited the ribaldry, altogether
unfounded,[15] of certain critics. His health, never strong, was now such
as to cause some apprehension to his friends; still he was able to share
the pleasures which London life affords. He went into the fashionable
world--which, by the way, does not appear to have taken him quite
seriously, while acknowledging his talents and erudition. The Marquis of
Lansdowne’s house was open to him; and mainly, no doubt, through the
influence of that kindly nobleman, he was even presented at Court. The
military career, for which, as he informs us (p. 130), he had a
predilection second only to “his love for truth and the rectification of
his country’s honour,” was no longer an object of ambition; and he may be
regarded as having resigned himself contentedly to the peaceful avocations
of a man of letters. Bad health, aggravated by his studious habits, seems
indeed to have been the only drawback from which he suffered; but although
this had previously excited the apprehension of his friends, it was
without any immediate warning that the end came. He had been paying a
visit to some acquaintances in the suburbs of London; had spent with them
an evening, during which he displayed his usual cheerfulness and vivacity;
had retired to rest without any symptoms of indisposition; and the next
morning was found lifeless in his bed,--death having, to all appearance,
taken place quite painlessly during sleep. By those who knew him he was
mourned, and by none more sincerely than the genial “Father Prout,” who
added the following postscript to his article on “The Rogueries of Tom
Moore,” already in print when the news of his young friend’s death reached
him:--

    “MEM.--On the 28th of June 1835, died, at The Hermitage, Hanwell,
    Henry O’Brien, author of _The Round Towers of Ireland_. His portrait
    was hung up in the gallery of Regina on the 1st August following; and
    the functionary who exhibits the ‘Literary Characters’ dwelt thus on
    his merits:--

    “In the village graveyard of Hanwell (_ad_ viii. _ab urbe lapidem_)
    sleeps the original of yonder sketch.... Some time back we had our
    misgivings that the oil in his flickering lamp of life would soon dry
    up; still we were not prepared to hear of his light being thus
    abruptly extinguished. “One morn we missed him” from the accustomed
    table at the library of the British Museum, where the page of
    antiquity awaited his perusal; “another came--nor yet” was he to be
    seen behind the pile of _Asiatic Researches_, poring over his
    favourite Herodotus, or deep in the Zendavesta. “The next” brought
    tidings of his death. His book on the Round Towers has thrown more
    light on the early history of Ireland, and on the freemasonry of those
    gigantic puzzles, than will ever shine from the cracked pitchers of
    the Royal Irish Academy, or the farthing candle of Tommy Moore.... No
    emblem will mark the sequestered spot where lies the Œdipus of the
    Round Towers riddle--no hieroglyphic.... But ye who wish for monuments
    to his memory, go to his native land, and
    there--_circumspicite!_--Glendalough, Devenish, Clondalkin,
    Inis-Scattery, rear their architectural cylinders; and each proclaims
    to the four winds of heaven ... the name of him who solved the problem
    of 3000 years, and who first disclosed the drift of these
    erections.... Suffice it to add that he fell a victim to the intense
    ardour with which he pursued the antiquarian researches that he
    loved.”

One portion at least of the good Father’s prophecy was amply fulfilled. In
_Irish Graves in England_, by Michael M’Donagh (_Evening Telegraph
Reprints_: Dublin, 1888), a chapter on O’Brien contains these words:--

    “His grave cannot now be identified in Hanwell churchyard. It was
    never marked by even a rude stone. In the register of burials the
    entry is: ‘No. 526, Henry O’Brien, Hanwell, July 2, years 26. Charles
    Birch, officiating clergyman.’ Tho number of the grave did not help
    towards its identification, and an examination of every stone did not
    result in the discovery of the name of O’Brien.”

So passed out of life a gifted young soul that had just begun to know the
measure of its strength. Had O’Brien been spared, he might have taken the
very highest rank among antiquarians and ethnologists; as it is, his fame
must rest upon a single crude and imperfect work, written in haste, before
his powers were fully ripe, or his learning properly assimilated. Beyond
this, and his translation of Villanueva, he may be said to have left no
trace behind. He had never married, though it is highly improbable that,
with his ardent temperament, and that almost reverential admiration for
the sex to which he gives frequent expression in _The Round Towers_, he
could have reached the age of six-and-twenty heart-whole. From his
portrait by Maclise (a copy of which forms the frontispiece to this
volume), he must, one would think, have been a sufficiently personable
man--though somewhat frail, and looking older than his years--not to have
wooed in vain. But he has left no hint of a love affair, beyond occasional
references to a mysterious “sorrow,” which may have been of this nature.
No stain rests upon his memory; his habits were convivial, but not
vicious; and he had a great reverence for his own religion, in no way
weakened by his sympathy with other less perfect aspects of eternal truth.
It may be said of him that he left the world without having done it any
harm, and in the firm belief that he had nobly served the cause of human
enlightenment,--which surely was no bad ending.

       *       *       *       *       *

It is one thing to admit the ingenuity, or even the plausibility, of a
writer’s views, and another to accept them as articles of belief. So far
from claiming for O’Brien that he has completely solved the mystery of the
Round Towers, we may even confess a doubt that the latter admits of any
complete solution. Certain links in the chain of evidence are wanting,
which, to all appearance, are not likely to be ever supplied. That, for
instance, the _Tuath-de-danaans_ came from Persia, bringing with them to
Ireland their arts and their religion, is quite possible; but the absence
of any reference to such migration in the more ancient Persian historians,
where we should expect to find it; the want of some adequate explanation
of the motives which could have led a highly-civilised people, accustomed
to a luxurious climate, to prefer as their final settlement the bleak
shores of a remote Atlantic island to the more temperate and, to an
Eastern eye, more beautiful countries through which they must have passed
on their way; the all but complete failure to point out the route which
they followed in their quest of an asylum--these are gaps which require to
be filled up before most of us will be prepared to accept their Eastern
genealogy. Still, it must be confessed that O’Brien’s theory rests upon
other and surer foundations, so far as its essential probability is
concerned; also, that it is entertaining and suggestive to a degree which
renders it, if not a profitable, at least a pleasing mental exercise.

_The Origin of the Round Towers_ (the first branch of the question
proposed by the Royal Irish Academy) is really only part of a much wider
problem which had long engaged the attention of earnest, capable, and
industrious archæologists, with whose names the reader of this work is
likely to become only too familiar. The Round Towers are merely one class
of more or less elaborate architectural or monumental remains, scattered
all over Ireland, and bearing unmistakable signs of a very remote
antiquity.[16] That these remains are inseparably connected in time and
origin, seems to be proved by the fact that no writer upon the subject of
the Round Towers had hitherto been able to treat of the latter
exclusively, without taking into consideration the “crosses” or “temples,”
or other subdivisions of the whole, and that neither Dr. Petrie nor his
rival claimed exemption from the same necessity. A great portion of their
respective works on the Round Towers is devoted, for instance, to a
consideration of other antiquities; and what is perhaps the most valuable
part of O’Brien’s,--namely, that upon which his assumption of a _pagan_
origin chiefly rests,--is the result of investigation into the nature of
that symbolism for which the sculptured crosses are so remarkable. It
seemed, in fact, impossible for those who studied the subject carefully to
resist the conclusion that all these remains belong to a period when
Ireland was inhabited by a race which differed in many respects from the
Irish of a later date. In Dr. Petrie’s opinion, that race consisted of the
early Christian missionaries and their proselytes; in O’Brien’s, it
belonged to an era far antecedent to Christianity itself; and so far, he
is at one with the leading authorities who preceded him. Limiting his
statement to the Round Towers, Dr. Petrie informs us[17] that, up to the
time at which he undertook to decide the matter, two theories prevailed as
to the “origin” of these structures: (1) That they were erected by the
Danes; (2) that they were of Phœnician origin. But O’Brien discards the
Danes altogether, and only allows a very subordinate part indeed to the
Phœnicians, namely, that of having, as sea-carriers, assisted to convey
the _Tuath-de-danaans_ to Ireland. For the grounds upon which Dr. Petrie
attributes an exclusively Christian origin to the Round Towers inquirers
must be referred to the body of his work, where they will find it most
ingeniously, if not quite ingenuously, argued at much length that these
structures were erected between the fifth and thirteenth centuries of our
era by Christian founders. An outline of his rival’s argument to the
contrary is given in the annexed “Synopsis.” The difference between the
respective methods of the two theorists is very marked, and here the
advantage does not rest with O’Brien. Petrie is calm, precise,
authoritative; O’Brien fervid, rambling, and passionately expostulative.
That the former has failed to prove his case, and that the latter has to
some extent succeeded in doing so, may, or may not, be the fact; but it
must be admitted that, if O’Brien was the more successful, he was not the
more dexterous combatant. It has been frequently, and perhaps not without
justice, remarked that “Irishmen have a way of _blundering_ upon the
truth”; and from the eccentric fashion in which he sets about proving his
contention, some may argue that O’Brien’s success merely affords an
instance of this national peculiarity. But it would be hardly fair to do
so in the case of an author who is acknowledged to have prepared himself
for his task by careful study of the authorities bearing upon its subject,
and whose “discovery,” as he calls it, is expressly founded on the results
of that preparation. In this latter respect he presents a marked contrast
to his somewhat dictatorial rival, who is wont to treat the exercise of
private judgment by those who happen to differ from himself as a species
of _lèse-majesté_.[18] On the other hand, O’Brien is always imploring the
reader to follow his argument step by step. “Here,” he ever seems to be
urging, “are the plain, unvarnished facts; here, the incontestable
authorities; with these staring you in the face, surely you cannot think
of denying that such and such an inference is unavoidable?” His reasons
may not be always of the best; but, such as they are, he gives them
freely. Of the two methods, the public, who are usually impressed by
self-assertion, preferred the former; and “Dr. Petrie’s epoch-making book”
was by general consent allowed to have “settled the question of the Round
Towers for ever.” This comforting belief remained undisturbed for more
than a quarter of a century, when, in the year 1867, a book appeared which
challenged its infallibility. The author, a Mr. Marcus Keane, seems to
have started upon an investigation of Irish ruins from sheer curiosity,
and with a dispassionate intention to see and judge for himself. He was
certainly not actuated by any wish to decry the merits of Petrie’s work,
to which he confesses his great obligations, and which he appears to have
taken at first as his guide. But, having carefully examined bit by bit the
ancient architecture still remaining in most of the Irish counties, and
having tested Petrie’s statements by personal investigation on the spot,
he reluctantly confessed that he had lost faith in the latter. “After much
consideration,” he declares,[19] “I have been forced to the conclusion ...
that the generally received theory is not supported by sufficient
evidence. My conviction of the heathen origin of these ruins has been
strengthened in proportion to the increased knowledge which I have
acquired by examination of the ruins themselves.... Not only the Round
Towers, but also the crosses and stone-roofed churches are entirely of
heathen origin.” Further, on all essential points he found himself in
agreement with O’Brien, the difference between them, in respect of the
particular form of paganism to which those remains owe their existence,
being so trifling as hardly to merit notice. Of course, we do not
undertake to say that he is right: the question is one upon which people
have always differed hitherto, and which will probably be a subject of
variance until the end of time. But it seems to us that the dispassionate,
almost reluctant, judgment of this competent, methodical, and eminently
fair observer, who approached his subject, not when controversy was
raging, but after a sufficient number of years had elapsed to admit of
prejudice dying out, is entitled to carry more than ordinary weight, where
the object is to arrive at a conclusion based upon a study of unvarnished
facts.

Up to this point the question may be said to have been regarded solely
from the architectural point of view, which is not the most favourable for
O’Brien; though, considering his necessarily limited knowledge in that
respect, he must be admitted to have made out a fairly strong case. It is
where the argument hinges upon analogies between Irish and Eastern
symbolism that we have him at his best. Here all the resources of his
great Oriental learning come into play, and may be said fairly to have
turned the scale in his favour. Indeed, it is perfectly astonishing,
considering that his book was written more than sixty years ago, when he
was himself a mere youth, how nearly it reaches the level attained by
modern research. In proof of this, it may be as well to refer, by way of
example, to one of the latest authoritative treatises on the subject of
Symbolism, that written by Count Goblet D’Alviella[20] (_Hibbert
Lecturer_ for 1891, and member of the Royal Academy of Belgium), together
with its learned “Introduction” by Sir George Birdwood, K.C.I.E.; and we
do so with the less hesitation because, as neither of these writers
indulges in more than a passing reference to Ireland, no suspicion of a
wish to strengthen their inferences by making out a pagan origin for Irish
antiquities can attach to them. The reader who consults these authorities
will find that they go far to support O’Brien’s interpretation of the
symbolic ornamentation of Irish towers and crosses; that they perfectly
coincide with his views on the nature of Sabaic paganism; and generally
with his theory, that where symbolism of this character is found existing
in Western lands, it must have been introduced there from an Eastern
source. A few sentences taken almost at random from the Introduction to
Count D’Alviella’s work, as well as from the book itself, may be adduced
in support of this assertion. Thus, having stated that “the religious
symbols common to the different historical races of mankind have not
originated independently among them, but have, for the most part, been
carried from the one to the other in the course of their migrations of
conquests and commerce”; that “the more notable of these symbols were
carried over the world in the footsteps of Buddhism”; that they were at
first but “the obvious ideograph of the phenomena of nature that made the
deepest impression on Asiatic man”; that the Sabæans were “the Chaldæan
worshippers of the Host (_Saba_) of Heaven,”[21] it goes on to say:
“Without doubt, the symbols that have attracted in the highest degree the
veneration of the multitude have been the representative signs of gods,
often uncouth and indecent; but what have the gods themselves ever been,
except the more or less imperfect symbols of the Being transcending all
definition whom the human conscience has more and more clearly divined
through and above all these gods?” How, it may be asked, does this differ
from O’Brien’s description of the nature of that “Budh” who forms the
central idea around which he groups the minor significances of Irish
Sabaism? Again we read: “It is sentiment, and, above all, religious
sentiment, that resorts largely to symbolism; and in order to place itself
in more intimate communication with the being or abstraction it desires to
approach. To that end men are everywhere seen either choosing natural or
artificial objects to remind them of the Great Hidden One.[22]... There
exists a symbolism so natural that ... it constitutes a feature of
humanity in a certain phase of development; ... for example, the
representations of the sun by a disc or radiating face, of the moon by a
crescent; ... of the generative forces of nature by phallic emblems.”[23]
Might we not fancy that this was written by O’Brien? Again: “What theories
have not been built upon the existence of the equilateral cross as an
object of veneration?... Orthodox writers have protested against the claim
of attributing a pagan origin to the cross of the Christians, because
earlier creeds had included cruciform signs in their symbolism. And the
same objection might be urged against those who seek for Christian
infiltrations in certain other religions under the pretext that they
possess the sign of the Redemption.” Is not this O’Brien’s argument in a
nutshell? Then we have an entire chapter (iv.), entitled “Symbolism and
Mythology of the Tree,” the substance of which he may be said to have
anticipated; and so on, all through the book. It is needless to multiply
quotations; those already given suffice to show that, in its essential
character, O’Brien’s argument, so far as it relies upon symbolism, is
corroborated by those in the front rank of modern archæologists.

       *       *       *       *       *

It must, however, be confessed that O’Brien is not always so much in
harmony with modern thought, and that his reasoning from analogies of
language appears to us, occasionally, neither sound nor ingenuous. Perhaps
it would be more correct to say that he sometimes, without meaning
deception, allows enthusiasm to entice him across the line between fact
and fiction. In this respect he is not, perhaps, less scrupulous than the
average etymologist; but even admitting the veniality of his offence, it
seems to us that the philological is the weakest portion of his book. In
his hands Grimm’s then recently discovered “law of the mutation of
consonants” was, as we think, too often strained to cover most
questionable derivations, nor did he shrink, apparently, from coining
forms of words to suit his purpose. As instances of this we may point to
his otherwise skilful treatment of the name _Hibernia_ at p. 128, where,
without any authority that we are aware of, he employs the form νηος for
υῆσος, evidently with a view to strengthen his case; also, to his
wonderful evolution of the word _Lingam_, at p. 284. But whilst the reader
will probably accept his statements on this head with caution, admiration
of his skill in detecting analogies which only require pointing out to
secure our assent, cannot be withheld. That he had in him the making of a
great philologist, is beyond question; and that in course of time, had his
life been spared, he would have made this branch of his argument really
formidable, is very probable. Even as it stands, we may be undervaluing
its merit: philology is not an exact science, and one can rarely be sure
of one’s ground therein from day to day. But, judging the matter by such
light as we possess, it seems to us that the least valuable part of
O’Brien’s book is that upon which he evidently prided himself most: others
may, possibly on better grounds, be of a different opinion, and we gladly
leave this portion of the book to speak for itself.

       *       *       *       *       *

It may, we think, be said without injustice, that when dealing with that
part of the question which related to the _uses_ of the Round Towers,
O’Brien was more successful in upsetting the theories of other people than
in establishing his own. The purposes for which preceding antiquarians had
severally claimed that the towers were built are almost endless; but Dr.
Petrie has summarised the most prominent of them as follows:[24]--(1)
Fire-temples; (2) places from which to proclaim the Druidical festivals;
(3) Gnomons, or astronomical observatories; (4) Phallic emblems, or
Buddhist temples; (5) Anchorite towers, or Stylite columns; (6)
Penitential prisons; (7) Belfries; (8) Keeps, or Monastic Castles; (9)
Beacons and Watch-towers. Both he and O’Brien agree in holding that the
Round Towers were not appropriated to any one of these purposes
exclusively, though they might have been used for two or more of them. It
is with regard to the selection of these latter that the authors
differ--Petrie adopting views (7), (8), (9); O’Brien, view (3), but with
much reservation; view (4) absolutely, and adding another view of his own,
namely, that they were sometimes devoted to memorial or sepulchral uses.
It has been mentioned already that Moore charged him with plagiarism in
respect of his adoption of view (4); but, like other charges from the same
quarter, the assertion rests upon unstable grounds. O’Brien made no secret
of the fact that on many points he shared the views of General Vallancey,
for whom he invariably expresses respect, and even admiration; but he is
careful to explain that, where their judgments happen to coincide, it is
for very different reasons. “I wish it to be emphatically laid down,” he
says in one place, “that I do not tread in General Vallancey’s
footsteps.... I have taken the liberty to _chalk out my own road_”; and,
in another, “Though his perseverance had rendered him (Vallancey) the best
_Irishian_ of his age, and of many ages before him, yet he has committed
innumerable blunders.” This goes to show that he was unlikely to adopt any
theory merely because Vallancey held it; and to have arrived at the same
conclusion by a wholly different road was surely not “plagiarism.” What is
more, a reference to the published works of General Vallancey,[25] or even
to such extracts from them as may be found in Dr. Petrie’s book, will, if
we are not mistaken, give rise to some doubt of that author having ever
distinctly maintained the Eastern, or pagan, origin of the Round Towers.
His views are, however, so nebulous and shifting, that it is difficult to
say whether he committed himself to any positive theory on the subject.
Starting with the conjecture that the Round Towers may have been the work
of “Phœnicians or Indo-Scythians,” he is soon found attributing them to
certain “African sea-champions,” who, in his opinion, were the “Pheni,”
being likewise, as he goes on to inform us, “a _Pelasgic_ tribe.” Next, he
declares that it was the _Fomorians_ who, having conquered Ireland,
“taught the inhabitants to build Round Towers”; but he afterwards seems to
discard this theory in favour of a “Danish” origin, and ends, to all
appearance, by resigning himself to the notion that they may, after all,
have been built by “Christian” settlers. Nor are his speculations as to
the _purpose_ of those structures less varied and conflicting. At one time
he maintains that they were undoubtedly “fire-temples”; at another, that
they were “belfries”; and yet again, that they were “beacons.” But--what
is especially remarkable in connection with the charge of plagiarism--he
never, so far as we can discover, attributes to them a “phallic”
significance. Upon the whole, then, it seems rather unreasonable to accuse
anybody of having borrowed theories from an author who practically had
none; and the probability is that, without having read General Vallancey’s
works, Moore had, from hearsay, formed a vague general notion of their
contents, which notion he, in the capacity of an irresponsible and not
over-scrupulous reviewer, ventured to utilise for paying off old scores.
Be that as it may, we are not prepared to urge that, upon the evidence,
O’Brien’s theory as to the phallic emblemism of the Round Towers--whether
he borrowed it from Vallancey or not[26]--absolutely deserves credence.
Like his ascription of an Eastern origin to the _Tuath-de-danaans_, it is
one of those things which, so far as we can see, are incapable of proof.
Still, it cannot be said that there is any inherent impossibility in the
notion; in fact, assuming that the Round Towers were built by an Eastern
colony, there is much in its favour. For, as all who are acquainted with
our Indian Empire must be well aware, phallic symbols are there regarded
with a veneration which in its character is entirely free from
associations that appear to be inseparable from them elsewhere. The East
and West have taken different views as to the light in which the physical
agency by which divine creative power has chosen to perpetuate life should
be regarded; and to the Hindoo mind, for instance, there is nothing
inconsistent with the highest moral purity in worshipping an idealised
representation of the generative principle. A similar belief, on O’Brien’s
showing, prevailed in ancient Persia,--indeed, but for its existence
there, the Tuath-de-danaans’ immigration into Ireland could hardly have
taken place,--so that colonisers from that country, if any such
colonisation ever took place, were likely to have introduced corresponding
typical representations wherever they settled. Hence the theory of the
Eastern origin of the Round Towers and that of their phallic significance
are mutually interdependent. Further than this it is useless to go. The
probability of either theory is a matter that, if we are not mistaken,
most readers will determine for themselves, without much respect to
authority; nor has any author who tries to establish a hypothesis on
evidence the bearing of which upon the subject is in itself hypothetical,
a right to complain that this should be so. O’Brien has been in a manner
forced to rely upon such evidence all through his book, and the latter
suffers in consequence. To our thinking, those portions of it are usually
the most convincing where, discarding authority for the most part, he
relies upon his own native shrewdness. His attack upon the “belfry” theory
is one instance of this. Another is the way in which he combats
Montmorency’s notion, that the towers may have been intended as places of
shelter, for persons or property, from hostile invasion. Almost equally
effective is his refutation of the hackneyed argument, that because Round
Towers are usually (not invariably, as some assert) found in the vicinity
of ecclesiastical buildings, they must necessarily be of Christian origin;
though here, as in the case of the “belfry” theory, he might, we think,
have insisted more upon the curious circumstance that Christians should
have discontinued building them as soon as Christianity was firmly
established in Ireland, but before the country had been reduced to a
peaceful or settled condition. If such adjuncts to churches were needed up
to the thirteenth century, there is nothing in the history of Ireland for
the next three centuries, at least, which shows that they might have been
dispensed with. To account for their disappearance by representing it as a
consequence of the transition from Romanesque to Gothic architecture,
which took place about the twelfth century, is to beg the whole question;
for it assumes that the Round Towers are Romanesque--a point on which we
take leave to think that opinions are much divided, as indeed they appear
to be upon almost every topic connected with the subject-matter of this
very remarkable book.

W. H. C.

LONDON, 1897.




SYNOPSIS


CHAPTER I

(PP. 1-15)


The book opens with a preliminary statement, in general terms, of the
object which its author has in view. It is to prove that the round towers
date from a more remote antiquity than that usually assigned to them; that
they were, in fact, erected long before Christianity reached these
islands, and even before the date of the Milesian and Scandinavian
invasions. In support of this view, he contrasts the materials,
architecture, and costliness of their construction with those of the early
Christian churches usually found in their vicinity (cf. p. 514), and
accounts for the contiguity of the latter by stating that the Christian
missionaries selected, as the sites of their churches, localities
previously consecrated to religious use, in order that they might thereby
“conciliate the prejudices of those whom they would fain persuade”; whilst
he points out that a Christian origin has not been claimed for Cromleachs
and Mithratic caves, in the vicinity of which ecclesiastical remains
likewise abound. On the other hand, he insists that the general structure
and decorative symbolism of the round towers is clearly indicative of
pagan times and a pagan origin, more especially of that primitive form of
paganism which, originating in Chaldea, diffused itself eastward until it
overspread a considerable part of Asia, and which is known as _Sabaism_.
Dissenting from the theories of his predecessors in the same field of
inquiry, he rejects the various theories that the round towers were
intended as “purgatorial columns,” or “beacons,” or “belfries,” or
“dungeons,” or “anchorite-cells,” or “places of retreat” in the case of
hostile invasion, or “depositories” for State records, Church utensils, or
national treasures; and he states as his conviction, based on examination
of their structure, that it was not the intention of their founders to
limit their use to any one specific purpose.


CHAPTER II

(PP. 16-32)

Following up this line of argument, he attacks Montmorency, who had
maintained that the founders of the round towers were “primitive Cœnobites
and bishops, munificently supported in the undertaking by the
newly-converted kings and toparchs; the builders and architects being
those monks and pilgrims who, from Greece and Rome, either preceded or
accompanied the early missionaries of the fifth and sixth centuries.”
Reserving a detailed refutation of this theory for subsequent chapters, he
contents himself for the present with showing that it rests upon mere
assumption, which is not borne out by the evidence adduced in
corroboration thereof; and exposes the fallacy of Montmorency’s argument,
that pre-Christian Ireland was in a state of barbarism which precluded the
possibility of such structures as the round towers being erected by its
inhabitants. He further deals with the objections, that the bards do not
allude to these towers as existent in their time, that those undoubtedly
ancient excavations, the Mithratic caves, are never found in the vicinity
of round towers, and that the limited nature of their accommodation made
them serviceable only for some such purpose as that of a belfry or
dungeon. With Vallancey’s views he finds himself more in sympathy, but is
unable to adopt them unreservedly--preferring, as he puts it, to chalk out
his own road.


CHAPTER III

(PP. 33-47)

Continuing his attack upon Montmorency, the author points out that the
towers erected elsewhere by Cœnobite associations are always square, not
round, and that any argument based upon the elevated position of the
entrances to both classes of edifices would apply equally to the pyramids.
He shows that the round towers could not have been intended as places of
refuge, or as depositories of ecclesiastical treasures, and adduces
historical proof that the structures known as “belfries” were wholly
different. Alluding to the supposed band of voluntary Cœnobite workmen
under _Saint Abban_, he points out that their building operations must
necessarily have been carried on in the midst of a raging war; that
although they must have availed themselves of native assistance in the
work, yet the Irish of the early Christian period betray not the slightest
knowledge of the art of building; that the building of round towers ceased
quite suddenly, almost immediately after the introduction of Christianity;
that the native Irish have never attributed these towers to such an
origin; that, so far from being, as Montmorency alleges, assisted by the
munificence of native princes, the Cœnobite monks must have had to deal
with absolute pagans, who would regard their labour with anything but
approval; and that the fact of “kills,” or remains of Christian churches,
being found in the vicinity of Cromleachs, Mithratic caves, and round
towers is simply the result of the reverence felt by the pagan converts
for the scenes and associations of their old belief, and affords no ground
for supposing that the churches were coeval with the latter. Subsequently
(at p. 514) he cites the instance of a round tower without any church near
it.


CHAPTER IV

(PP. 48-62)

In tracing the origin and purpose of the round towers, our author is led
to consider the names given them in ancient records and Irish folk-lore.
The stunted ruin of Bally-Carbery Round Tower, near his own birthplace,
was, he found, known to the peasantry as the “Cathoir ghall,” _i.e._ “the
temple of brightness or delight,” whilst both in the _Annals of the Four
Masters_, the _Ulster Annals_, and the _Annals of Innisfallen_ these
towers are included in the generic name _Fiadh-Neimhedh_, as contrasted
with the names _Cloic teacha_ and _Erdam_ applied to “belfries,” thus
showing that the two kinds of structures are perfectly distinct. He finds
that _Fiadh-Nemeadth_ in all preceding writers on the subject is held to
apply specifically to the round towers, though some of these writers
(_e.g._ Colgan and O’Connor) have wrested its meaning to support their own
particular views, and the true import of this term he subsequently
explains to be “consecrated Lingams” (p. 105), or _phallic temples_. The
“belfry” and the _gnomon_, or “celestial index,” theories are thus
exploded. From historical evidence he is further led to assume that
Ireland is identical with the _Insula Hyperboreorum_ of the ancients, and
that the legendary mission of the Boreadan _Abaris_[27] to Delos took
place during the _Scythian_ occupation of Ireland. This friendly
communication between the ancient Irish and the Greeks he attributes to
their having sprung from a common stock--the _Pelasgi_ and the
_Tuath-de-danaans_ belonging to “the same time as the Indo-Scythæ, or
Chaldean Magi.” He traces briefly the relations between the
_Tuath-de-danaan_ settlers in Ireland and their Scythian (or Milesian)
conquerors, and shows that to the former is due the high state of
civilisation and learning for which ancient Ireland was distinguished, and
which degenerated under Scythian rule; and concludes with a general
statement as to the prevalence of _Sabaic_ worship therein, and the
phallic configuration of the round towers.


CHAPTER V

(PP. 63-76)

Being now fairly launched on the subject of _Sabaism_, or worship of
natural manifestations of the divine energy, he traces its origin,
development, and decadence into idolatry. Amid the heterogeneous confusion
of beliefs that seem to have sprung up among the descendants of Noah,
Nimrod introduced the worship of the sun as a deity, but only as a part of
that general Sabaism which included the whole “host of heaven” as objects
of worship, and recognised the Godhead, of which they were simply
manifestations, under the names of _Baal_ and _Moloch_. Gradually, the
creature was substituted for the Creator, and their names, especially the
former (_Bolati_), were applied to the sun, “as the source and dispenser
of all earthly favours,” while to the moon was attributed a corresponding
reverence under the name _Baaltis_, though in both cases the object of
internal regard was intended to be _Nature_, or “the fructifying germ of
universal generativeness.” From the tendency of man to the concrete, this
central idea was soon lost sight of, and the material element put in its
place--hence came _Fire-worship_. Originating in Chaldea, this degenerated
form of Sabaism in course of time spread eastward until it reached Persia,
where eventually there seems to have been a reversion to the principle
which underlay it, _i.e._ that of _generation_ and _nutrition_, in which
form it afterwards extended to India. Though fire was the ostensible
object of worship, the sun and moon, from which that worship originated,
were regarded and reverenced as “the procreative causes of general
fecundity,” with which was coupled the notion of regeneration after
dissolution of the body. Hence when, as will appear hereafter, Eastern
Sabaism was introduced into Ireland by the Tuath-de-danaans, the round
towers created by them as temples of their worship had both a phallic and
sepulchral meaning.


CHAPTER VI

(PP. 77-90)

That purer form of _Sabaism_ in which the central idea of “the All-good
and All-great One” predominated over materialism, seems to have prevailed
in ancient Egypt, and to a more definite extent in India, whilst in both
these countries, and also in Ireland, its material side led to the
cultivation of astronomy. Hence the _pyramids_ of Egypt, the _pagodas_ of
India, and the _round towers_ of Ireland had both a religious and a
scientific purpose. There is no ground, however, for supposing that the
round towers were “fire-temples.” Though temples of the latter kind
undoubtedly exist in Ireland, their structure is altogether different, and
they evidently belong to a later period, showing, in fact, traces of an
Italian origin. Fire-worship was probably introduced into Italy from
Greece, where it had been practised by the old Pelasgic stock, who, on
their expulsion from Thessaly, settled in Etruria, bringing their worship
with them.


CHAPTER VIII

(PP. 91-106)

From a careful study of Eastern records and Sabaism, the author is led to
take up the position that the round towers were constructed by early
Indian colonists of Ireland (the _Tuath-de-danaans_), in honour of “the
fructifying principle of nature,” of which the sun and moon are
representative. The emblem of this principle was the _phallus_ in the case
of the sun, and the _crescent_ in that of the moon. The round tower was
simply a monumental _phallus_, which fact is taken to explain the terms
“Cathoir ghall” and “Fidh-Nemphed” to which he alludes in chap. iv.;
whilst the _crescent_ ornament by which many of these towers were
surmounted is symbolical of the female nature. A corroboration of this
theory is found in the circumstance that the name _Budh_, by which these
towers are “critically and accurately designated, signifies in Irish,
first, the _sun_, and secondly, what φαλλός, _phallus_, does in Greek and
Latin,” a view which is supported by the analogy of Egyptian sun and moon
worship.


CHAPTER IX

(PP. 107-126)

Having thus committed himself to the view that the paganism which founded
the Irish Round Towers was a religion of which _Budh_ (_i.e._ the sun and
the _phallus_) was the central idea, and which, therefore, resembled in
its essence the faiths of India and Egypt, the author proceeds to trace
the origin of this religion. In India the latter is known as _Buddhism_,
or that form of Sabaism taught by Buddha; but the author is persuaded that
there never was such a person as Buddha--at least, when the religion first
shot into life, which was almost as early as the creation of man--though
in later times several enthusiasts assumed that name. The origin of the
religion was, in fact, “an abstract thought,” which cannot easily be
expressed in words until it is reduced to the materialised forms of that
practical Sabaism which each nation framed for itself, and which consisted
in the worship of generative and productive power under its various
manifestations. Hence the objects of worship ranged from the sun and moon
even to agricultural operations, and, of course, included sexual
physiology. Indian Buddhism worshipped the _Lingam_ (or _phallus_) as the
emblem of_Budh_ (_i.e._ the Sun), but without any sensual alloy in such
reverence, which, in fact, necessitated the observance of a strict moral
code. Among other requirements of this code was the performance of works
of charity, _Dana_ (_i.e._ the giving of alms), and the religionists were
hence called _Danaans_ or _Almoners_. The bearing of all this upon Irish
paganism is explained by referring to the intimate connection that in
early times existed between Ireland and the East, from whence its
Tuath-de-danaan colonists were derived. The name _Erin_, together with its
Greek form _Ierne_, and its Latin transmutation _Hibernia_, is shown to be
identical with _Iran_, the ancient name of _Persia_, which, modified into
_Irin_, was applied by the Greek historians to the “Sacred Island” of the
West, and recognised by Gildas and Ordericus Vitalis as the established
designation of Ireland in their time.


CHAPTER X

(PP. 127-141)

Developing this last argument, our author shows that, while _Iran_ (or
“the sacred _land_”) was a name applied to both Persia and Ireland, the
form _Irin_ (Sacred _Island_) is exclusively applied to Ireland, and that
_Irc_, _Eri_, _Ere_, and _Erin_ are but modifications of the latter. The
Greeks commuted this name of _Irin_ into _Ierne_, which is merely a
translation (ἱερός + νῆσος); and the Latins, by putting an _H_ for the
rough breathing of ἱερός, and interpolating a _b_ for sound’s sake,
transformed the latter into _Hibernia_, the meaning “Sacred Island” being
preserved. But by its own inhabitants it continued to be known as
_Fuodhla_, _Fudh-Inis_, and _Inis-na-Bhfiodhbhadh_, names associating the
worship which prevailed therein with the profession of the worshippers,
for they respectively denote the land or island of _Fuodh_ or _Budh_ and
_Budhism_. The _Budh_ here mentioned was identical with the phallic deity
worshipped by the Tuath-de-danaans under the name of _Buodh_ (known also
as Moriagan and Fareagh or Phearagh), which name the Scythian invaders
afterwards adopted as their war-cry (_Boo_ or _A-boo_). The peculiar
tenets of Irish Budhism were embodied in a mass of literature committed to
the flames by Saint Patrick; but the history of pagan Ireland still
survives in MSS. scattered over Europe, whilst an image of _Buodh_, or
_Fareagh_, bearing a close resemblance to those of the Eastern _Buddha_,
and to the idols of _Matambo_ “whose priests are sorcerers or magicians”
(afterwards shown to be the meaning of _Tuath-de-danaans_), has been
unearthed at Roscommon, and is now in the Museum of Trinity College,
Dublin.


CHAPTER XI

(PP. 142-156)

From India our author now diverges to Egypt. The similarity between the
regal title “Pharaoh” and _Phearagh_ or _Fareagh_ just mentioned is
accounted for by the invasion of Egypt by the _Uksi_, or _Hyksos_ (Royal
Shepherds or Shepherd Kings), who, according to Manetho, came “from the
East.” The Indian _Vedas_, which corroborate his account, term them
_Pali_, or “shepherds”; and the rigorous nature of their sway accounts for
the dislike manifested by the Egyptians towards the Israelites, who were a
pastoral people. That they introduced their form of worship into Egypt, is
shown by the description which Herodotus gives of the rites, ceremonies,
and usages of the Egyptian priests, resembling those practised by the
Brahmins. Historical evidence points to the erection by them of the
greater pyramids, also to their introduction of those magical arts for
which the Egyptians became notorious. This latter fact brings the _Uksi_
into connection with the _Tuath-de-danaans_ (whose name is indicative of
proficiency in magic), and serves to strengthen the author’s opinion that
both belonged to the same Chaldean stock.


CHAPTER XII

(PP. 157-166)

The pyramids of Egypt may be said to correspond, with one significant
difference, to the round towers of Ireland. Both are characterised by the
highest architectural skill; both are constructed with an evident
reference to astronomical purposes; both afford indications that they were
_inter alia_ appropriated to sepulture; and both are distinctively of
phallic or, more strictly, Sabaic import. But in this last feature a
divergence becomes evident. The symbolism of the principle of “generative
production” common to both is in the form of the pyramid more emblematic
of the _female_ nature (see pp. 267-269), whilst the round towers typify
the _male_--a divergence which the author subsequently treats in more
detail. To it may be due the circumstance that these excavations or
“wells” which exist beneath the pyramids have not hitherto been found
under round towers.


CHAPTER XIII

(PP. 167-176)

In connection with the last paragraph, attention is, however, drawn to the
fact that round towers have usually been erected in the vicinity of water;
and that this may have been owing to a real, though less dominant,
veneration of the female principle, is probable from the extensive use of
bathing in the worship of _Astarte_, the representative of that principle
whose peculiar emblemism is apparent in the ornamentation of the round
towers. Traces of the apparatus for a bell found on the summit of one of
the latter edifices affords no proof of its original purpose as a belfry.
For though bells were used in pagan ceremonials, they were not rung to
summon worshippers; and the fact may have been that, after their
conversion to Christianity, the Irish applied round towers occasionally to
the only purpose for which they could then be used in connection with
public worship.


CHAPTER XIV

(PP. 177-192)

Recurring to the affinity of Ireland with ancient Persia (Iran), the
history of the latter country is traced from its settlement by the
_Aryans_. According to tradition preserved in the collection of sacred
books known as the _Zendavesta_, the original seat of that people was the
_Eriene-Veedjo_, a district situated in the north-western highlands of
Asia, of great fertility, and enjoying a singularly mild climate, having
seven months of summer and five of winter. Then “the death-dealing Ahriman
smote it with the plague of cold, so that it came to have ten months of
winter and only two of summer”; and was in consequence deserted by its
inhabitants, who gradually overspread the low-lying countries, as far
south as the Indus, including _Fars_, as Persia was then termed. They were
a vigorous and energetic race these Aryans, who soon became dominant in
their new quarters, substituting the name of their own country (_Iran_, or
the _sacred land_, formed from the ancient Zend _Eriene_) for that of
Fars, and founding a dynasty, or rather succession of dynasties, which
superseded the government formerly in existence. The mixture of races led
to a certain diversity of language, and thus originated the Zend and
_Pahlavi_ or Sanskrit dialects, which bear a remarkable affinity to Irish
(cf. _Palaver_). There was further a diversity of religions, the old
religion of _Hushang_, a predecessor of Zoroaster, being professed by many
long after fire-worship became the dominant faith of Persia.


CHAPTER XV

(PP. 193-210)

This ancient religion of Hushang, which was doubtless that of the Aryans,
seems to have been of that _Sabaic_ order practised by the Chaldeans,
which, as we have seen, recognised the heavenly bodies as the most
imposing representatives of a divine power, and cannot therefore be fairly
described as _idolatry_. It was idealistic, in so far as it regarded the
different energies of nature simply as manifestations of a great creative
power, whereas the idolatrous stage did not supervene until this purer
faith degenerated into materialism. With this religion that of the ancient
Irish harmonized. The dominance of sun and moon worship in the latter is
shown by the way in which the various titles of these luminaries are
interwoven with the language; most of the Irish local names, as well as
the names of traditional festivals, consisting of variants of different
epithets applied to the sun and moon, which the pagan Irish considered to
be united in matrimony, just as the Egyptians did _Osiris_ and _Isis_,
their equivalents.


CHAPTER XVI

(PP. 211-226)

A faith thus compounded of love, religion, and astrology has necessarily a
triple aspect; and, according to the particular component kept in view, or
the etymology professed, may be termed _Sabaism_, _Buddhism_, or
_Phallism_. It constitutes the most primitive form of worship, and is the
source from whence all the faiths of the world have been derived. Hence
the corresponding features in distinct mythologies. Brahminism, for
example, is an offshoot from Buddhism, owing to the apostasy of Paramon,
the son of Budh-dearg; and the essential notions of Christianity, the
doctrines of a virginal conception, a vicarious sacrifice, and a
resurrection, have their counterparts in both these faiths. The phallic
element, ignored by Christianity, maintained its place in Oriental and
Irish paganism. The adjuncts of _Lingam_ worship occur in the worship of
_Budh_. The pagodas of India have their counterparts in the round towers.
The symbolism expressed in the sculptures of Elephanta, Ellora, and
Salsette is reflected in the carvings at Clonmacnoise, Kilcullen, and
Knockmoy. The Cross is universal, not distinctive; and the purposely
mutilated cryptograms of the Crescent and the Serpent belong to a paganism
long antecedent to the Christianity which partially effaced them.


CHAPTER XVII

(PP. 227-239)

Researches into the distinctive character of Irish paganism show that its
main element was the phallic type of _Sabaism_, the Irish language
affording remarkable evidence of this fact. Many of its words and all its
letters embody a twofold meaning, denoting in the first place some
_passion, quality, or virtue_, and in the next its _sensible index_. For
example, _Budh_ or _Fiodh_ means primarily a _lingam_, or _phallus_, and
secondarily a _tree_; and this peculiarity of an esoteric meaning known
only to the learned, and an esoteric one understood by the masses, it
shares with Hebrew, which belongs to the same linguistic family. Of this
we have an example in the scriptural allegory of “Eve and the _tree_ of
knowledge,” wherein the esoteric import of “tree” is _phallus_. We thus
arrive, as it were, at the fount of Buddhism. Eve may be regarded as the
first Buddhist, and her son Cain, who offered the fruits of the earth to
“the God of nature and of increase” (Budh), as the first priest of that
order. This allegory is found repeated in different forms among the
various populations of the world--in Egypt, India, Persia, and elsewhere.
It gave rise to many typical commemorations in various countries, such as
the “Maypole festivals” of Eastern lands, whence the custom emanated to
Ireland (with the _Tuath-de-danaan_ settlers), where it is still
practised.


CHAPTER XVIII

(PP. 240-251)

The scriptural allegory of the “Fall of Man,” involving, as it does, the
history of Cain, has an intimate bearing upon the ancestry of the
_Tuath-de-danaans_. Cain had a son, Enoch, whose name connotes as usual a
twofold meaning, signifying first, _Initiation in sacred rites_; secondly,
_an assembly of congregated multitudes_. The son of Enoch was named
_Irad_, i.e. _consecrated to God_ (_Budh_); hence the region where he
dwelt was called _Iran_, meaning _the land of those so consecrated_; from
which it is argued that in that precise region the Budhists first
established the insignia of their empire. Now, the _Dabistan_ records
declare that although _Kaimours_ was generally regarded as the first king
of Persia (Iran), he had many predecessors; and that long before the time
of Zoroaster the Persians venerated a prophet called _Mahabad_ or
_Maghabad_ (the Great, or Good, _Abad_), whom they considered as “the
Father of men,” and who had thirteen successors of his own family, all
styled _Abad_. This _Abad_, or _Maghabadean_, dynasty eventually became so
corrupt that it was banished to _the woods and mountains_, when _Kaimours_
was called to the throne. For various reasons the author is persuaded that
the Maghabadeans were the direct descendants of Cain. Their name had the
usual twofold signification: first, The unity of the Godhead; secondly, a
sacerdotal institution; and _Tuath-de-danaan_ is simply a translation or
ampliative rendering of the latter--_Tuath_ being a modification of
_Budh_, and also signifying _magic_; _De_, the vernacular term for the
Deity; and _Danaan_ signifying Almoners--the whole thus meaning
_Magician-god-almoners_, or the Almoner-magicians of the Deity.


CHAPTER XIX

(PP. 252-263)

Assuming that the _Tuath-de-danaans_ originally occupied Iran, or Persia,
their migration to Ireland is thus explained. An internecine variance,
arising out of a purely religious question, sprang up among them. They
became divided into two sects--one maintaining that the _male_ influence
was dominant in the production of offspring; the other that _female_
influence was more effective. Each adopted a distinguishing title,
emblematic of the sex whose virtues it proclaimed. The former did not find
it necessary to change the name _Tuath-de-danaan_, since the esoteric
meaning of _Tuath_ (i.e. _Budh_) was the emblem of _masculinity_; but the
others adopted the title of _Pish-de-danaans_, because _Pish_, or _Pith_
(synonymous with _Yoni_), denoted that of _femininity_. The war which
resulted from this variance of opinion was waged with all the bitterness
which usually marks polemic differences; and the _Pish-de-danaans_,
proving completely victorious, expelled their rivals from the sacred soil
of Iran. The _Tuath-de-danaans_, or at least a portion of them (cf. p.
443), fled westward, and after many vicissitudes reached Europe, where
traces of them are found in parts of Greece, Italy, and Spain; and from
the country last named (by help of the _Phœnicians_, who were the great
sea-carriers of those days), they made their way to Ireland. It is
remarkable that a parallel account appears in Hindu records of the
severance which took place between the _Lingajas_ and the _Yonijas_ on a
precisely similar question.


CHAPTER XX

(PP. 264-284)

Although the Persian historians maintain silence, the evidence of other
authorities in support of this episode is not wanting. For instance, when
referring to Buddha, Oriental writers agree that he was born in _Maghada_;
also that he was the son of _Suad-de-dana_--_Suad_ being convertible with
_Tuath_, and both resolvable into _Budh_. Without professing to map out
the exact route by which the _Tuath-de-danaans_ made their way to Ireland,
the author maintains that the fact of their having occupied that country
for a considerable time is incontrovertible. As for their rivals, the
_Pish-de-danaans_, it has already been stated that they, in their turn,
had to leave Persia when _Kaimours_ was called to the throne; and the
presumption is that they were identical with those _Uksi_, or Shepherd
Kings, who overran Egypt, and to whom the erection of pyramids
emblematical of the female nature is ascribed. Their distinctive views
may, it is pointed out, have prevailed among them from the time when they
formed a portion of the Noachidæ; for the “Ark” was typical of the
dominant idea in their belief, and the same idea was typified under
another form in the pyramids. A variant symbol of this idea is the
_crescent_ (or _lunar boat_), of which certain Irish ornaments are
representative. It is further possible that the _Pish-de-danaan_ tradition
of the deluge may have been communicated to Moses during his stay in
Egypt, and that the narrative is more figurative than historical.


CHAPTER XXI

(PP. 285-304)

Among the sculptured symbols of the faith held by the ancient Irish, that
of the _Cross_ stands pre-eminent; but it would be a mistake to infer from
this circumstance the existence of Christianity in Ireland at the time
when these sculptures were wrought. The cryptogram of the Cross is found
everywhere, both in the Old and New World, among the relics of nations
whose paganism does not admit of doubt, and it dates from a period long
antecedent to Christianity. Buildings of cruciform structure, and
evidently devoted to religious uses, exist all over the East and West; and
both they and the _Mithratic caves_, for which no one has ever claimed any
but a pagan origin, partake of the same character. To aver that the Cross
was emblematical of a _vicarious sacrifice_ by which the redemption of
mankind was accomplished, is merely to say that it expresses a belief
common to many Sabaic faiths of the pagan world--a belief of which it was
the recognised emblem in Egypt, India, Greece, Rome, Scandinavia, and
America, as well as in Ireland.


CHAPTER XXII

(PP. 305-324)

The argument as to the pagan origin of Irish cross-symbolism is pursued
and developed, and the connection of the symbol in question with the Irish
_Budh-gaye_ (corresponding to the Hindu _Budha-gaya_), or representative
of generative power (_gaye-phallus_), demonstrated. The symbolism of which
it forms a type is ubiquitous, being found in archaic sculpture all over
the Eastern and Western World: nor did Plato exaggerate when he said--‘The
letter X is stamped upon the universe.’


CHAPTER XXIII

(PP. 325-340)

A remarkable instance of this widely prevalent doctrine of the vicarious
sacrifice of some incarnation of the Deity accomplished by a purely
virginal conception is afforded in the Hindu _Puranas_, which recount the
incarnation of _Vishnu_ (or _Crishna_) in the _White Island_, and the
subsequent crucifixion of the fruit of this conception, under the name of
_Sulivahana_ (cf. the Irish patronymic _Sulivan_), called also
_Dhanandhara_, _i.e._ the _Sacred Almoner_ (cf. _Danaan_ and its meaning).
Curiously enough, the mystic, or esoteric, name of ancient Ireland was
_Muc Inis_, meaning _White Island_; and the details of a similar
crucifixion are, with strictly pagan accompaniments, reproduced in the
sculptures at Knockmoy, in Galway, which further closely resemble not only
a sculptured portrayal on the temple of Kalabche, in Nubia, but a
distinctly Eastern Buddhist group on the _Tuath-de-danaan_ cross at Old
Kilcullen, County Kildare.


CHAPTER XXIV

(PP. 341-355)

A striking instance of the resemblance between the Nubian and Knockmoy
sculptures consists in the attire of the principal figures. In both the
philibeg, or kilt, is worn; and this peculiarity is reproduced in idols of
the Irish pagan god, _Phearagh_, or _Farragh_, or _Budh_, which have been
from time to time exhumed. The headdresses and collars also correspond. In
Buddhist Indian mythology Deva _Thot_ is represented as crucified; in
fact, the expectation of salvation through the atonement of a crucified
Mediator characterises the whole system of pagan (Sabaic) beliefs as
thoroughly as it did Hebraism. It is expressed in one of the names of
Ireland, namely, _Criach-na-Fuineadhach_ (meaning _the asylum of the
expectants, or the retreat of those looking forward_), which was given to
that country long before the advent of Christianity.


CHAPTER XXV

(PP. 356-367)

The round towers and crosses at Clonmacnoise, Clondalkin, and elsewhere,
abound in sculptured devices of a similar character, there being in all a
manifest reference to Buddhist, or Eastern, ceremonial; whilst the
representation of a dog (an animal esteemed sacred by the
Tuath-de-danaans) on one of the crosses at Clonmacnoise seems to exclude
the possibility of its relation to Christianity. But perhaps the most
significant feature of these sculptures is the profusion of _snake_
ornamentation, pointing to a time when that form of Sabaism known as
“serpent-worship” was in the ascendant. The frequency of this emblemism
was so obnoxious to the early Christian missionaries, on account of the
evident reverence with which it was regarded by the Irish, that St.
Patrick thought it advisable to efface it when practicable; and in this
sense he may be entitled to the credit of having banished snakes from
Ireland.


CHAPTER XXVI

(PP. 368-395)

Reverting to his proper subject of the origin and purpose of the round
towers, our author examines the evidence bearing on the date of their
erection. The Ulster Annals record the destruction of fifty-seven of these
towers by an earthquake in A.D. 448, the natural inference being that they
must have existed before the fifth century, but how long before is matter
of conjecture. Tradition connects them with a personage styled the _Goban
Saer_ (Freemason Sage); but this title being the name of a class, not of
an individual, and having no settled place in chronology, does not further
the solution of the difficulty. A better clue is found in the name of the
place whereon was fought the first decisive battle between the
Tuath-de-danaan invaders and the Celtic (Firbolg) inhabitants, which gave
the supremacy of the island to the former. From the number of
commemorative towers erected there by the conquerors, this came to be
known as _Moytura_ (in Irish, _Moye-tureadh_, _i.e._ “the field of the
towers”); and as the date of the second battle, fought centuries later, is
approximately B.C. 600 (p. 449), there is reason for assigning the
erection of round towers to a period long preceding that of Christianity.
The ascription of these towers to the Tuath-de-danaans is in a degree
warranted by the fact that the word “_Tuathan-Tower_” is a well-known
Irish expression, and that there seems to be no other word in the language
which conveys the same idea.


CHAPTER XXVII

(PP. 396-411)

The identity of Ireland with the _Insula Hyperboreorum_ is deduced from a
description of the latter, copied by Diodorus Siculus from the writings of
Hecatæus and from a compendium by Marcianus Herocleotes of the works of
Artemidorus. Both Hecatæus and Artemidorus lived before the Christian era,
and an allusion in the latter author to certain “round temples,” of which
the officiating priests were called _Boreades_, that existed in
“_Juvernia_, a British isle, bounded on the north by the ocean called the
_Hyperborean_, but on the east by the ocean called the _Hibernian_,”
coupled with the fact that (with the exception of those at Brechin and
Abernethy) no remains of round temples are found in any of the British
Isles save Ireland,[28] goes far to prove the identity in question, also
the pre-Christian antiquity of the round towers, together with the
existence of an exceptional, and therefore by natural inference an
_imported_, civilisation in that island. The latter inference is
strengthened by continually-recurring traces of the great proficiency of
its inhabitants in the fine, or useful, arts at an era when the adjacent
islands were still plunged in barbarism.


CHAPTER XXVIII

(PP. 412-431)

These proofs of an adventitious civilisation bearing the marks, not of
gradual growth, but of full development, point to the colonisation of the
island by a highly-cultured race, such as were the ancient people of
_Iran_ (Persia). The round towers, for instance, could not well have been
the work of the Phœnicians, who were a maritime and mercantile race, by no
means prone to arts and letters, and in none of whose admitted settlements
is any trace of similar buildings to be found. Neither the Firbolgs (or
Celtic inhabitants of Ireland), nor the Fomorians, nor the Scythians,
Scoto-Milesians, nor Danish invaders, were at all given to the refinements
of civilisation, and simply regarded the construction of permanent
buildings as unworthy of a race of warriors. Everything, in fact, goes to
show that the Tuath-de-danaan settlers alone could have erected these
towers, introduced the Boreadan ceremonial, and given to the country of
their adoption a name taken from that of their native land. With the
Scythian conquest, it became, of course, inevitable that this name (_Irin_
or _Eirin_) should be changed into _Scuitte_ or _Scotia_ (the land of the
_Scythians_), and that there should have been a partial exodus of the
vanquished Tuath-de-danaans--some of whom, settling in what is now
Scotland, gave it the name of _Iran_ or _Eran_ (which survives in _Erne_
or _Erse_), which was afterwards changed into _Scoitte_ or _Scotia_, out
of compliment to the Scythian rulers of the adjacent island, with whom its
Pictish inhabitants had formed alliance.


CHAPTER XXIX

(PP. 432-444)

As for the unfounded theory,--that Ireland was colonised by Phœnicians
arriving from Spain, whose last settlement in the island was established
by Heber and Heremon, sons of Milesius, and descendants of _Feni an fear
soid_, “the Phœnician wise man,”--it is pointed out that Heber and Heremon
(brothers of Amergin, the bard) were in reality the sons of _Gallamh_, and
invaded Ireland at the head of a Scythian, not Phœnician, colony (p. 393).
Upon historical evidence, the date of this invasion is fixed at B.C. 1002;
while it is agreed on all hands that the _Tuath-de-danaans_ had landed
about two hundred years before, or B.C. 1202, which latter date exactly
corresponds with that given by most Oriental authorities for the exodus of
the Buddhists from India. About this time, indeed, Ireland seems to have
borne the character of an Oriental asylum--a circumstance to which may be
attributed the Eastern costumes and aspect of the figures depicted in its
ancient sculptures, the Eastern character of traditional religious and
ceremonial usages, and the national reverence for the shamrock,
corresponding with that shown to the trefoil (or _trisula_) in Persia
(_Iran_).


CHAPTER XXX

(PP. 445-474)

The duration of Tuath-de-danaan supremacy may have been some six
centuries, dating from the first battle of Moytura, in B.C. 1202 (p. 435),
to the second battle, in or about B.C. 600, between the Firbolgs, or Celts
(who had been gradually reasserting themselves), and a reinforcement of
Tuath-de-danaans, coming this time, not from Persia, but from India,
whence they had been expelled by the Brahmins (p. 443). Although this
second invasion proved successful, the power of the Tuath-de-danaans was
now on the wane, and the height of civilisation to which they had raised
the island rapidly declined before the inroads of the Scythians. Their
ritual became merged in that of the Druids, and their taste for letters
vitiated. Possibly, with a view to arrest this decadence, they began to
cultivate intercourse with Greece, the result being a strong reciprocal
influence, exercised by the languages of the two countries on each other,
and more especially by Irish upon Greek. A corresponding influence
resulted from the migration of discontented Tuath-de-danaans into
Scotland. Nor was it confined to language; for certain peculiarities of
ancient Irish architecture are found reproduced in Mycenian and Caledonian
structures, as, for example, in the _Treasury of Atreus_ (Mycenæ) and the
_Dune of Dornadilla_ (Scotland); and that religion was not wholly
unaffected is proved by the discovery of Irish relics showing that the
oracular superstitions of Dodona had their counterpart in Ireland.


CHAPTER XXXI

(PP. 475-497)

The relics of Tuath-de-danaan occupation, which exist in the shape of
gigantic crosses, and of sculptured ornamentation in which cross-symbolism
is prominent, point to a mystery far more esoteric than that involved in
the Christian emblem. The cross had become representative of the number
_ten_, because in Irish the same word, _lambh_, denoted equally a _cross_
and the human _hand_, or the number of fingers on both hands; whilst the
“triangle of _ten_” (p. 268) embraced “all that was solemn in religion and
in thought,” being, in fact, “the index of male and female united,” and
the prototype of the ark and pyramid. This _Sabaic_, and only
intelligible, explanation of these highly figurative sculptures disposes
of the theory that they are the product of a Christianity with which they
have nothing in common but a shape which is not peculiar to any one
religion in any part of the world.


CHAPTER XXXIII

(PP. 498-524)

Serpent-worship is perhaps the most significant form of _Sabaism_,
involving, as it does, the expression of its source. For in the sacred
language of _Iran_, whereof Irish is the leading type, the word _Sabh_
(the root of _Sabaism_) has three distinct, yet connected, meanings--(1)
_Voluptuousness_, or the _Yoni_; (2) a _Snake_, or sinuosity; (3) _Death_.
Through all these runs the central idea of sexual relation, which, as the
most elementary part of social life, has been symbolised all over the
world in connection with religion. The scriptural reproach, “generation of
vipers,” is probably equivalent to _offspring of concupiscence_, as will
appear from the indignant repudiation of those to whom it was
addressed--“We were not born of fornication; we have one Father, even
God.” The part which the serpent plays in Brahminism is well known. In
Mexico a widespread faith called Nagualism had the _Culebra_, or snake,
for one of its principal deities; whilst the _Gadelglas_ of the ancient
Irish (Gadelians) meant simply the _green snake-god_, from which latter,
and not from the verdure of its soil, Ireland may have obtained the
designation of the _Emerald_ Isle. In fact, Sabaism, Ophiolatry, and
Gadelianism were one and the same; and, while purporting to be the worship
of the serpent, or of the stars (_vide_ p. 505), were in reality the
worship of _Sabh_ or _Yoni_, the representative of female nature. It was,
however, masculinity (_Budh_) that was typified in the phallic form of
those round towers, which the author now proceeds to describe with more
minuteness of detail than heretofore. Incidentally, he disposes of the
argument in favour of the Christian origin of these towers, which is based
upon the assumption that remains of Christian churches are invariably
found in their vicinity, by adducing an instance to the contrary (at
Giant’s Ring, County Down).[29]

W. H. C.




DEDICATION OF THE FIRST EDITION


  TO
  THE LEARNED OF EUROPE
  TO THE HEADS OF ITS SEVERAL UNIVERSITIES
  TO THE TEACHERS OF RELIGION AND THE LOVERS OF HISTORY
  MORE ESPECIALLY
  TO THE ALIBENISTIC ORDER OF FREEMASONS
  TO THE FELLOWS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY
  TO THE MEMBERS OF THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY
  TO THE FELLOWS OF THE SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES
  TO THE EDITORS OF THE ARCHÆOLOGIA SCOTICA
  TO THE COMMITTEES OF THE SOCIETIES FOR THE PROPAGATION OF THE
  GOSPEL AND THE DIFFUSION OF USEFUL KNOWLEDGE
  AND
  TO THE COURT OF THE HONOURABLE THE EAST INDIA COMPANY
  THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED
  AS A NOVEL EXPOSITION OF LITERARY INQUIRIES IN WHICH
  THEY ARE SEVERALLY INTERESTED
  AND AS AN INTIMATION OF RESPECT FROM
  THE AUTHOR




PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION


In _Fraser’s Magazine_ for the month just expired, there has appeared an
article headed the “Arcana of Freemasonry,” which will save me the trouble
of an introductory dissertation. The style is quaint, but that will be
overlooked; its author is evidently a true mason and a good man; and,
initiated as he is in all the fundamentals of his fraternity, he will be
the more ready to recognise the truth of my disclosures, as well as to
admit the originality of the proofs which I adduce. To him, therefore,
whoever he is, do I with confidence refer.

“In the spirit of the mighty dead,” says he, “the great ones of the earth,
that seem ever and anon to look down through the clouds of this murky
atmosphere and to beckon us heavenward, nothing strikes more keenly, in
our conviction, than that passion for divine truth which burned
unquenchably within them. With what hallowed devotion they worshipped it,
with what intense aspirations they loved it, we must remember but too
painfully, when we converse with men as they are, and read the writings
they applaud.

“Yes--it must be so! The first and noblest object to which the ambition of
man can aspire is the discovery and propagation of truth, on which the
felicity of all created thinkers absolutely depends; and, fortunately, the
glory of its discovery is nothing superior to the joy of its
communication. And therefore have the finest and freest souls, that have
caught the brightest glimpses of truth’s eternal radiation, ever most
earnestly sought to lead their brethren and kindred to the same difficult
and solitary height from which they themselves first witnessed the
dawnings of the prophetic dayspring.

“How many illustrious names, however venerable, have from time’s eldest
records sought out with indefatigable assiduity the relics of divinest
Wisdom! How often beneath her charmed inspirations they wandered forth,
exulting over the boundless fields of metaphysical and physical
science--endeavouring by the things that are manifest to retrace the
hidden Divinity--to look through nature up to nature’s God! And if happily
they discover some strange and stirring indications of the Almighty’s
elaborating hand, or some bright testimony of His vivifying though
impalpable Spirit, have they not hastened with glowing hearts, and souls
overcharged with adoration, to whisper the mystery in secret, or to
proclaim the marvel to the world?

“The history of Freemasonry being in fact the history of the gradual
progression of devotion and philosophy in the youth, maturity, and
declension of our planet’s millenary circle, is intensely interesting to
the philosophic mind, as the ages of the one have a thousand mystic
correspondences with the ages of the other. After taking a luminous survey
of the advances of human intelligence as revealed in Scripture, it traces
the perpetual tradition of divine wisdom among the _hierophantic_
academies of classic memorial. None understood so well the essential truth
of their _theo-astrological mythologies_ and their _symbolical mysteries_.
They track every subtle declension of lofty and bright-souled truth into
the shadowy circumference of hostile error; and thus, establishing their
minds on the deepest foundations of history, they continually build up
superstructures of all that is precious in literature or elegant in art.

“In thus eulogising Freemasons, we of course allude to Freemasons
initiated into the deep spirit of divine philosophy, and not mere nominal
professors. True masons,--those who are made _free_ by their free devotion
to God’s spiritual service, and _accepted_ by emulating the
self-immolation of their celestial prototype of heaven and earth for just
and disciplined worthies,--we would discourse of these, and these alone.
It would be as unfair to judge of Freemasonry in its hidden sanctuary
within the veil, by its irregular members, as to judge of its religious
illustration without the veil by merely nominal Christians.

“But for true, or free, or speculative masons. These are the men who,
attached to their celestial Saviour with filial enthusiasm incommunicable,
and to each other by fraternal sympathies that melt them into beautiful
unanimity of immortal emulation, these are the men who feel a more
especial and endearing interest in the whole history of mankind. To them,
whatever is “wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best,” in all the records
of humanity, hath a kind of kindred familiarity of association unknown to
others; for in all true men they recognise their ancestry or their
brotherhood, and they watch the broad line of their genealogical descent
with the reverent fondness of a lineal and loyal progeny. In their history
they love to contemplate the magnificent economy of Providence for the
gradual perfectionising of all lapsed intelligences. In this they view
every variation of Churches and States with tranquil and unbroken
satisfaction, and from it they look forward to the future with that fine,
free, and fearless confidence which Christian philosophy alone inspires.

“In the present times, these relations to society have assumed a somewhat
deeper and still more thrilling intensity; they know well enough that old
age hath come upon the earth, and that the latter day is at hand; and that
the prophecies relating to her dissolution and bright regeneration are,
ere long, to be accomplished in their fulness.

“They confess, with rejoicing, the vast spread of intellectual light and
freedom that now gilds the concluding pages of our planet’s history. They
believe that the true and venerable principles of Church and State will be
confirmed and illustrated in their breadth and length, and height and
depth, by the last and prophetic experience of pious and patriot sages,
ere the kindling judgment breaks out upon the astonished world.

“Such is the position of Freemasons in society at present. And when we
consider the extent of this chosen band of good and wise men, bound
together by the fellowship of indissoluble benevolence, and scattered over
every kingdom and republic, we cannot but observe their influences with
peculiar scrutiny of attention; for, by keeping fast their own counsel,
and preserving mutual good faith, they ever possess a strong, though
secret domination of philanthropy over all the affairs of Church and
State. In her peaceful and inviolable retirement, Masonry is, as it were,
the _primum mobile_ and mainspring of society,--unseen herself, but urging
the whole visible mechanism into harmonious and musical action.

“In the present time, Freemasons cannot but feel that a terrible
responsibility is committed to their charge. The ancient interests and
ambitions of Churches and States are coming into perpetual and jarring
collision with the new. The ebb-tides of bigotry and despotism are
clashing with the advancing currents of enthusiasm and dissolute passion.
The spray of the whirling eddies already whitens the deep, and the roar of
the conflicting breakers is heard far away upon the wind. God saith, ‘I
will overturn, overturn, overturn, until He shall come whose right the
kingdom is’; and the sea and the waves are roaring upon every shore, and
men’s hearts fail them for fear, and for looking on those things which are
coming on the earth. To true masons is entrusted the hazardous charge of
piloting the vessel athwart the boiling whirlpools. They will save, if
they can, earth’s latest age from indecent strife and confusion, and
struggle hard against the unfilial and disloyal apostates, that would
bring down her grey hairs with sorrow to the grave.”[30]

Here I would willingly close my Introduction; but as it may seem strange
that a work which bears upon its title-page the character of “Prize Essay”
should not have been published by the Society that have awarded it the
prize, I am obliged to open up a statement of facts which I had rather
have concealed; yet, in doing so, I shall take care, now that all vexation
has passed over, that no symptoms of asperity shall escape my pen; all the
colouring of language I shall equally avoid; nay, even inferences, however
obvious, I shall not press into observation, but confine myself strictly
to a matter-of-fact detail as to the conduct of the party in the case in
question.

In December 1830, the Royal Irish Academy, after many fruitless efforts to
obtain information on the subject of the Round Towers, proposed a premium
of a gold medal and fifty pounds to the author of an approved Essay, in
which all particulars respecting them were expected to be explained. This
intimation I never saw. The stipulated time for the composition of
treatises--namely, a full twelvemonth--expired, and the several candidates
sent in their works. After a perusal of two or three months, the Council
agreed upon giving the premium to one of them; but his work being
deficient in some of the conditions required,[31] it was furthermore
resolved that he should be allowed some additional interval for the
supplying of these defects, and this determination they put into practice
by the following advertisement:--

    “ROYAL IRISH ACADEMY HOUSE, DUBLIN,

    “_21st February 1832_.

    “It having appeared to the Royal Irish Academy that none of the Essays
    given in on the subject of the ‘Round Towers,’ as advertised in
    December 1830, have satisfied the conditions of the question, they
    have come to the following resolutions:--

    “1st. That the question be advertised again as follows:--

    “‘The Royal Irish Academy hereby give notice that they will give a
    Premium of Fifty Pounds and the Gold Medal to the author of an
    approved Essay on the Round Towers of Ireland, in which it is expected
    that the _characteristic architectural peculiarities belonging to all
    those ancient buildings now existing shall be noticed_, and the
    _uncertainty_ in which their origin and uses are involved be
    satisfactorily removed.’

    “2nd. That the time be extended to the 1st of June next, for receiving
    other Essays on said subject, and for allowing the authors of the
    Essays already given in to enlarge and improve them; for which purpose
    they will be returned, on application at the Academy House.

    “All Essays, as usual, to be sent post free to the Rev. J. H. Singer,
    D.D., Secretary, at the Academy House, 114 Grafton Street, Dublin;
    each Essay being inscribed with some motto, and accompanied with a
    sealed billet, superscribed with same motto, in which shall be written
    the author’s name and address.”

A few days before this appeared, I heard, for the first time, of the
subject having been for competition. Wishing to ascertain whether it was
decided or not, I availed myself of a pretext for calling upon Dr.
M’Donnell, one of the Secretaries to the Academy, when the following
conversation took place between us:--

“I wish to know, sir,” said I, “whether the Council would patronise a
translation of _Ibernia Phœnicia_, which I have just embarked in, with Dr.
Villanueva’s consent?”

“The Council have already subscribed to the _original_, and I believe they
feel no difficulty in understanding it in that form,” was the reply.

“I do not at all question their competency,” I rejoined; “but to the
public, Doctor, it is a sealed volume; and I cannot think it foreign from
the spirit of your institution to countenance such an idea. Besides, it is
not a mere echo of the original that I intend to give. I purpose to
enlarge it by many additions of my own, accompanying it all through with
notes and illustrations.”

“To what points in particular will those additions refer?”

“To the development of the mystery which overhangs the Round Towers.”

“Oh! On that head the Academy have already made up their minds. What is
_your_ theory about them?”

“Surely, Doctor, if the Academy have already made up their minds upon the
subject, my information can be to you of no value! Good-morning.”

If my disappointment at this interview was great, my delight, a few
mornings after, was incomparably greater, on beholding the advertisement
above introduced; and though the _shortness_ of the time allowed, with the
_positiveness_ of the assertion so recently and reluctantly extorted, made
me suspect at once that there was some _management_ in the business, yet,
having thoroughly assured myself, from the wording of that manifesto, that
I was entitled to enter the lists, I plunged into the discussion without
further delay, and day and night, in sorrow and in difficulties, I
laboured, until I finished my Essay against the appointed day, when I sent
it in accordingly to await its chance.

Four days, however, had only passed over, when the Council, having
perceived that they had been taken at their word, by the appearance of a
new candidate, allowed their friend to take back his Essay for one month
more, to render it more perfect! And in the exercise of their discretion,
they had the modesty to advertise, by a document precisely similar to that
already inserted, that their object in so doing was to “obtain _new_
Essays on said subject.”

This last advertisement was not published for some days after their friend
had removed his work from the Council Board; so that there were no more
than about _three weeks_ remaining, for the inditing of _new works_ upon a
subject for which _lives_ have been found inadequate, and for which their
friend had already been allowed a period nearly approaching to two years!

Soon as informed of this manœuvre, I called upon Dr. Singer, as the
Secretary, and entreated of him, with much ardour, that he would put a
stop to those proceedings; stated that I was myself the author of one of
the Essays, which I would not further particularise; and that, as I had
reason to apprehend something wrong was in contemplation, I would feel
obliged if he exerted himself to have the Essays detained, and determined
upon by their merits as they then stood. He asked me to explain the ground
of my apprehensions. I complied; whereupon he assured me that I was
mistaken in that quarter, as “the individual,” says he, “at whose request
we have extended the time is one for whom we all have a regard, and is by
no means the person on whom your suspicions light!”

It was but little consolation to me that the person in whose favour all
this partiality was exerted was “not the person on whom my suspicions
lighted”! I remonstrated, but in vain. Every syllable that transpired
afterwards tended only to show that the decision was already
pronounced--that the premium was already awarded. I then hinted at the
injustice of seducing me into the competition, at the very risk of my
life, upon so short a notice, and not vouchsafing now so much as to
examine my production. This had some effect, and I left the Doctor with an
assurance that I “_should, at all events, get a hearing_.”

The day for the reception of the _amended Essays_ again came, and mine
again made its appearance. In the interim was started a periodical, under
the direction of some members of the Council, the most prominent of whom
was the _favoured_ individual himself. In the second number of this
periodical, on the Saturday after the last sending in of the Essays, there
appeared an article, written by the Rev. Cæsar Otway, a member of the
Council, under the assumed name of Terence O’Toole, in which half
playfully and half mysteriously, _he lets the cat out of the bag_, and
actually asserts, as the event verified, that the premium was already
determined _to a member of their own body_!

Here are his words:--

“The Round Tower, to the right, is a prodigious puzzler to antiquarians.
Quires of paper, as tall as a tower, have been covered with as much ink as
might form a Liffey, in accounting for their origin and use. But all these
clever and recondite conjectures are shortly, as I understand, to be
completely overthrown, and the real nature of these Round Towers clearly
explained, for the first time, in a Prize Essay presented to the Royal
Irish Academy by an _accomplished antiquarian_ of our city.”[32]

Notwithstanding the disguise here assumed of “as I understand,” and so
forth, the writer of this announcement had, at this moment, not only
_perused_ his colleague’s Essay, but actually registered his vote in its
favour! And as to his pretending that the development was a discovery, by
saying “for the first time,” he betrays therein the extreme either of
_untruth_ or of _ignorance_, as the theory alluded to is but the _echo_,
in all particulars, of Montmorency’s book, every sentence in which I prove
erroneous in the early chapters of the present volume! I could no longer,
however, be ignorant as to the _identity_ of the person in whose favour
Dr. M’Donnell had told me the Council had “made up their minds”;--casually
corroborated afterwards by Dr. Singer!--I saw at once that the
“_accomplished_ antiquarian of our city” was Mr. Petrie, the antiquarian
_artist_ of the Royal Irish Academy--himself a member of their Council!

However, Dr. Singer had promised that I “should get, at all events, a
hearing.” And this was performed with a vengeance. _Three_ months was the
time devoted to the examination of all the former Essays. It remained,
therefore, only publicly to announce what was privately resolved upon.
But as my Essay, the _only new one_, was at all taken in, it was
indispensable but that they must read it, and _six_ long months did they
appropriate thereto. At the end of this period they saw that the position
assumed was right, and that I was entitled to the premium. But they had
already pledged themselves to give it to their friend, whose theory was
the direct opposite of mine; and, consequently, every sentence in it, or
in mine, must be wrong--a discrepancy, however, which they thought to
reconcile by leaving the original prize undisturbed, and voting me a
separate one.

Had they had the candour to avow that this was their dilemma, I should
never have murmured, but quietly submitted to the issue; instead of which,
however, they worded their resolution in such a form as led the public to
think that there were _two_ premiums all along intended, and that the
first of these was given to the _best_ composition, and the second to that
which approached it in quality.

It was as follows:--

    “ROYAL IRISH ACADEMY HOUSE.

    “On Monday, December 17, a meeting of the Council of the Royal Irish
    Academy was held, for the purpose of deciding on the merits of essays
    received, pursuant to advertisement, on _The Origin and Use of the
    Round Towers of Ireland_, when the following premiums were adjudged,
    viz.:--

    “Fifty pounds and the gold medal to George Petrie.

    “Twenty pounds to Henry O’Brien, Esq.”

Now, be it observed that it was not only of the gold medal and fifty
pounds that I was deprived by this manœuvre, but of the one hundred
additional pounds which Lord Cloncurry had offered upon the same subject.
Of this the Academy were also the dispensers, on the understanding that
whoever should get their gold medal and fifty pounds--the only premium
which they had offered--should also get his lordship’s hundred; so that
by this stratagem they assigned to their friend not only their own, but
his lordship’s patronage!

I was in London at the time, and signified my dissatisfaction by letter.
Several were interchanged, in one of which I gave them to understand that
I would submit to the injustice if they would but publish my work in their
_Transactions simultaneously_ with Mr. Petrie’s. This they declined,
assuring me that they would publish it, but _not simultaneously_, and not
_until_ after. No comment is necessary for this.

Meanwhile, their periodical, which, from the first moment of its starting,
whenever reference was made to the Round Towers, unqualifiedly asserted
that they were Christian, and only _coeval_ with the _monasteries_,[33]
thought proper now to change its tone; but as an open acknowledgment of
_error_ would be too self-abasing for _Academicians_, they only put forth
a _feeler_, as if implying _doubt_ on the matter, which would have the
twofold effect of screening the “Council’s” verdict--as the result of
doubt or ambiguity--and of preparing the public mind for the _altered_ and
_novel_ conclusion to which _all_, I trust, will ere long, as well as
_themselves_, have arrived.

My eye, however, was on their plans, though separated by “a roaring sea.”
I knew that where there were so many windings to mature the plot, there
must be as many to prevent its detection; and, accordingly, the very first
move they made in these, their _new tactics_, I _checkmated_ at once by
the following letter:--

    (No. 1.)

    “LONDON, _March 16, 1833_.

    “DEAR DR. SINGER,--The _Dublin Penny Journal_ of February 23rd, on the
    article, ‘Devenish Island,’ contains this sentence, viz.: ‘Whether the
    towers are the accompaniment to the churches, or the churches to the
    towers, is a question not yet decided.’

    “Now _this_--coupled with the circumstance of the Committee having
    awarded _two_ premiums to _two_, as I understand, _conflicting
    ascriptions_, and that when only _one_ was _originally
    proposed_--induces me, with all deference, to offer this memorial,
    through you, to the Academy.

    “As the development of _truth_ in the elucidation of _history_ is the
    object of the _antiquarian_, and, as the ‘labourer is worthy of his
    hire,’ I take the liberty respectfully to ask whether, if I make _my
    ascription_ of the Round Towers a _mathematical_ demonstration, with
    _every other incident_ relating to their founders, comprehending _all_
    the antiquities of Ireland, as connected therewith--and this by _all_
    the _varieties_ and _modes_ of proof--whether, I say, in _that_ event,
    will the Academy award me _the gold medal_ and premium? or, if that
    cannot be _recalled_, an equivalent gold medal and premium.

    “My intercalary work, _substantiating_ all the above, is now finished,
    and can be forwarded to the Committee by return of the same post which
    will favour me with your answer.--I have the honour to be, dear sir,
    your obedient, etc.

      “HENRY O’BRIEN.

    “To the Rev. Dr. J. H. Singer,
      “_Secretary to the Academy_.”

By the above proposal I must not be understood as _admitting_ that my
_original_ essay “was not _sufficiently_ conclusive”; but as I had more
arguments still in reserve, I wanted to elicit from the Academy the
admission that it was _truth_ they sought after. After waiting, however,
more than three weeks, and getting no reply, I forwarded some other
proofs, accompanied by a letter, of which the following was the
conclusion, viz.:--

    (No. 2.)

    “These are but _items_ in the great body of discoveries which this
    intercalary work will exhibit. In truth, I may without vanity assert
    that the whole _ancient history of Ireland_, etc., is therein
    rectified and elucidated--which it never was before. Am I, therefore,
    presumptuous in appealing to the Royal Irish Academy--the heads of
    Irish literature and the avowed patrons of its development--for the
    reward of my labours?

    “I shall with confidence rely upon their _justice_.--I have the honour
    to be, with sincere regard, etc.

      “HENRY O’BRIEN.

    “To the Rev. Dr. J. H. Singer,
      “_Secretary to the Academy_.”


    (No. 3.)

    “ROYAL IRISH ACADEMY HOUSE,
    “_April 16, 1833_.

    “SIR,--Your _improved_ essay and letter were yesterday laid before
    Council, and as Dr Singer is at present confined with the gout, it
    devolves on me to communicate to you the following extract from the
    minutes:--

    “‘Resolved, that the Secretary be directed to reply to Mr. O’Brien,
    and to state that any alteration or revocation of their award cannot
    be made, _whatever may be the merits_ of any additional matter
    supplied to them after the day appointed by advertisement; but if Mr.
    O’Brien be willing that the new matter be printed along with the
    original Essay, the Council will have the same perused, in order to
    ascertain the expediency of so enlarging their publication.’--By
    order.

      “RICH. ROW, _Clerk to the Academy_.

    “To H. O’Brien, Esq.”


    (No. 4.)

    “LONDON, _April 18, 1833_.

    “SIR,--Had I a _notion_ that the Academy’s reply would be such as your
    letter has this day imparted, I would never have sat down to indite
    those additions, much less have forwarded them for _their perusal_.
    For why did I write to the Secretary _three weeks_ ago, but to
    ascertain _whether_ or _not_, in the event of _my_ doing _so_ and
    _so_, would the _Academy_ act _so_ and _so_, and thus repair that
    injury which they had before inflicted? What could be more easy than
    to give me a categorical answer, one way or the other? Instead of
    which, however, they left me to my own conclusions, which, as usual in
    such circumstances, leading me to construe silence into acquiescence,
    I transmitted my documents on the tacit faith that though the Academy
    would not pledge themselves by a written promise, they would,
    notwithstanding, if my researches proved adequate, reward my industry
    by a suitable remuneration.

    “Now, however, when my papers have been received, and my developments
    communicated, I am told that, _be their merits what they may_, the
    _award_ is _irrevocable_; and I have no alternative, in the writhings
    of my mortification, but the consolation of being _injured_ and
    _duped_ at the same time.

    “You will say, perhaps, that my new evidences have not yet been read,
    and that therefore my property is secure and sacred. But has not the
    _accompanying letter_ been read? And what was _that_ but a _programme_
    of their contents?

    “_I_ had _thought_ that the Royal _Irish_ Academy were not only a
    _learned_, but a _just_ and a _patriotic_ Society. _I_ had _thought_
    that having marshalled themselves into an institution, with the
    _avowed_ object of _resuscitating from death_ the almost _despaired-of
    evidences_ of our _national history_, they would not alone _foster_
    every _advance_ toward that desirable consummation, but shower
    _honours_, and _acclamations_, and _triumphs_ upon him who has not
    only _infused a vital soul_ into those _moribund remains_, but made
    the history of Ireland, at this moment, the _clearest_, the most
    _irrefragable_, and withal the most _interestingly comprehensive
    chain_ of _demonstrational proofs_ in the _whole circle of universal
    literature_.[34]

    “But it is not alone the being deprived of my reward that I complain
    of, and the transferring of that reward to _another, every sentiment
    of whose production must inevitably be wrong_, but it is the
    _suppression_ of my labours, and the keeping them back from the public
    eye, in deference to my _opponent’s_ work, lest that the _discernment_
    of the public should bestow upon me those _honours_ which the
    _discretion_ of the Academy has thought proper to _alienate_, that
    affects me as most severe.

    “Indeed, it has been stated from more quarters than one, that the
    withholding of the medal from me, in the first instance, and the
    substituting thereinstead a _nominal_ premium of twenty pounds,
    originated from a personal pique against me individually. Such a
    report I would fain disbelieve, and yet it is hard not to give it some
    credence, seeing that the _irresistible cogency_ of my _truths_ and
    the _indubitable value_ of my literary discoveries are not only not
    rewarded, but kept back from publication, _until someone else_ more
    fortunate, or rather _more favoured_, shall _run away with_ the credit
    of my cherished disclosures.[35] I wish--I desire--I most intensely
    covet--that the Academy would convince me that _this is not an act of
    the most aggravated injustice_.

    “You will please lay this before the Council, and tell them from me,
    respectfully, that I do not want them either to ‘alter’ or ‘revoke’
    their award, but _simply_ to vote me ‘_an equivalent gold medal and
    premium_’ for my _combined essay_, or, if they prefer, the _new
    portion_ of it. Should this be refused, _I will put my cause_, etc.
    etc.--I have the honour to be, etc. etc.

      “HENRY O’BRIEN.

    “To the Rev. Richard Row,
      “_Clerk to the Academy_.”

They bestowed some days in consultation upon the above; meanwhile, the
transmission of the _Dublin Penny Journal_ to London was countermanded,
and not a copy of it was allowed, for some months afterwards, to come
within hundreds of miles of the place of my residence. In the interim the
ingenious author of the _Celtic Druids_, and who had been _partly_ in
possession of my development of the “Towers” for some time previously,
favoured me with a visit, during which we conversed principally on
historical questions. The next day I addressed him a _note_, a copy of
which, with its _answer_, I take leave to subjoin, for the sake of the
_terminating_ clause of the latter, being the _self-convicting
acknowledgment_ of the “Academy’s” _disingenuousness_.

    (No. 5.)

    “_May 2, 1833._

    “DEAR SIR,--I hope you will not feel displeased at the frankness of
    this question which I am about to propose to you, viz. have you any
    objection to show me in manuscript, before you send to print, the
    terms in which you speak of me, in reference to those points of
    information which I entrusted to your confidence--such as the ancient
    names of Ireland and their derivation, the towers and founders, dates,
    etc.?

    “Should you think proper to consent to this feeling of anxiety on my
    part, I shall be most willing to share with you those other ‘points’
    which I exclusively retain.

    “To the full extent you shall have them. The only condition I require
    is, the credit of originality, which I have laboriously earned. Please
    to drop me a line in reply to this, and allow me to subscribe myself,
    with great respect,--Dear sir, your obedient,

      “HENRY O’BRIEN.

    “Godfrey Higgins, Esq.”


    (No. 6.)

    “_May 3, 1833._

    “MY DEAR O’BRIEN,--You may be perfectly assured I shall print nothing
    which I have learned from you without acknowledging it. But I have
    really forgotten what you told me, because I considered that I should
    see it in print _in a few days_. Anything I shall write on the subject
    will not be printed for years after your books have been before the
    public. You did not tell me the name of Buddha, but I told it you,
    that it was Saca, or Saca-sa,[36] which I have already printed a
    hundred times, and can show you in my great quarto, when you take your
    tea with me, as I hope you will to-morrow. _Sir W. Betham_ told me of
    the fire-towers being Phalluses last night at the Antiquarian
    Society.--Yours truly,

      “G. HIGGINS.”

Who, now, can pretend to think that the _neutralising award_ of the
“Council” was the effect of scepticism or legitimate doubt? Here Sir
William Betham, the Ulster King-at-Arms! the Goliath of _antiquaries_!--as
he is, undoubtedly, of _pedigrees_,--being himself a _member_ of the
“deciding tribunal,”--proclaims, in the midst of a venerable literary
assembly, that _my solution_ of the Round Tower enigma is accurate; and
yet in the _teeth_ of this _confession_, and of the _conviction_ which
_extorted_ it, he joins in voting away _my medal_ to a _compilation of
errors_, and in substituting thereinstead twenty pounds!

    (No. 7.)

    “LONDON, _May 2, 1833_.

    “DEAR DR. SINGER,--I exceedingly grieve to hear of your ill-health.
    Its announcement, I assure you, made me look within myself, and for a
    moment lose sight of my own hardships. I hope, however, that you are
    now so far recovered as to send me a favourable answer to this my
    _last_ appeal.

    “Taking it for certain that the Academy’s having not replied to the
    tenor of my late intimation arose from the circumstance of there
    having been no ‘Council day’ since; and, as I anticipate, that on
    Monday next my _question_ will be _finally_ disposed of, I am anxious,
    for the good of _all parties_, and for the _triumph_ of _truth_, to
    show you in _one view_ how I have amputated the last _supports_ of
    error, and covered its advocates with ignominy and shame.

           *       *       *       *       *

    “Thus _every leaf_ unfolds _evidences_ to the _realisation_ of _my
    victory_. I took my stand at the outset on the pedestal of _truth_;
    and I challenge scrutiny to insinuate that, in the _multiplied
    developments_ which I have since revealed, I have deviated from my
    _grand_ position one single iota.

    “Let it not be supposed, in the observation with which I am now about
    to conclude, that I mean anything disrespectful to the Council of the
    Academy. Many years have not passed since I knew several of them in a
    different relation; and however little effect college associations may
    produce on _other_ minds, _I_ find not their influence so fleeting or
    transient. It is with extreme reluctance, therefore, that I would
    split with a body who have lectured me as tutors. But time has
    _advanced_; _I am now right, and they are wrong, and the cause which
    they patronise will not do them much credit_.

    “I do not, however, yet give up my hopes but that the Academy will
    _wisely_ retrace their steps. Revocation of the _former_ medal I do
    not require--much less the exercise of a single grain of _partiality_.
    My demand merely is, as my former letters have indicated, the
    substitution of _justice_.

    “Please receive the assurance of my consideration, and in confident
    reliance that you will use your influence in this matter, and favour
    me with the upshot instantly after Monday’s Board,--I remain, ever
    sincerely yours,

      “HENRY O’BRIEN.”


    (No. 8.)

    “LONDON, _May 9, 1833_.

    “DEAR DR. SINGER,--My appeals are over; and I regret to say that they
    have not been attended to. The _virtuous_ and _enlightened part_ of
    the Academy, therefore, cannot blame me, if, in the assertion of my
    honest right, I try the effect of a public remonstrance.

    “In the interim, I transmit to you by this night’s post some
    additional leaves, which, in the anxiety of despatch, as well, indeed,
    as from fear that they would not be inserted _because they overwhelm
    for ever the antiquarian pretensions of the Dublin Penny Journal_,[37]
    have omitted to copy. However, I will _now_ forward them, and claim
    that they may be printed along with those already sent in the original
    Essay.

    “... I have exhausted all the forms of blandness and conciliation, in
    the vain hope of inducing the Council to redeem _themselves_ from
    _disgrace_, by doing _me_ common _justice_. I have strove in the
    mildest terms of conscious rectitude, invigorated by a phalanx of
    overwhelming proofs, to make them reconsider their course, and spare
    me the unpleasant task of exposing a deed which I am loth to
    characterise by its proper designation. But the ‘heart of Pharaoh’ was
    hardened; the ‘voice of the charmer’ not listened to; and to my soft
    importunities nothing was returned but the coldness of obduracy and
    disregard.

    “The Rubicon, therefore, is crossed; my patience feels insulted; and
    the only consideration I value, in the resolve to which I have at last
    been driven, is, that _you_ had nothing to do with the ‘job’ of the
    Round Towers.

    “Little did the Academy know what arguments I could adduce in
    elucidation of _certain mysteries_. As little do they now dream what
    proofs I can summon, though _you_ cannot have _forgotten_ one of them,
    while I promise I shall make _Dr. M’Donnell recollect_ another; and
    would not the _Rev. Cæsar Otway_, with whom I have never so much as
    exchanged a look, be surprised at my quoting him as a reluctant third
    witness, to show that the gold medal and premium were predetermined to
    Mr. Petrie before ever I became a candidate; and that, _consequently_,
    the advertisement under which I was _invited_ to contend, but from
    which the Council never expected an intruder, was but a specious
    delusion.

    “In this determination I violate no act of private regard, nor set
    light by the claims of individual acquaintance. You know yourself how
    earnestly I struggled, before the consummation of this nefarious
    proceeding, to stem the agency of that despicable under-current which
    I had just detected. I knew that fraud of some kind was at work; and
    though unable at the moment to fix upon the person in whose favour it
    was set agoing,--nay, though _mentally_ fastening the blame thereof
    upon another, whose name, however, I never _let slip_, and to whom, I
    rejoice to say I have since made more than recompense for this ideal
    injury,--yet could I not be persuaded but that something _sinister_
    was designated; and to frustrate the influence of such prominent
    deceit, you know how vehement was my address. I implored you, I
    besought you, and all but upon my _knees_, and with _tears_, I invoked
    you, by your regard to justice and your fear of a Creator, to _check
    this trickery_, and allow _merit alone_ and _anonymous_ to decide the
    issue.

    “I now, in the same spirit of solemn self-composure, adjure the
    ‘Council’ through you, in the name of that God before whom they and I
    shall one day appear, that they will have my cause redressed, and make
    me reparation, not only for the substantial injury, but for the mental
    disquietude and agony which this ‘business’ has occasioned. If they do
    not, rest satisfied that _my path is already chalked_. All the
    _evolutions_ of the Council, as displayed upon the Towers, and with
    which I am but too familiar, shall be immortalised in letterpress; and
    I do not yet despair of the _hereditary fairness_ of my country but
    that it shall _register_ its dissent from the decision of that
    tribunal, which could have had at once the _obtuseness_ of intellect
    and the _perverseness_ of conduct to _stultify_ their own verdict by a
    contradictory award; and, after _inveigling me into a competition
    which they never meant to remunerate, deprive_ me of the fruits of my
    indubitable triumph, in the pursuit of which I had almost lost my
    life, and cut short my existence in the very spring of my manhood.

    “I mean no offence, individually or collectively, to the Academy or
    its members; but as they have been deaf to the justice of my private
    ‘appeals,’ I shall try the effect of a public ‘remonstrance’; and as
    to _ulterior_ consequences I greatly err, else the upshot will show
    that the motto[38] adopted as my fictitious signature in the ‘Essay’
    was not the random assumption of inconsiderateness or accident, but
    the true index to the author’s resources.

    “My proposal is this--my unshaken position from which I will not
    swerve or retract--a _gold medal and premium equivalent to those
    originally advertised_.--I am, dear sir, yours sincerely,

      “HENRY O’BRIEN.

    “To the Rev. Dr. J. H. Singer,
      “_Secretary to the Academy_.”


    (No. 10.)

    “GRAFTON STREET, DUBLIN,
    “_May 13, 1833_.

    “DEAR SIR,--I have been directed by the Council of the Royal Irish
    Academy to reply to your last letters on the subject of your Essay,
    and the additional matter recently sent over. As to the latter, I am
    directed to say that the Council had engaged to examine and publish,
    if approved, some small additions to your former Essay; but the papers
    you have sent are so large as to be nearly equal in bulk to the
    original dissertation; under these circumstances the Council cannot
    publish them as additional to, or incorporated with, the Essay to
    which they awarded twenty pounds prize, _as thereby its character
    might be so altered that it would not appear in print the same Essay
    on which they had formed their opinion_. The Council, therefore, wish
    to know how they may transmit to you the papers you have sent. When
    the gentlemen to whom your Essay has been submitted for examination
    report, you shall be made aware of the extent of alteration they
    suggest; and if you think that your paper requires the additions you
    have sent, and would therefore wish to publish it with them yourself,
    I have no doubt the Council will entertain any notice to that
    effect.--I am, dear sir, your most obedient,

      “J. H. SINGER.

    “H. O’Brien, Esq.”


    (No. 11.)

    “LONDON, _May 20, 1833_.

    “DEAR DR. SINGER,--I do not quite understand the closing observation
    of your last letter. If the Academy mean me a kindness, I should trust
    that my nature is too sensible of such advances not suitably to
    acknowledge it; and I should be sorry that, either from obscurity in
    the diction, or want of quickness in my perception, I were to lose the
    opportunity of making a grateful return. Let me, therefore, put the
    following interrogatory to set myself right, viz.:--

    “Will the Academy procure me a publisher for my _enlarged_ work? And
    will they advertise that, having previously done me injustice, by the
    transfer of my medal, they now, on being convinced of their error,
    adopt this as the only mode of reparation, the award itself not being
    to be recalled?

    “Without some such course as this, it is obvious that the offer which
    they make, instead of being a _kindness_, would be a _mockery_; and,
    instead of making amends for _oppression_, would be adding _insult_ to
    _persecution_! For who, let me ask, would publish a work which a jury
    have branded with the stamp of _inferior_, doling out their
    surreptitious twenty pounds as an eleemosynary deodand, while the
    _darling_ of their adoption, though disfigured by all the
    imperfections of _blindness_, _lameness_, and _untruth_, and
    recommended only by a few _painted gew-gaws_, which never entered into
    the requisites of the original advertisement, _will pass current in
    Dublin amongst the creatures_ of party!

    “I have already applied to Mr. ----, and he, intimidated by the
    vicious state of society in Ireland, declined my proposal; but though
    his apprehensions were sufficient to deter him from the speculation,
    they were totally unfounded; for, despite of all corruption, all
    chicanery, and all cabals, the etc. etc. etc.

    “This complaint, observe, does not refer to the new papers only, but
    extends itself equally to the original Essay. Why do the Academy keep
    it back? Believe me, it is in vain for them to defer ‘the evil day’ of
    their exposure. Their doom was sealed the very moment they did me
    injustice! I have watchfully reconnoitred their course, and have
    proofs of the intricacies of their internal machinery, ample as those
    before adduced for the solution of the Round Tower enigma, to effect
    their overthrow; and if the present generation be not virtuous enough
    to redress my cause, it shall be no fault of mine if any future age
    shall be ignorant of the names of the individuals who constitute the
    present _Council_; and in what light they shall be considered, their
    own conscience can furnish them with a tolerable foretaste!

    “Was it not a cruelly perverse thing of them, after determining
    beforehand to award the medal to Mr. Petrie, to inveigle me into the
    competition by a deceptious advertisement? And then, after signally
    beating them under all disadvantages, to _manœuvre me off by a
    beggarly cheat_? Shame, foul shame for ever upon the Academy!

    “Why, sir, the very terms of your letter show their
    self-convictedness, though they have not honesty enough to avow it
    overboard! What do they mean by saying that the new matter would ‘make
    my Essay not appear in print the same as that on which they formed
    their opinion’? Are they afraid that it would make it appear worse?
    Not at all; they would rejoice at the pretext, and publish it
    _instanter_ as a cloak to their verdict! But as they have, in spite of
    them, admitted those additions to be an _improvement,[39] why do they,
    I ask, who have advertised for truth, again repress its effulgence_?

    “It is now easy to see what they designed by the clauses of
    ‘expediency,’ ‘if approved,’ and ‘subject to revisal’; viz., if false,
    we will insert them in _self-vindication_; but if true, we will not,
    _as being too great a victory over our own ignorance and favouritism_!

    “My Essay, however, does not want those new papers: the Council,
    therefore, will please have them sealed and handed over to the custody
    of Mr. Tims, my bookseller, in Grafton Street. The only additions
    which I shall insist upon being inserted are those contained in my
    letters in appropriate places, as I shall point out.

    “I conclude by giving notice that I shall claim Lord Cloncurry’s
    premium; nor do I despair of _recovering that_, as I should think that
    his lordship is _too honest a man to sacrifice the interests of
    literature to the intrigues of a faction_!--I have the honour to be,
    etc.,

      “HENRY O’BRIEN.”


    (No. 12.)

    “ROYAL IRISH ACADEMY HOUSE, DUBLIN,
    “_May 27, 1833_.

    “SIR,--I am directed by the Council of the Royal Irish Academy to
    inform you that they feel themselves compelled, in consequence of your
    late letters, to decline the publication of your Essay, or the
    maintaining any further correspondence with you on the subject.

    “Your Essay and the additional matter will be sent, as you desire, to
    Mr. Tims, Grafton Street, as soon as a copy of the former can be
    taken.--I am, sir, your most obedient,

      “J. H. SINGER, _Secretary_.

    “H. O’Brien, Esq.”

The discontinuance of the correspondence was to be expected, but their
declining the publication of my Essay in their _Transactions_, merely
because of my giving utterance to some unpalatable truths, was an excess
of _magnanimity_ which I did not think that even the “Council” would
personify.

However, you suppose that they, at all events, returned me my Essay, as
promised? Far from it! In violation of all honour, and of the written
engagements of their Secretary, they have detained it ever since in their
hands, thereby putting me to the vast expense of procuring new plates,
instead of those which the original contained--an inconvenience, I must
affirm, which they had hoped I could never have surmounted; while, in the
interim, they should push out their _bantling_ upon the public, secure in
the consciousness of having cushioned my work, that they should ride over
the market without a rival.

They should have known, however, that the person who, at _three months’
notice_, undertook to solve the Towers, and then kept them at bay for six
months before they could chouse him out of his prize, was not to be
deterred by such an obstacle as the above. And the reader may be satisfied
that, though it has occasioned _me_ some hardship, _he is in no respect
thereby a loser_.

I have stated that the effect of my Letter No. 1 was to interrupt the
transmission of the _Dublin Penny Journal_ to London. I have now to point
out the result of the menace conveyed in Letter 8 of my determining to
expose--as I enclosed the proofs that I could refute--the _antiquarian
errors_ of their organ. It was that they _instantly took the hint, and
sold their interest in the concern_! And its new proprietor, edified no
doubt by a friendly lesson at their hands, very wisely intimates, in his
opening number, that he shall forego _antiquities_, and make literary
_jobbing_ no part of it.

Here are his words: “From the concluding paragraph of the last number of
this little publication, its readers will be aware that it is now in the
hands of a new editor and proprietor, and they will naturally expect that
in the present number something should be said relative to its future
management. ‘Deeds, not words,’ has ever been the motto of its (present)
conductor, and he will therefore merely say that it is his intention to
give his readers good value for their money; that the _Dublin Penny
Journal_ shall not be a mere ‘catchpenny,’ depending upon the number and
excellence of its woodcuts for extensive circulation, but containing, as
he considers a publication of the kind should do, such a variety of
interesting and useful matter as shall render it really valuable. In
future, therefore, while the _antiquities_ of the country will not be
neglected, the work shall exhibit a more _general character in the
subjects of its contents_.”[40]

       *       *       *       *       *

_N.B._--As I am a member of no club, belong to no literary society, and
have no facilities otherwise for watching periodicals, whether newspapers,
magazines, or reviews, I shall feel obliged if any gentleman who, in the
exercise of a free judgment, should think proper to dissent from me, and
to express such dissent in offensive language, would be pleased to forward
me a copy of the work wherein his strictures may appear, and I promise
that I shall reply to them with deference, and perhaps satisfaction. I
also trust that, from the singularity of my position, I do not expect too
much when I express a hope that any publication which speaks against me
will allow me to reply through the same medium--a request certainly which
cannot be refused, unless the design be hostile and factiously malicious.
Any suggestions for improvement, with a view to a second edition, I very
cheerfully court.

All communications addressed to me, to the care of my publisher, Mr.
Whittaker, Ave Maria Lane, St. Paul’s, London, will reach me, and be
attended to.




  THE ROUND TOWERS OF IRELAND;

  OR

  THE HISTORY OF THE TUATH-DE-DANAANS

  _FOR THE FIRST TIME UNVEILED_.


  BY HENRY O’BRIEN, ESQ., A.B.


  [Illustration]


  “Hic sacra, hic genus, hic majorum multa vestigia.”
                                              CICERO.

                    ... “were of fame,
  And had been glorious in another day.”
                                  BYRON.


  SECOND EDITION.


  LONDON:
  PARBURY AND ALLEN, LEADENHALL STREET;
  DUBLIN:
  J. CUMMING, LOWER ORMOND QUAY.
  MDCCCXXXIV.




TO THE MOST NOBLE THE MARQUIS OF LANSDOWNE, ETC. ETC. ETC.


MY LORD MARQUIS,

Many reasons concur why I should feel ambitious to associate your name
with the following production. To enumerate these would neither become my
humility, nor be acceptable to your good taste. But there is one motive
which, as it is the offspring of the heart, implanted there at a period
when adulation was not dreamt of, I may be allowed to particularise,--I
was born upon your estates--you are the landlord of that spot which
imparted my earliest images--the first soarings of my fancy were derived
from that scene--and to the native notes which I have lisped in that
primitive and retired region, more than to the vaunted advantages of a
subsequent collegiate career, am I beholden for the clue with which I have
traversed the ancient world; and of which Envy herself must yet
acknowledge, that I have here rectified the history in its very widest
amplitude--as well sacred as profane.

It is to do honour to this clue _in the eyes of the Mecænas of his age_,
and, under the auspices of his approval, to promote its revival, that I
give utterance to this sentiment; and so, hoping that you will view it in
this light, and not as the empty chaunt of a reprehensible egotism, I beg
leave to subscribe myself, with the most profound consideration and
respect,

  My Lord Marquis,
    Your Lordship’s most devoted
      And most faithful, humble Servant,
        HENRY O’BRIEN.

LONDON, _September 1834_.




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.


                                                                      PAGE

  PORTRAIT OF HENRY O'BRIEN, BY MACLISE                     _Frontispiece_

  DEVENISH ROUND TOWER                                                  38

  ARDMORE    "     "                                                    71

  CLONDALKIN "     "                                                   101

  EFFIGY OF FARRAGH, OR MORIAGAN                                       138

  SAMONA OF BUDDHA                                                     140

  ROUND TOWER, WITH DEVOTEE ON SUMMIT                                  169

  SYMBOLIC SCULPTURE FOUND AT VINDOLANA                                223

  PALENCIAN SCULPTURE OF THE SYMBOLIC “TREE,” WITH FIGURES             229

  PYTHAGOREAN TRIANGLE OF TEN                                          268

  SYMBOLIC CRESCENT-ORNAMENTS                                     273, 274

  EFFIGY OF CRUCIFIED BUDDHA, SACA, OR MACHA                           296

  BRECHIN ROUND TOWER (SCOTLAND), WITH DOUBLE-ARCH AND EFFIGIES        299

  OBELISK AT SANDWICK (ROSS-SHIRE)                                     306

  PHOENICIAN MEDALS, STAMPED WITH CROSS, LAMB, AND ROSARY              314

  SHAFT OF CROSS AT FORRES (SCOTLAND)                                  316

        "        "            "       REVERSE SIDE OF SAME             319

  MONOLITH AT CARNAC (EGYPT)                                           322

  SCULPTURE IN KNOCKMOY ABBEY                                     329, 330

  SCULPTURE ON TEMPLE AT KALABCHE (NUBIA)                         341, 342

  KILCULLEN, CROSS AT                                                  338

  CLONMACNOISE,    "                                                   358

  FINGLAS          "                                                   366

  KELLS            "                                                   491

  FACSIMILE OF MS. DISCOVERED AT ICOLMKILL                             419

  PHEELEAS, OR ORACLE-TUBE, FOUND AT BALLYMONEY                        460

  GLENDALOUGH, CURIOUS SYMBOLIC SCULPTURE ON RUINS OF                  467

  THE MAGI--WOODCUT FROM AN ANCIENT BLOCK-BOOK                         482

  MEDALS OF CHRIST, FOUND AT ISLAND OF ANGLESEA AND AT CORK            509




THE ROUND TOWERS, _&c._




CHAPTER I.

    “A lively desire of knowing and recording our ancestors so generally
    prevails, that it must depend on the influence of some common
    principle in the minds of men. We seem to have lived in the persons of
    our forefathers; our calmer judgment will rather tend to moderate than
    suppress the pride of an ancient and worthy race. The satirist may
    laugh; the philosopher may preach; but reason herself will respect the
    prejudices and habits which have been consecrated by the experience of
    mankind.”[41]


Of all nations on the globe, the Irish, as a people, are universally
admitted to possess, in a pre-eminent degree, those finer sensibilities of
the human heart, which, were they but wisely controlled, would exalt _man_
above the level of ordinary humanity, and make him, as it were, a being of
another species. The numerous instances adduced in all periods of their
history, of ardent and enterprising zeal, in every case wherein personal
honour or national glory may be involved, are in themselves sufficient to
establish this assertion. But while granting their pre-eminence as to the
possession of those feelings, and the capability of the feelings
themselves to be refined and sublimated to the very acme of cultivation,
we may still doubt whether the _mere possession_ of them be not less a
blessing than a curse--whether, in fact, their quick perception of
disquietudes and pains be not more than a counterpoise to their keen
enjoyment of delight or pleasure.

Foremost, however, in the train of the _many virtues_ which flow
therefrom, is that “amor patriæ,” or love of country, which, unsubdued
often by the most galling miseries and the most hopeless wants, throws a
halo round the loneliness of their present despair in the proud
retrospection of their former buoyancy. This spirit it is which, despite
of obvious advantages to be derived from emigration, has riveted the Irish
peasant so immutably to his home, that any effort on his part to dissolve
those local fetters would be equivalent to the disruption of all the ties
and attachments which nature or habit had implanted within him.

  “The lofty scenes around their sires recall,
  Fierce in the field and generous in the hall;
  The mountain crag, the stream and waving tree,
  Breathe forth some proud and glorious history--
  Urges their steps where patriot virtue leads,
  And fires the kindred souls to kindred deeds.
  They tread elate the soil their fathers trod,
  The same their country, and the same their God.”

But it may be said that this is a day-dream of youth--the hereditary
vanity of one of Iran’s sons, arrogating antiquity and renown for an
inconsiderable little island, without a particle of proof to substantiate
their assumption, or a shadow of authority to give colour to their claims.
Why, sir, cast your eye over the fair face of the land itself, and does
not the scene abound with the superfluity of its evidences? What are those
high aspiring edifices which rise with towering elevation towards the
canopy of the “_Most High_”?[42] What are those stupendous and awful
structures of another form--the study at once and admiration of the
antiquarian and the philosopher, to be found on the summits of our various
hills[43] as well as in the bowels[44] of the earth itself?--what are they
but the historical monuments of splendour departed--surviving the ravages
of time and decay, not as London’s column, to “lift their heads and lie,”
but to give the lie and discomfiture to those, who, from the interested
suggestions of an illiberal policy, or the more pardonable delusions of a
beclouded judgment, would deny the authenticity of our historic records,
and question the truth of our _primeval_ civilisation?

It is true, the magnificence which those memorials demonstrate is but the
unenviable grandeur of druidical, as it is called, idolatry and
unenlightened paganism,--when man, relinquishing that supremacy consigned
to him at his creation, or rather divested thereof in punishment for the
transgression of his degenerate disposition, lost sight of that Being to
whom he owed his safety and his life, and bent himself in homage before
perishable creatures that crawl their ephemeral pilgrimage through the
same scene with himself. Granted; yet that cannot well be objected to _us_
as a disgrace, which, co-extensive in its adoption with the amplitude of
the earth’s extension, equally characterised the illiterate and the sage;
and if, amidst this lamentable prostration of the human understanding,
anything like redemption or feature of superiority may be allowed, it must
be, unquestionably, to the adherents of that system, which, excluding the
objects of matter and clay, recognised, in its worship of the bright
luminaries of the firmament, the purity and omnipotence of that Spirit
who brought all into existence, and who guides and preserves them in their
respective spheres;--and when I shall have _proved_ that the intent and
application of those _Sabian[45] Towers_,--or, to speak more correctly,
those _primitive Budhist Temples_,--which decorate our landscape and
commemorate our past renown, appertained to this species of purified
idolatry, which worshipped only the host of heaven, the moon and the solar
body, which gives _vigour_ to all things, I shall, methinks, have removed
one obstacle from the elucidation of our antiquities, and facilitated the
road to further adventure in this interesting inquiry.

Let me not be supposed, however, by the preceding remarks to restrict
their destination to one single purpose. All I require of my readers is a
patient perusal of my details; and I deceive myself very much, and
overrate my powers of enunciation, else I shall establish in their minds
as thorough a conviction of the development of the “Towers” as I am myself
satisfied with the accuracy of my conclusions. I shall only entreat, then,
of their courtesy that I be not anticipated in my course, or definitively
judged of by isolated scraps, but that, as my notice for this competition
has been limited and recent, allowing but little time for the observance
of _tactique_ or rules, in the utterance of the novel views which I now
venture to put forward, the proofs of which, however, have been long
registered in my thoughts, and additionally confirmed by every new
research, the merits of the production may not be estimated by parcels,
but by the combined tendency of the parts altogether.

To begin, therefore. The origins I have heard assigned to those records
of antiquity,--however invidious it may appear, at this the outset of my
labours, to assume so self-sufficient a tone, yet can I not avoid saying
that, whether I consider their multiplicity or their extravagance, they
have not more frequently excited my ridicule than my commiseration. That
specimens of architecture, so costly and so elegant, should be designed
for the paltry purposes of purgatorial columns or penitential heights, to
which criminals should be elevated for the ablution of their
enormities--while the honest citizen, virtuous and unstained, should be
content to grovel amongst lowly terrestrials ’mid the dense exhalations of
forests and bogs, in a mud-wall hut, or at best a conglomeration of
wattles and hurdles--is, I conceive, an outrage upon human reason too
palpable to be listened to.

Not less ridiculous is the idea of their having been intended for beacons;
for, were such their destination, a hill or rising ground would have been
the proper site for their erection, and not a valley or low land, where it
happens that we generally meet them.

The belfry theory alone, unfounded in one sense though it really be, and
when confined to that application equally contemptible with the others,
is, notwithstanding, free from the objection that would lie against the
_place_, as it is well known that the sound of bells which hang in plains
and valleys is heard much farther than that of such as hang upon
elevations or hills: for, air being the medium of sound, the higher the
sonorous body is placed, the more rarefied is that medium, and
consequently the less proper vehicle to convey the sound to a distance.
The objection of situation, therefore, does not apply to this theory; and,
accordingly, we shall find that the exercising of bells--though in a way
and for an object little contemplated by our theorists--constituted part
of the machinery of the complicated ceremonial of those mysterious
edifices.

The truth is, the “Round Towers” of Ireland were not all intended for one
and the same use, nor any one of them limited to one single purpose; and
this, I presume, will account for the variety in their construction, not
less perceptible in their diameters and altitudes than in other
characteristic bearings. For I am not to be told that those varieties we
observe were nothing more than the capriciousness of _taste_, when I find
that the indulgence of that caprice, in one way, would defeat the very
object to which one party would ascribe them, whilst its extension, in a
different way, would frustrate the hopes of another set of speculators.

But what must strike the most cursory as irresistibly convincing that they
were not erected _all_ with _one_ view, is the fact of our sometimes
finding two of them together in one and the same locality.

Now, if they were intended as beacons or belfries, would it not be the
most wasteful expenditure of time and wealth to erect two of them together
on almost the same spot? And when I mention expenditure, perhaps I may be
allowed, incidentally, to observe, that, of all species of architecture,
_this_ particular form, as it is the most durable, so is it also the most
difficult and the most costly.

Need I name the sum of money which Nelson’s monument has cost in modern
times? or that imperfect testimonial in the Phœnix Park which commemorates
the glories of the hero of Waterloo. No; but I will mention what Herodotus
tells us was the purport of an inscription upon one of the pyramids of
Egypt, the form of some of which, be it known, was not very dissimilar to
our Irish pyramids, while their intent and object were more congenial;
viz. that no less a sum than 1600 talents of silver, or about £400,000 of
our money, had been expended upon radishes, onions, and garlic alone, for
360,000 men, occupied for twenty years in bringing that stupendous fabric,
that combined instrument of religion and science, to completion!

Our Round Towers, we may well conceive, must have been attended, at the
early period of their erection, with comparatively similar expense: and
assuredly, the _motive_ which could suggest such an outlay must have been
one of corresponding import, of the most vital, paramount, and absorbing
consideration.

Would the receptacles for a bell be of such moment? And that, too, whilst
the churches, to which, of course, they must have appertained, were
thought worthy of no better materials than temporary hurdles, and so leave
behind them no vestiges of their local site,--no evidence or trace of
their ever having existed! And, indeed, how could they?--for existence
they never had, except in the creative imagination of our hypothetical
antiquaries.

Ruins, it is true, of chapels and dilapidated cathedrals are frequently
found in the vicinity of our Round Towers; but these betray in their
_materials_ and architecture the stamp of a later age, having been founded
by missionaries of the early Christian Church, and purposely thus
collocated--contiguous to edifices long before hallowed by a religious
use--to at once conciliate the prejudices of those whom they would fain
persuade, and divert their adoration to a more purified worship.

And yet, upon this single circumstance of proximity to ecclesiastical
dilapidations--coupled with the bas-relief of a crucifix which presents
itself over the door of the Budhist temple of Donoghmore in Ireland, and
that of Brechin in Scotland--have the deniers of the antiquity of those
venerable memorials raised that superstructure of historical imposture,
which, please God, I promise them, will soon crumble round their ears
before the indignant effulgence of regenerated veracity.

It might be sufficient for this purpose, perhaps, to tell them that
similar ruins of early Christian churches are to be met with abundantly in
the neighbourhood of Cromleachs and Mithratic caves all through the
island; and that they might as well, from this vicinity, infer that those
two other vestiges of heathenish adoration were contrived by our early
Christians as appendages to the chapels, as they would fain make out--by
precisely the same mode of inference--that the Round Towers had been!

But this would not suit; they could find no ascription associated with
Christianity which cave or cromleach could subserve; and thus have the
poor missionaries escaped the cumbrous imputation of having those colossal
pagan slabs and those astounding gentile excavations affiliated upon them.

Not so fortunate the Towers. After ransacking the whole catalogue of
available applications appertaining to the order of monastic institutions
with which to _Siamise_ those temples, Montmorency has at last hit upon
the noble and dignified department of a “dungeon-keep” or “lock-up!” as
the sole use and intention of their original erection!

As I intend, however, to unravel this fallacy in its proper quarter, I
shall resume, for the present, the thread of my discourse.

Besides the absurdity, then, of bestowing such magnificence upon so really
inconsiderable a thing as a belfry, while the supposed churches were
doomed to dwindle and moulder in decay, is it not astonishing that we find
no vestiges of the like fashion, or structures of the like form, in any of
those countries where the people to whom the advocates of this theory
ascribe their erection have since and before exercised sway?

The Danes had dominion in Britain longer and more extensively than they
ever had in _this_ island; and yet, in the whole compass of England, from
one extremity to the other, is there not one fragment of architecture
remaining to sanction the idea of identity or resemblance!

Nay, in all Denmark and Scandinavia, the original residence of the Ostmen
and Danes, there is not a single parallel to be found to those columnar
edifices!

Ireland, on the contrary, exhibits them in every quarter; in districts and
baronies where Danish authority was never felt; and surely our forefathers
were not so much in love with the usages and habits of their barbarian
intruders, as to multiply the number of those stately piles, solely in
imitation of such detested taskmasters.

But what renders it _demonstrative_ that those professional pirates had no
manner of connection with the Irish Round Towers, is the glaring fact,
that in the two cities of Wexford and Waterford--where their power was
absolute, their influence uncontrolled--there is not a solitary structure
that could possibly be ascribed to the class of those which we now
discuss!

In Scotland alone, of all European countries besides Ireland, do we meet
with two of them,--one at Brechin, and the other at Abernethy;--but they
are smaller than the Irish, and, with other characteristics, seem to have
been built, after their model, at a comparatively recent period, by a
colony from this country, “as if marking the fact,” to use Dalton’s
_accidentally_[46] appropriate phrase, “of that colonisation having taken
place when the rites, for which the Round Towers were erected, in the
mother-country, were on the decline.”

But, forsooth, they are called “cloghachd” by the peasantry, and that,
without further dispute, fixes their destination as belfries! Oh! seri
studiorum quîne difficile putetis?

That some of them had been appropriated in latter times, nay, and still
are, to this purpose, I very readily concede; but, “toto cœlo,” I deny
that such had ever entered into the contemplation of their constructors,
as I do, also, the universality of the very name, which I myself know, by
popular converse, to be but partial in its adoption, extending only to
such as had been converted by the moderns to the purpose described, or
such as may, originally, have had a clogh, or bell, of which I admit there
were some, as part of their apparatus.

The first bells of which we have any mention are those described by Moses,
as attached to the garments of the high-priest. From these, the Gentiles,
as they affected to rival the Israelites in all their ceremonies, borrowed
the idea, and introduced its exercise into the celebration of their own
ritual. By “Israelites,” however, I deem it necessary to explain that I do
not understand those who, in strictness of speech, are so denominated as
the descendants of Israel, _i.e._ Jacob, who, in fact, were a
comparatively modern people; but I particularise that old stock of
patriarchal believers which existed from the Creation, and upon which the
Israelites, rigidly so called, were afterwards engrafted.

Our Irish history abounds with proofs of the “ceol,” and “ceolan,” the
bell and the little bell, having been used by the pagan priests in the
ministry of their religious ordinances; and to the fictitious sanctity
which they attributed to this instrument may we ascribe that superstitious
regard which the illiterate and uneducated still continue to entertain for
the music of its sound.

From the Sabian ceremonial--succeeded by the Druidical--it unquestionably
was that the Christian missionaries in Ireland first adopted the use of
bells, wishing, wisely, therein to conform as much as possible to the
prejudices of the natives, when they did not essentially interfere with
the spirit of their divine mission. I shall hereafter relate the
astonishment excited in England, at the appearance of one of those bells,
brought there in the beginning of the sixth century by Gildas, who had
just returned after finishing his education in Ireland; and this, in
itself, should satisfy the most incredulous that the Britons, as well
pagan as Christian, were ever before strangers to such a sight; and no
wonder, for they were strangers also to such things as Round Towers, to
which I shall prove those implements properly and exclusively belonged.

“Clogad” is the name, and which literally signifies a “pyramid,” that has
led people into this “belfry” mistake. To conclude, therefore, this
portion of our investigation, I shall observe, in Dr. Milner’s words,
“that none of these towers are large enough for a single bell of a
moderate size to swing about in it; that, from the whole of their form and
dimensions, and from the smallness of the apertures in them, they are
rather calculated to stifle than to transmit to a distance any sound that
is made _in_ them; lastly, that though possibly a small bell may have been
accidentally put up in one or two of them at some late period, yet we
constantly find other belfries, or contrivances for hanging bells, in the
churches adjoining to them.”

I fear greatly I may have bestowed too much pains in dispelling the
delusion of this preposterous opinion. But as it had been put forward with
so much confidence by a much-celebrated “antiquarian,”--though how he
merited the designation I confess myself at a loss to know,--I thought it
my duty not to content myself with the mere exposure of the fallacy,
without following it up with proofs, which must evermore, I trust,
encumber its advocates with _shame_; and the rather, as this great
champion of _Danish civilisation_ and proclaimer of his _country’s
barbarism_ is at no ordinary trouble to affect ridicule and contempt for a
most enlightened and meritorious English officer, who, from the sole
suggestion of truth, promoted by observation and antiquarian research,
stood forward as the advocate of our ancestral renown, to make amends, as
it were, for the aspersions of domestic calumniators.

Both parties are, however, now appreciated as they ought; and though
Vallancey, certainly, did not understand the purport of our Round Towers,
his view of them, after all, was not far from being correct; and the
laborious industry with which he prosecuted his inquiries, and the
disinterested warmth with which he ushered them into light, should shield
his memory from every ill-natured sneer, and make every child of Iran feel
his grateful debtor.

Having given Milner a little while ago the opportunity of tolling the
death-knell of the belfry hypothesis, I think I could not do better now
than give Ledwich, in return, a triumph, by demolishing the symmetry of
the anchorite vagary.

“It must require a warm imagination,” says this writer,--after quoting the
account given by Evagrius of Simeon Stylites’ pillar, upon which
Richardson, Harris, and Milner after them had founded the anchorite
vagary,--“to point out the similarity between this pillar and our ‘tower’:
the one was solid, and the other hollow--the one square, and the other
circular: the ascetic _there_ was placed without _on_ the pillar; with
_us_ enclosed _in_ the tower. He adds, these habitations of anchorites
were called _inclusoria_, or _arcti inclusorii ergastula_, but these were
very different from our round towers; for he mistakes Raderus, on whom he
depends, and who says, ‘The house of the recluse ought to be of stone, the
length and breadth twelve feet, with three windows, one facing the choir,
the other opposite, through which food is conveyed to him, and the third
for the admission of light--the latter to be always covered with glass or
horn.’

“Harris, speaking of Donchad O’Brien, Abbot of Clonmacnois, who shut
himself up in one of these cells, adds, ‘I will not take upon me to affirm
that it was in one of these towers of Clonmacnois he was enclosed.’ It
must have been the strangest perversion of words and ideas to have
attempted it. Is it not astonishing that a reverie thus destitute of
truth, and founded on wilful mistakes of the plainest passages, should
have been attended to, and even be, for some time, believed?”

Thus have I allowed him to retaliate in his own words; but in order to
render his victory complete, by involving a greater number within his
closing denunciation, he should have waited until he had seen a note
appended to the fourteenth of Dr. Milner’s _Letters_, which,
unquestionably, would deserve a similar rebuke for its gross perversion of
a “cell” into a “tower.”

It is this: “We learn from St. Bernard, that St. Malachy, afterwards
Archbishop of Armagh, in the twelfth century, applied for religious
instruction, when a youth, to a holy solitary by name Imarus, who was shut
up in a ‘cell,’ near the cathedral of the said city, _probably in a Round
Tower_.” Risum teneatis?

But I am tired of fencing with shadows and special pleading with casuists.
And yet, as I would wish to render this Essay systematically complete, I
am forced, however reluctant, to notice the conjecture, which others have
hazarded, of those Round Towers having been places of retreat and security
in the event of invasion from an enemy; or depositories and reservoirs for
the records of State, the Church utensils and national treasures!

To the _former_, I shall reply, that Stanihurst’s description of the
“excubias in castelli vertice,” upon which it would seem to have been
founded, does not at all apply to the case; because, while the “castella”
have vanished, the Round Towers--which never belonged to them--do, many of
them still firmly, maintain their post; and as to the _latter_, the
boldness with which it has been put forward, by its author before
named,[47] requires a more lengthened examination than its utter
instability could otherwise justify.




CHAPTER II.


This chivalrous son of Mars, more conversant, I should hope, with tactics
than with literary disquisitions, has started with a position which he is
himself, shortly after, the most industrious to contradict; namely, “that
the gods, to punish so much vanity and presumption, had consigned to
everlasting oblivion the founders, names, dates, periods, and all records
relating to them.”[48]

Surely, if they were intended for the despicable _dungeons_ which the
Colonel would persuade us was their origin, there existed neither “vanity”
nor “presumption” in _that humble design_; and when to this we add the
_nature_ of that security, which he tells us they were to establish, one
would think that _this_ should be a ground for the perpetuity of their
registration, rather than for consigning their history to “everlasting
oblivion.”

But secure in the consciousness of the whole history of those structures,
and satisfied that _truth_ will never suffer anything by condescending to
investigation, I will, to put the reader in full possession of _this_
adversary’s statement, here capitulate his arguments with all the fidelity
of an honourable rival.

His object, then, being to affix the Round Towers to the Christian era, he
begins by insisting that, as “the architects of those buildings were
consummate masters in masonic art,” it follows, that “a people so
admirably skilled in masonry never could have experienced any impediments
in building substantial dwellings, strong castles, palaces, or any other
structures of public or private conveniency, some fragments of which,
however partial and insignificant, would still be likely to appear, in
despite of the corroding breath of time or the torch of devastation.”

His next argument is, “that the _busy_ and _fantastic bard_, whose
occupation led him to interfere in private and public concerns,--who, in
truth (he adds) is our oldest and most circumstantial annalist,--on the
subject of the Pillar Tower is dumb and silent as the dead”; whence he
infers the “non-existence of those Towers during the remote ages of bardic
influence,”--“and of their being utterly unknown to them, and to our
ancestors, anterior to the reception of the Christian faith.”

His third proposition is, that as “Strabo, Pomponius Mela, Solinus,
Diodorus Siculus, and other writers of antiquity, have represented the
condition of Ireland and its inhabitants to be barbarous in _their_
days,--in common with their neighbours the Britons, Gauls, and Germans, to
whom the art systematically to manufacture stone had been
unknown,--_ergo_, those _barbarians_ could not be set up as the authors of
the Pillar Tower.”

His fourth premise is, that “wherever we chance to light upon a cromleach,
we seldom fail to find near it one of those miserable caves”--and which he
has described before as “surpassing in dreariness everything in the
imagination of man”;--whereas in the vicinity of the Pillar Tower no such
thing is seen, _unless some natural_ or _accidental excavation_ may
happen to exist _unaccountably_ in that direction. His inference from
which is, that “although the cromleach and the cave do claim, the first a
Celtic, the second a Phœnician origin, and happen _here_ to be united, the
Pillar Tower, nevertheless, disavows even the most distant connection with
either of them.”

His fifth is a continuation of the foregoing, with an erroneous
parallelism, viz. “at Bael Heremon, in India, not far from Mount Lebanon,
there stood a temple dedicated to Bael, near to which were many caves, of
which one was roomy enough to admit into it four thousand persons.” “The
size of those temples,” he adds, “was regulated according to the extent or
amount of the local population, being spacious and magnificent in large
cities, and small and simple in the inferior towns and villages; but
nowhere, nor in any case, do we meet an example of a lofty spiral tower,
_internally too confined_ to admit _into it at once a dozen bulky
persons_, denominated a temple.”

“An edifice,” he resumes, “like the Pillar Tower, might easily serve for a
belfry; and there are instances where it has been converted, in modern
times, to that use; on the other hand, a temple, properly speaking, gives
an idea of a spacious edifice, or of one calculated to accommodate,
withinside its walls, a certain congregation of devout people, met to
pray. Should the building, to answer any partial or private use, be
constructed upon a diminutive scale, like the little round temple at
Athens,[49] called Demosthenes’, the edifice,” he continues, “in that
case, obtains its appropriate shape, yet differing in plan, size, and
elevation from the Irish Pillar Tower, to which it cannot, in any one
respect, be assimilated.”

“Moreover,” he says, “the ancients had _hardly_ any round temples.
Vitruvius barely speaks of two kinds, neither of which bears the slightest
resemblance to a tower. Upon the whole,” concludes he, “if we will but
bestow a moment’s reflection on the geographical and political condition
of primitive Ireland, and the avowed _tardy_ progress towards civilisation
and an acquaintance with the fine arts then common to those nations not
_conveniently_ placed within the enlightened and enlivening pale of Attic
and Roman instruction, it will be impossible not to pronounce Vallancey’s
conjectures respecting the Pillar Towers as receptacles for the sacred
fire altogether chimerical and fabulous.”

Before I proceed to demolish, _seriatim_, this tissue of cobwebs, I wish
it to be emphatically laid down that _I_ do not tread in General
Vallancey’s footsteps. To his undoubted services, when temperately
guarded, I have already paid the tribute of my national gratitude; but,
pitying his mistakes, while sick of his contradictions, I have taken the
liberty to _chalk out my own road_.

Now for Montmorency. As to the first, then, of those objections against
the antiquity of our Round Towers, it is readily repelled by explaining
that, in the early ages of the world, masonic edifices, of architectural
precision, were exclusively appropriated, as a mark of deferential homage,
to the worship of the _Great Architect_ of the universe; and with this
view it was that the science was, at _first_, studied as a sort of
religious mystery, of which there can be required no greater possible
corroboration than the circumstance of that _ancient_ and _mysterious_
society who date the existence of their institution from Noah himself--and
it is incomparably older--still retaining, amid the thousand changes which
the world has since undergone, and the thousand attempts that have been
made to explore and explode their secrets, the mystic denominational
ligature of “_Free and Accepted Masons_.”[50]

The absence, therefore, of any vestiges of other _coeval_ structures, for
private abode or public exhibition, should excite in us no surprise; more
especially when we recollect that in the East also--whence all our early
customs have been derived--their mud-built houses present the greatest
possible contrast between the simplicity of their domestic residences and
the magnificence and grandeur of their religious conventicles--Verum illi
delubra deorum pietate, domos sua gloria decorabant.[51]

But though this my reply is triumphantly subversive of the Colonel’s first
position, I shall dwell upon it a little longer, to hold forth, with
merited retaliation, either his disingenuousness or his forgetfulness;
because the same inference which he deduced from the non-appearance of
coeval architecture of any _other_ class, would apply as well to the
period which _he_ wishes to establish as the era of the erection of the
Towers,--and of which era, he admits, no other architectural monuments do
remain,--as to that which I shall incontrovertibly prove was their proper
epoch.

Then, without having recourse to the _impossibility_--of which all
travellers complain--to ascertain even the _situation_ of those gigantic
cities which in other parts of the globe, at equally remote periods of
time, were cried up as the wonders of the age--the masterpieces of human
genius, making their domes almost kiss the stars; without betaking myself,
I say, to those, the only memorials of which are now to be found in that
of the _echo_, which, to your affrighted fancy, asking inquisitively and
incredulously, “Where are they?” only repeats responsively, “Where are
they?”--passing over this, I tell him that, more highly favoured than
other countries, we possess, in Ireland, ample evidences of those remnants
which he so vauntingly challenges. Traverse the isle in its inviting
richness, over its romantic mountains and its fertile valleys, and there
is scarcely an old wall you meet, or an old hedge you encounter, that you
will not find, _embedded_ among the mass, some solitary specimens of
chiselled execution, which, in their proud, aristocratic bearing, afford
ocular and eloquent demonstration of their having _once_ occupied a more
respectable post.

Not less futile than the foregoing is his second objection, arising from
what he represents as the silence of “the busy and fantastic bard.”
Doubtless he reckoned upon _this_ as his most impregnable battery; and I
readily believe that most of his readers anticipate the same result: but
this little book will soon shiver the fallacy of such calculations, and
adduce, in its proper place, from the very head and principal of the
_bardic order_--no less a personage than Amergin himself--its _towering_
refutation; as well as the _final_, incontrovertible appropriation of
those structures to their _actual_ founders.

In the interim, I must not let the opportunity pass of vindicating our
ancient bards from the false imputations of “busy and fantastic.”

If pride of descent be a weakness of Irishmen, it is one in which they are
countenanced by all the nations of the globe who have had anything like
pretensions to support the claim; and I fearlessly affirm that the more
sensitive a people prove themselves of their national renown, their
hereditary honour, and ancestral splendour, the more tenacious will they
show themselves, in support of that repute,--whether as individuals or a
community,--in every cause involving the far higher interests of moral
rectitude, of virtue, and of religion. In the legitimate indulgence of
this honourable emotion the Irish have ever stood conspicuously high. No
nation ever attended with more religious zeal to their acts and
genealogies, their wars, alliances, and migrations, than they did; and
while no people ever excelled them in enterprise or heroism, or the wisdom
and administration of their legislative code, so were they surpassed by
none in the number and capability of those who could delineate such
events, and impart to reality the _additional charm_ of imagery and verse.

The bards were a set of men exclusively devoted, like the tribe of Levi
amongst the Israelites, to the superintendence of those subjects. Their
agency in this department was a legitimately recognised and graduate
faculty; and, in accuracy of speech, the only one which merited the
designation of _learned_, being attainable only after the most severe
novitiate of preliminary study and rigid exercise of all the mental
powers.

The industry and patience bestowed on such a course were not, however,
without their reward. In a classical point of view _this_ exhibited itself
in the high estimation in which they were held--both amongst foreigners
and natives--as poets, as prophets, and as philosophers; while the dignity
and emolument attached to their situation, and the distinguished rank
assigned them, at the general triennial assemblies of the state at
Tara--with the endowments conferred upon them by the monarch and the
several provincial kings--were sure to render it, at all times, an object
of ambition and pursuit to members of the noblest families throughout the
various parts of the realm.

The moral deportment and personal correctness of those literary sages
contributed still further to add to their esteem; and, probably, I could
not succeed better, in depicting the almost _sanctity_ of their general
behaviour, than by transcribing a stanza descriptive of the qualities
which won to them, as a society, the mingled sentiments of veneration and
of awe. It is taken from a very ancient Irish poem, and runs thus--

  “Iod na laimh lith gan ghuin,
  Iod na beorl gan ean neamhuib,
  Iod na foghlama gan ean ghes,
  Is iod na lanamh nas.”

That is--

  “Theirs were the hands free from violence,
  Theirs the mouths free from calumny,
  Theirs the learning without pride,
  And theirs the love free from venery.”

In later times I admit there was a lamentable degeneracy in the bardic
class,--or rather the innumerable pretenders to the assumption of the
name; and the “fescennine licentiousness” with which they violated the
sanctity of domestic seclusion, in exposing the objects of their private
spleen, tended not a little to bring their body into disrepute, and
subject them additionally to the salutary restrictions of legislative
severity. They were not less extravagant in the lavishment of their
fulsome commendations; so that one can hardly avoid drawing a parallel
between them and those poetasters, formerly, of Italy, whom Horace so
happily describes in those remarkable hexameters, viz.:--

  “Fescinnina per hunc invecta licentia morem,
  Versibus alternis opprobria rustica fudit,
                    ... quin etiam lex
  Pœnaque lata malo quæ mallet carmine quenquam,
  Describi.”[52]

You would imagine the Roman poet was speaking of the Irish bards in the
_night_ of their decline; but the description by no means applies to the
original institution, whose object it was to perpetuate the history and
records of the nation, and preserve its history from the intrusions of
barbarism. To this end it was that they met for revision at the senatorial
synod; and the importance of this trust it was that procured to their body
the many dignities before described, giving them precedence above the
aggregate of the community at large, and investing them with an authority
little short of royalty.

Rhyme was the vehicle in which their lucubrations were presented; verse
the medium selected for their thoughts. To gain perfection in this
accomplishment their fancies were ever on the stretch; while the varieties
of metre which they invented for the purpose, and the facility with which
they bent them to each application and use, were not the least
astonishing part of their arduous avocations, and leave the catalogue of
modern measures far away in the shade.

Music is the sister of poetry, and it is natural to suppose that they went
hand in hand _here_. In all countries, the voice was the original organ of
musical sounds. With this they accompanied their extemporaneous hymns;
with this they chanted the honours of their heroes. The battle-shout and
the solemnity of the hour of sacrifice were the usual scenes for the
concerts of our ancestors. Singing the glory of former warriors, the
combatant was _himself_ inspired; and while the victim expired on the
altar of immolation, the priest sang the praise of the deity he invoked.

The introduction of the Christian truths gave a new and elevated scope to
the genius of the bards. A new enthusiasm kindled up their ardour--a new
vitality invigorated their frames; and they who, but the moment before,
were most conspicuous in upholding the dogmas of the pagan creed, became
now the most distinguished in proclaiming the blessings of the Christian
dispensation. Fiech, Amergin, Columba, Finan, etc., are glorious examples
of this transmuted zeal.

About the twelfth or thirteenth centuries, however, a change burst forth
for the destinies of this order. Verse ceased to be used in their
historical announcements. Prose succeeded, as a more simple narrative; and
from that moment the respectability of the bards progressively evaporated.

The jealousy of the English Government at the martial feeling excited by
their effusions, and the intrepid acts of heroism inculcated by their
example, if not the actual cause of this national declension,
preponderated very largely amongst its component ingredients.

In the height of the battle, when the war-cry was most loud, and the
carnage most severe, those poetic enthusiasts would fling themselves
amongst the ranks of the enraged contenders, and determine the victory to
whatever party they chose to befriend.

When, too, under the pressure of an untoward fate, and the disheartening
yoke of--what they deemed--a treacherous subjugation, the nobles would
seem dispirited at the aspect of circumstances, and all but subscribe to
the thraldom of slavery, the bards would rouse the energies of their
slumbering patriotism, and, as Tyrtæus used the Spartans, enkindle in
their bosoms a passion for war. We must not be surprised, therefore, to
find in the preamble to some of the acts passed in those times for the
suppression of this body of men, the following harsh and deprecating
allusions, viz.:--“That those rymors do, by their ditties and rymes made
to divers lords and gentlemen in Ireland, in the commendacyon and high
praise of extortion, rebellyon, rape, raven, and outhere injustice,
encourage those lords and gentlemen rather to follow those vices than to
leave them.”

For two centuries after the invasion of Henry II., the voice of the Muse
was but faintly heard in Ireland. The arms of Cromwell and William III.
completely swept away her feudal reminiscences. As it was their country’s
lustre that inspired the enthusiasm of the bards, so, on the tarnishing of
_its_ honour, did they become mute and spiritless. They fell with its
fall; and, like the captive Israelites, hanging their untuned harps on the
willows, they may be supposed to exclaim in all the vehemence of the royal
psalmist--

  “Now while our harps were hanged soe,
  The men whose captives there we lay
  Did on our griefs insulting goe,
  And more to grieve us thus did say:
  You that of musique make such show,
  Come, sing us now a Zion lay.--
  Oh no! we have nor voice nor hand
  For such a song in such a land.”

Montmorency’s _third_ objection against the antiquity of the Round
Towers--founded on the statements of those Greek and Latin writers above
named, respecting the “barbarous” condition of the _then_ Irish,--I thus
dissipate into thin air.

The inhabitants of Ireland, at the time in which those authors flourished,
had nothing to do with the erection of the Round Towers. Those edifices
were hoary with antiquity at that moment. They belonged to an era and to a
dynasty, not only of a more ancient but of a more exalted character in
every sense of the word, and whose religious ceremonials, for the
celebration of which the Round Towers were constructed, the _then_
inhabitants did not only abhor, but did all in their power to efface and
obliterate. Nor was it the religion alone of this inoffensive and sacred
tribe that this new and devastating race of militants laboured to
extirpate; but, what was far more to be deplored, they, for a season,
extinguished their literature also; until at length, fired by the moral
ether which the lessons of their now slaves had inspired, their souls got
attuned to the sublimity of such studies, and they sat themselves down
accordingly to emulate their instructors.

As to the puny detractions, therefore, of either Greece or Rome, they
might well have been spared, as they knew _less_ than _nothing_ of our
real history. When they were lowly and obscure, and immersed in the
darkness of circumambient benightment, our high careering name,
_synonymous_ with civilisation, was wafted by the four winds of heaven to
all the quarters of the world which that heaven irradiates. The commerce
of the whole East pressed tumultuously to our shores--the courts of the
polished universe (not including Greece or Rome amongst the number) sent
us embassies of congratulation; while the indomitable ardour and
public-spirited zeal of the “islanders” themselves launched them abroad
over the bosom of the wide watery circumference; exploring in every region
the gradations of civil institutes, as well as the master productions of
Nature herself; civilising life with the results of their discoveries, and
garnishing their houses, like so many museums, with the fruits of their
research, for the benefit, at once, and entertainment of their less
favoured, though not less ambitious brethren at home.

Think you that the testimony of Festus Avienus, who wrote before the
Christian light, and who avowedly only compiled his treatise from other
more ancient authorities--think you, I say, that _his_ designation of this
island as “sacred”--and which he says was the appropriate denomination by
which the still greater ancients used to call it--was an idle sobriquet or
an arbitrary adjective? Amongst the many discoveries which will develop
themselves in succession, before I shall have done with this little book,
I pledge myself to the public incontrovertibly to prove that the word
“_Hibernian_”--so grossly abused and so malignantly vilified, and which
Avienus has recorded as the name of the _islanders_ at the period in which
he wrote, as it is still to this day--signifies, in its _component
essence_, and according to the nicest scrutiny of etymological analysis,
independently _altogether_ of historical corroboration, _an inhabitant of
the sacred isle_; and has _nothing_ on earth to do with _Heber_ or
Heremon; or _hiar_, the west; or _iberin_, extremes; or any other such
outlandish nonsense!

Now comes the Colonel’s _fifth_ and _last_ objection; viz. that because
there existed at Baal Heremon, in India, a temple sacred to Baal, the
capacity of which was sufficient to accommodate four thousand persons,
therefore the Round Towers, which are “internally too confined to admit
into them, at once, a dozen bulky persons, could not be denominated a
temple.”

Does not the Colonel know that there existed a plurality of those Baals?
that, in fact, they were as innumerable as the stars in the firmament,
resolving themselves--according to the character of every distinct
country, and of every minor subdivision and canton in that country--into
the specific and gentile classifications of Baal Shamaim, Baal Pheor or
Phearagh, Baal Meon, Baal Zephon, Baal Hemon, etc.; while under the _veil_
of all, the learned ever understood to have been solely personated the sun
and moon. “Howbeit every nation made gods of their own, and the men of
Babylon made Succoth-Benoth.”[53]

In accordance with the _different_ views under which each people
considered the _bounties_ of those luminaries, so did their temples assume
a corresponding shape; and it shall be my lot, in the progress of this
litigated research, to show why the followers of one of those Baals,
namely, Baal Phearagh, gave their temples this _erect_, _narrow_, and
_elevated roundness_.

I have thus annihilated those visionary ramparts which my opponent had
flattered himself he had raised against the intrusion of long-suppressed
truth; and by the help of which, as a military bastion, he had fondly
hoped he might link together the Church and the sword in one _cemented_
bond of anachronism. Let us see, however, how he would bring about the
match, with the articles of intermarriage, and so forth.

His assumption is, that “the founders of those Towers were primitive
Cœnobites and Bishops, _munificently_ supported in the undertaking by the
newly-converted kings and toparchs; the builders and architects being
those monks and pilgrims who, from Greece and Rome, either preceded or
accompanied our early missionaries in the fifth and sixth centuries”;
which he pretends to substantiate in the following manner.

Having discovered, by a most miraculous effort of penetration, that one
hundred and fifty Greek and Roman religionists had accompanied St. Abhan
on his return from imperial Rome,--whither he had gone to complete his
theological studies, towards the end of the fifth century,--and not
knowing how to occupy those strangers in this _then pagan_ land, the
Colonel, with his industrious habits, well aware that “idleness is the
mother of mischief,” sets them, at once, about building the Towers.

But as it would be too lavish a display of knight-errantry to waste their
time and strength without some ostensible purpose, he must, of course,
find out for them a pretext, at least, for such; and so, in the eagerness
of his milito-monastic zeal, he flies off, at a tangent, to the top of
Mount Colzoum, near the desert of Gebel,--“a short day’s journey from the
Red Sea,”--where he thinks he has got, in the monasteries of the Egyptian
monks, a direct, immediate, and indubitable prototype.

Reader, you shall be the judge. Here is his own translation of Bonnani’s
description of the place, viz.:

“There are three churches, of which St. Anthony’s, which is small and very
old, is the most distinguished; the second is dedicated to the apostles
Peter and Paul; and the third church is raised in honour of St. Macaire,
who has been a lay brother in this convent. All the cells stand separately
from each other; they are _ill built_, the walls being composed of clay,
covered in with flat roofs and diminutive windows only one foot square.
Close to the refectory, which is dark and dirty, the monks have added a
rather decent apartment, in their wonted hospitality, destined to the
reception of visitors.

“Within the central courtyard, an isolated _square tower_ of masonry,
which is approached by a drawbridge, holds a formidable station. Here the
Cophtes preserve whatever wealth or precious objects they possess; and if
assailed by the plundering Arabs, defend themselves with stones. There are
four more celebrated monasteries in the desert of St. Macaire, distant
about three days’ journey from Grand Cairo. The first is the convent of
St. Macaire, which is ancient and in a ruinous state--the bones of the
founder are enshrined in a stone coffin, placed behind an iron gate,
enveloped in a chafe or pluvial (a sort of church ornament), formed into a
canopy. A _square tower_ of stone, which you enter by a drawbridge, is the
only solid building belonging to the Abbey that remains. The friars store
their books and their provisions, and obstinately defend themselves in
this _hold_, whenever the wild Arabs come to pay them a predatory visit.

“There are _similar_ (square) towers attached to the three other
monasteries in the desert, the doors of which, and of the convent of St.
Macaire, are alike covered with iron plates,” etc.

To the candid and dispassionate reader,--who has gone through this
extract, and who is told that _this_ is the _basis_ upon which Colonel de
Montmorency builds his superstructure of monastic appropriation,--to such
I fearlessly appeal whether he will not scout the indignity with
_intellectual_ scorn.

Here are edifices spread, _in numbers_, over our island, in unity of
design and elegance of execution, admitted by this writer himself as “the
most imposing objects of antiquity in all Christendom,” and “placed by an
almost supernatural power to brave the stormy winds and the wrath of
time”; yet, in the same breath, made the counterparts of a _few trumpery_,
_temporary_, and _crazy_ old piles, which were originally erected as
military stations, totally distinct from religion or religious
uses--similar to those erected by Helena, mother to Constantine the Great,
on the coast of Syria, against piratical incursions, and analogous to what
we find in India, viz. a whole fortress converted into a conventual
establishment. The thing is absurd,--it is revolting to _common
sense_,--and bears on its forehead its own discomfiture.




CHAPTER III.


Observe, then, the structures which he compares are altogether different;
one being _square_, and the other round. Nor, in the whole _compass_ of
_possible analogies_, is there a single feature in which the two _classes_
of edifices could be _said_ to correspond, but that they both have their
doors--which, by the way, are different in their form--at a distance from
the ground. The _Pyramids_ of Egypt bear the same correspondence,--their
entrance being one-third of the height from the surface,--and why does not
the Colonel bestow _them_ also upon the monks? No; those poor, denuded,
inoffensive, exemplary, _unearthly_ victims of maceration were incapable
of, either the masonic acme, or--at the era which Montmorency
particularises--of the corporate influence and pecuniary or equivalent
supplies indispensable for the erection of either “pyramid” or
“tower”;--contenting themselves rather with their _lowly cells_, whence
they issued out, at all seasons, to diffuse the word of “life,” than in
raising _maypoles_ of stone, within which to garrison their
_inexpressible_ treasures.

But to reconcile this discrepancy in exterior outfit, he has recourse to a
miracle, which he thus conjures up. “Doubtless, in the _beginning_, when
first those Cœnobites settled in the desert, the convent-tower was round;”
then, by a single word, _præsto_,--or “doubtless,”--right-about face,
takes place a metamorphosis, from round to square!--the more miraculous,
in that the _former round_ ones left behind them no vestiges! Upon which,
again, a counter miracle is effected: “The square ones having subsequently
fallen into disuse, the round tower, in after ages,” he says, “appears to
have acquired a degree of increased celebrity, especially in _Europe_,
during the preponderance of the feudal system, when every baronial castle
in Great Britain, Ireland, Germany, France, etc., was furnished with one
or more.” Now, has he not before told us, and told us _truly, by chance_,
that the Pillar Tower _scorns_ all kind of affinity with those
“_barbarians_”; whereupon I shall merely observe with the poet, that

  “If people contradict themselves, can _I_
  Help contradicting them?”[54]

But, if intended as a place of shelter for either _person_ or _property_,
why build them of such an altitude? Above all things, why not build them
of such internal capacity as to accommodate the _whole_ number of inmates
in each convent, in case of an attack,--as, in fact, those _square_ towers
in the desert used; whereas, “a _dozen bulky persons_” could not squeeze
together into one of our Round Towers; and accordingly, with the
inconsistency inseparable from error, our author himself proclaims that
“it has frequently occurred that the _barbarian_, on finding that he had
been foiled in his search after treasures, though he burned the abbey, and
perpetrated all the mischief he was able, sooner than retire empty-handed,
the _pirate_ seized on the abbot, or most prominent member he found
belonging to the community, and hurried away the unfortunate individual
on board his ship, holding him in durance, till, overcome by ill-usage, he
besought his brethren to come to his relief with a heavy ransom for his
freedom.” “It has also often happened,” he adds, “that, unable to comply
with the tyrant’s exorbitant demands, the monks resigned the captive to
his fate.”

Surely, if they had those _keeps_ to fly to, the “unfortunate” abbot need
not allow himself to be seized at all; and surely, also, if they had all
those treasures upon which the Colonel insists, they would not leave the
father of their “community” unredeemed from so excruciating a degradation.
And hence we may conclude with Dr. Lanigan, “What little credit is due to
the stories of some hagiologists, who talk of great estates granted to our
monasteries and churches in those and even earlier times.”[55] Indeed, for
the two first centuries subsequent to the arrival of St. Patrick, such a
thing was incompatible with the nature of the “political compact” in
Ireland.

I do not deny, however, but that the ecclesiastics of this time did
possess some articles of value appertaining to the altar, and that these
were objects of unholy cupidity to the Danes: nay, further, I admit that,
to escape from the insatiability of those virulent marauders, they used to
fly to the belfries, which--from that mistaken regard attached to the
edifices, as these receptacles of those sonorous organs to which
superstition has ever clung[56]--they had hoped would prove an asylum
from their pursuits,--but in vain--neither religion nor superstition
opposed a barrier to the Northmen, while the frail materials whereof those
belfries were constructed afforded a ready gratification to their appetite
for destruction.

_The Ulster Annals_, year 949, furnish us with the following
fact:--“Cloicteach Slane do loscadh do Gall Athacliath. Bacall ind
Erlamha, 7 cloc badec do cloccaibh, Caenechair Ferleghinn, 7 sochaide mor
inbi do loscadh.” That is, the belfry at Slane was set fire to by the
foreigners (the Danes) of Dublin. The pastor’s staff or crozier, adorned
with precious stones, besides the principal _bells_, and Canecar the
lecturer, with a _multitude_ of other persons were burned in the flames.
_The Annals of the Four Masters_, noticing the same event, use nearly
similar words: “Cloicteach Slaine do loscadh can a lan do mhionnaibh 7
deghdh aoninibh, im Chæinechair Fearleighinn Slaine, Bachall an Eramha 7
_clocc_ ba deach do chloccaibh.” That is, The belfry at Slane was _burned
to the ground_, along with several articles of value which were therein,
and _numbers_ of _individuals_, besides the Slane prælector, the patron’s
staff, and all the bells, which were there of _most_ worth.

Now take notice that within those “belfries” a “_multitude_ of persons”
used to have been collected, whereas the Round Towers could not
accommodate above “a dozen” at one time. The belfries also are represented
to have been reduced to ashes by the conflagration, which accords with the
description given by both Ware and Colgan, of the _wooden_ substance
whereof they were composed; whereas the Round Towers are made of _stone_,
and cemented by a bond of such indurated tenacity, that nothing short of
lightning or earthquake has been known to disturb them:--and even though
other violence may succeed in their overthrow, yet could it not be said
with any accuracy that they were reduced by _fire_ to cinders. But, above
all, those very Annals which I have above quoted, when recording a greater
and national calamity, place the belfries and the Round Towers in the same
sentence, _contradistinguished_ from one another,--the former
characterised by their appropriate name of _Cloicteach_, as exhibited
before, and the latter under the still more apposite denomination of
_Fidhnemeadh_, as we shall explain elsewhere.

Again, if designed as fortresses for the monks, and receptacles for their
riches, is it not strange that in the isle of Hy,--which was literally a
nest of ecclesiastics, and which Columb Kill himself evangelised at the
time when Montmorency was--in a _dream_--employing him and his coadjutors
at the erection of the Round Towers,--is it not strange, I say, that this
little isle, the most defenceless, as it is, and forlorn of all lands that
ever projected above the bosom of the sea, should yet, in the allotment of
monastic artillery, be left totally destitute of an _aërial_ garrison?

And yet, notwithstanding the absence of such defences, the monks still
continued to make it their favourite abode; of which we have but too
cogent an evidence in the record of the Four Masters, under the year 985,
stating that the abbot and fifteen of his brethren were slain by the
Northmen on Christmas Day, just as they were preparing to celebrate the
nativity of their Redeemer.

But those monks spread themselves, in _shoals_, over England also; and we
know that _that_ country was even more infested than our own with both
Northmen and Danes. Is it not astonishing, therefore, that the English
convents were not protected against the sacrilege of those savages by
telescopic steeples of _Babylonish cement_?

This, it may be said, is applying a steam-engine to crush a flapwing; yet,
as that flapwing has been somewhat troublesome, and has contrived to
blindfold some searchers after antiquarian _truth_, I may be excused if,
to frustrate any efforts at impotent revivals, I shall continue
decapitating the hydra, until he disappears in his own sinuosities.

He tells us, then, with all the calculation of an engineer and the gravity
of a physician, that a stone let fall from the top of one of those towers
would crush the “barbarian” to atoms. True, it would, and the _civilian_
also. A little pebble let fall from an eagle’s beak, as he cuts his aërial
passage through the cloudy regions, or soars aloft into the empyreal of
interminable space, would have a similar effect; but it would puzzle the
shrewdest engineer in Christendom to place a ballast-man, with a big stone
on his lap, on either the top or the sloping sides of the conical
“caubeen” which graces the summit of our careering cylinders. This, to use
the Colonel’s own words, “will be admitted to be contrary to all that is
admissible in the rules of architectural proportions.”

[Illustration: DEVENISH.]

Next remark that the Colonel keeps those 150 “volunteers” at work upon the
Round Towers in the midst of a raging war;--after he had before affirmed
that they could only be erected in a season of profound peace--for a
complete century. During this whole time they must, of course, have
availed themselves of the assistance of the inhabitants; and is it not
marvellous that, during that long time “the ancient Irishman”--and “Pat’s
nae stupid fellow,” as the Colonel himself avows--should not have been
able to pick up a single insight into the arcana of the masonic art?--but
that soon as ever the dear externs expired,--who at the period of their
arrival must have been, at least, over twenty years of age each, and who,
to accomplish Montmorency’s miracle, must have every one of them lived
just one hundred years more, and then died, all in one day!--is it not
_petrifying_, I say, that soon as ever this appalling catastrophe
occurred, every vestige of those “fairy” masons should have vanished along
with them?--and the country, in a _paralysis_, have forgotten to associate
them with the Towers, as if stupefied with the incantation of a wizard or
a talisman!

And yet this was not the greatest injustice of which the poor Cœnobites
got reason to complain; but it _is_ that, when the people had recovered
from the delirium of their late trance, and began to look abroad for some
“authors” on whom to _father_ those edifices, they unanimously, though
unaccountably, agreed to lay them at the door of the “O’Rorkes” and the
“MacCarthy Mores”!

It so happens that the last of the MacCarthy Mores was my _own_ maternal
grandfather; and he, venerable and venerated old gentleman, apt as he was,
in the evening of his faded life, to revert to the mutability of worldly
possessions, never for a moment bestowed a solitary thought upon the
alienation of the property of those columnar masonries. Often used he to
mention the Castles of Palace and of Blarney: Castlemain and Glenflesk
used still oftener to grace his talk; but oftener still, and with more
apparent delectation, would he dilate on the _Castle_ of Macroom and the
_Abbey_ of Mucruss,--all, as the creation of _immediate_ or _collateral_
branches of his family; but never, in the catalogue of his patrimonial
spoliations did he enumerate a Round Tower, or lay a shadow of claim to
their construction.

To the point, however.--The great miracle after all is, that after the
decease of those “fairy” masters, no one of their native helpmates could
be found able to join together with mechanical skill two pieces of hewn
stone with the intermediate amalgam of adhesive mortar! The thing is so
absurd as to make the Colonel himself in his honesty to exclaim, “Is this
simple process that mighty piece of necromancy which, according to some
authors” (forgetting that he was one of those himself), “that _lively_
people were unable to comprehend?” It is amusing to see how encomiastic
and commendatory he is of the “Hibernians” when it answers his views; and
how vituperative and condemnatory when it is equally to his purpose.

The last assumption of this writer, and which I have purposely reserved
until now is an affected parallel of the Irish Culdees with the Egyptian
Cophtes. “Their great piety, austerity, and hospitality announce,” he
says, “the existence of one kind of discipline and of kindred religions
between the Cophtes and the Irish Cœnobites.” That is, because they are
both _pious_, _austere_, and _hospitable_, they must both necessarily
correspond in _religious opinions_ and in _Church forms_! The Indian
Brahmins, say I, are also _pious_, _austere_, and _hospitable_; and why
are they not incorporated in this holy identification? No, Colonel, it
will not do; I see what you are at. You want to insinuate our obligation
to the Greeks for the blessings of the Gospel. A false zeal for mental
emancipation--subsequent to the dislodgment of spiritual encroachment--has
forced into mushroom existence this spurious abortion. Aloof from the
thraldom of Roman or other yoke, the Irish, within themselves, cultivated
the principles of the Christian verity; but it is, in the extreme,
erroneous to say that they derived their _faith_ in that verity through
emissaries of the Grecian Church, from whom they differed as substantially
as light does from darkness.

I think it very probable indeed that the glad tidings of revelation were
first imparted to Ireland by the lips of St. Paul himself.[57] We have the
names of many Christians existing amongst us before the arrival of either
Pelagius or Patrick. The very terms of the commission, which Pope
Celestine gave to the _former_, being addressed “ad Scotos in Christum
credentes,” to the _Irish who believe in Christ_,--prove the good seed had
been laid in the soil before _his_ pontificate. The nation, however, was
yet too much immersed in its old idolatries--and the fascinations of
their former creed had so spellbound the inhabitants as a community--that
those who singled themselves out as converts to the new faith were
obliged, from persecution, to betake themselves to other countries. And
yet _this_ is the moment when paganism was omnipotent throughout this
island, that Colonel de Montmorency has the modesty to tell us that the
“Round Towers” were erected as magazines for the monks!

To the _Patrician Apostle_, the beloved patriarch of Ireland, was reserved
the glory of maturing the fruit which his predecessors had planted. His
constitutional zeal and absorbing devotion in the service of his Creator
were but the secondary qualifications which pre-eminently marked him out
for so hazardous an enterprise. The primary and grand facility which this
_true hero_ possessed for the attainment of his great design, was his
intimate converse with the manners and language of the natives,--obtained
during his captivity not long before,--which, making way at once to the
_hearts_ of his auditory, was an irresistible passport to their heads and
their understandings.

In the sequel of this volume it will be fully shown, that when St. Patrick
entered upon his prescribed task,--towards the close of the fifth
century,--the monarch and his court were celebrating their pagan festival,
or preparing for it, on the hill of Tara. Can a nation be called Christian
where the sovereign and court are pagan? Or will a few exceptions from the
mass of the population be indulged with fortresses of imperishable
architecture, while the nation at large took shelter within _wattles_ and
walls of clay?--and that, too, at a moment when Christianity was
considered a name of reproach, and its few solitary abettors constrained
to exile or to degradation!

No sooner, however, were the simplicities of Christianity expounded to the
natives through the medium of their native tongue, than the refined
organism of the Irish constitution, habituated by discipline to sublime
pursuits, took fire from the blaze of the sacred scintilla, and enlisted
them as its heralds, not only at home but throughout Europe.

Precisely at this instant it was that all the _ancient_ names of places in
the island--recorded by Ptolemy from other foreign geographers--were
changed and new-modelled; the converts--“_ut in nova deditione_”--not
thinking it sufficient to abandon the forms of their previous belief, and
adopt the more pure one, if they did not obliterate every vestige of
nominal association which could tend to recall their fancies to the
religion which they relinquished. Accordingly, from the names of Juernis,
Macollicon, Rhigia, Nagnata, Rheba, etc., sprang up the names of
Killkenny, Killmalloch, and the thousand other names, commencing with
“Kill,” to be met with in every district and subdivision throughout the
country.

Every corner was now the scene of Christian zeal; and every neophyte
strove to surpass his neighbour in evincing devotion to the newly-revealed
religion. “Kills,” or little churches,--from the Latin _cella_, now for
the first time introduced,--were built in the vicinity of every spot which
had before been the theatre of pagan adoration--whether as cromleachs, as
Mithratic caves, or as Round Towers. These were the memorials of _three
distinct species_ of paganism, and were, therefore, now singled out as
appropriate sites for the erection of Christian “Kills,” the ruins of
which are still to be traced, contiguous to _each_ of those idolatrous
reminiscences,--disputing with the false divinities the very ground of
their worship, and diverting the zeal of the worshippers from the creature
to the Creator.

Nay, to such a pitch did the crusaders, in their conflict, carry the
principle of their enthusiasm, that many of them adopted the names of
their late idols, and intertwined _those_ again--now Christianly
appropriated--with the _old_ favourite denominations of many of the
localities. For instance, St. Shannon assumed _that_ name from the _river_
Shannon, which was an object of deification some time before; and St.
Malloch adopted _this_ name from the city of Malloch, that is, the Sun, or
Apollo,--the supreme idol of pagan Ireland’s adoration,--from which again,
with the prefix “Kill,” he made the name Kill-_malloch_,--the latter alone
having been the ancient name of the place, converted by Ptolemy into
“Macollicon”; which is only giving his Greek termination, _icon_, to the
Irish word _Malloch_, and transposing, for sound’s sake, the two middle
syllables.

Chaildee was the pious but appropriate epithet by which those patriarchs
of Christianity thought fit to distinguish themselves. The word means
_associate of God_. Having obtained the gospel from the see of Rome, they
adhered implicitly--yet without conceding any _superiority_--to the Roman
connection--agreeing in all the grand essentials of vital belief, and
differing only as to some minor points of ecclesiastical discipline.

This variance, however, has afforded handle to some lovers of
controversial doubt to maintain that Ireland was never beholden to Rome
for the gospel. The fallacy is disproved by the fact of all our early
neophytes betaking themselves, for perfection in the mysteries of
revelation, to the Roman capital. On one of which occasions it was that
Montmorency himself brought over his hundred and fifty volunteers, to
accompany back one of those converted students, who had gone there to
learn the very minuteness of the doctrine which the Romans inculcated.

It was not, remember, for ordinary or secular education that they betook
themselves to Rome. The academies of Ireland far surpassed it in
splendour. It was solely and exclusively to learn the particulars of their
faith; and having once obtained this insight, they continued in spiritual
unison with the tenets of that Church, as to all fundamental points of
doctrine; never surrendering, however, the independence of their judgment,
nor bowing before the “_ipse dixit_” of any tribunal,--where _reason_ was
to be the guide,--until forced by the conspiracy of Pope Adrian IV. and
his countryman Henry II.

How contemptible, therefore, is the effort, in the teeth of this exposure,
to identify the Irish Chaildees with the Egyptian Cophtes! There was no
one point in which they may be compared, except their mutual _poverty_;
which, however, Montmorency overlooks, or rather contradicts, making them
both wealthy, and have _banks_ even for their riches. As, however, I look
upon Dr. Hurd[58] as somewhat a better authority, you shall have what he
says upon the subject--

“Among the Ethiopians, there are still to be found some monks, called
Coptics, who first flourished in Egypt, but, by no difficult sort of
gradation, made their way into Ethiopia. They profess the utmost
_contempt_ for all _worldly things_, and look upon themselves as a sort of
terrestrial angels. They are obliged to _part with all their possessions
before they can enter upon a monastic life_.”

Their discrepancy in doctrine is even still more notorious, agreeing with
the Chaildees only in a _single_ instance also; namely, in _both_ denying
the supremacy of the Pope. Here are the Doctor’s words: “They deny the
papal supremacy, and, indeed, _most parts_ of the popish doctrine,
particularly transubstantiation, purgatory, _auricular confession_,
_celibacy_ of the _clergy_, and _extreme unction_;” all which, save the
first, the Irish Chaildees maintained in _common with the see of Rome_.

And now, on the point of education, I will content myself with
Montmorency’s own testimony, which is to this effect, viz.: “Only on the
score of erudition it must be acknowledged that the _Irish theologian_, as
history asserts, did not only _excel_ the modern Greek and Egyptian, but
his profound acquaintance with the _sciences_, _arts_, and _laws of his
country_, gave him an _unrivalled superiority_ in the _literary_ and
civilised world.”

What, Colonel! are those the “barbarians”? Is _this_ what you mean by not
being _conveniently situated_ within the _enlightened_ and _enlivening_
influence of Greek and Roman refinement? Alas! you knew but little of the
real statement of the case; whilst the illustrious Fenelon, himself a
descendant of this boasted Rome, thus more accurately avows, “that,
notwithstanding all the _pretended politeness_ of the Greeks and Romans,
yet, as to moral virtue and religious obligations, they were no better
than the savages of America.”

I have been thus hurried on by the train of my thoughts, without observing
much of order or methodical arrangement. As my object is, however, the
elucidation of truth,--not idle display, or vainglorious exhibition,--I am
sure my readers will scarce murmur at the course by which I shall have led
them to that end; in a question, moreover, where so many adventurers have
so miserably miscarried.

  So much the rather, thou celestial light,
  Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
  Irradiate. There plant eyes; all mist from thence
  Purge and disperse; that I may see and tell
  Of things invisible to mortal sight.[59]




CHAPTER IV.


Having thus disposed of the word “Cloic-teach,” which Dr. Ledwich so
relied upon, as determining the character of these antique remains, I take
leave, evermore, to discard the misnomer, and draw attention to a name
which I have never seen noticed as applied to any of those pyramidal
edifices. That which I allude to is “Cathoir ghall,” which means the
“Cathedral or temple of brightness” (“and _delight_”[60]); not, I must
premise, from any external daubing with which modern Vandalism may have
thought proper to incrust it,--as happened to that at Swords,--but in
evident reference to the solar and lunar light--the sources of life and
generation--therein contemplated, at once, and interchangeably venerated.

The particular Tower to which this epithet had been assigned--and which it
obtained, by way of eminence, for its colossal superiority--is not now
standing.[61] It rose about half a mile distant from the old castle of
Bally Carbery, in the barony of Iveragh, and county of Kerry; a place
where one would hope that the true designation of such phenomena would be
preserved most pure, being aloof from the influence of exotic refinements,
and, thus far, free from that maudlin _scepticism_ and laboured _doubt_
which a “little learning” too frequently superinduces.

  “Dear, lovely bowers of innocence and ease,--
  Seats of my youth, when ev’ry sport could please,--
  How often have I loiter’d o’er thy green,
  When humble happiness endear’d each scene!
  How often have I paused on every charm,--
  The shelter’d cot, the cultivated farm!
  While all the village train, from labour free,
  Led up their sports beneath the spreading tree.”[62]

No combination of letters could possibly approach closer, or convey to a
discerning mind greater affinity of meaning to anything, than does the
above name to the description given of them in the twelfth century by
Giraldus Cambrensis, who calls them “_turres ecclesiasticas_, quæ, more
patriæ, arctæ sunt et altæ, nec non et rotundæ.” This definition, vague as
it may seem, affords ample illumination, when compared with the epithet
which I have above adduced, to penetrate the darkness of this literary
nebula. The word “_turres_” points out their constructional symmetry, and
“_ecclesiasticas_” their appropriation to a religious use; and what can
possibly be in stricter consonance with the tenor of this idea than
“Cathaoir ghall,” or the Temple of Brightness, which I have instanced
above as the _vernacular_ appellation of one of those sanctuaries?

Should it be asked, why did not Cambrensis, at the time, enter more fully
into the minutiæ of their detail? I shall unhesitatingly answer, it was
because he knew nothing more about them. The Irish had at that moment most
lamentably dwindled into a degenerate race. The noble spirit of their
heroic ancestors, which had called forth those pyramids, for the _twofold_
and _mingled_ purpose of _religion_ and _science_, had already evaporated;
and all the historian could glean, in prosecuting his inquiries as to
their era and cause, was that their antiquity was so remote, that some of
them may be even seen immersed beneath the waters of Lough Neagh,[63]
which had been occasioned many ages before by the overflowing of a
fountain.[64]

Let us now turn to the annals of the “Four Masters,” which record the
destruction of Armagh, A.D. 995, by a flash of lightning, and see under
what name they include the Round Towers in the general catastrophe. Here
is the passage at full length, as given by O’Connor--“_Ardmaeha do lose do
tene saighnein, ettir tighib, 7[65] Domhuliacc, 7 Cloic teacha, 7
Fiadh-Neimhedh_”; that is, Armagh having been set on fire by lightning,
its houses, its cathedrals, its belfries, and its _Fiadh-Neimhedh_, were
all destroyed.

The _Ulster Annals_ have registered the same event in the following
words:--“_Tene diait do gabail Airdmaeha conafarcaibh Dertach, na
Damliacc, na h Erdam, na Fidh-Nemead ann cen loscadh_”; that is, Lightning
seized upon Armagh, to so violent a degree, as to leave neither mansion,
nor cathedral, nor belfry, nor _Fiadh-Nemeadh_, undemolished.

Here we find _Fiadh-Nemeadh_ to occur in both accounts, while the belfries
are represented in one place as _Cloic teacha_, and in the other as
_Erdam_, and in both are opposed to, and contradistinguished from, the
_Fiadh-Nemeadh_. Our business now is to investigate what this latter word
conveys; and though I do not mean, for a while, to develop its _true
interpretation_,--of which I am the sole and exclusive depositary,--yet
must I make it apparent, that by it--whatever way it must be rendered--all
before me have understood, were emphatically designated our Sabian Towers.
Thus Colgan in his _Acts_, p. 297, referring to these words of the Four
Masters, says: “Anno 995, Ardmaeha cum _Basilicis_, _Turribus_, _aliisque
omnibus edificiis_, incendio ex fulmine generato, tota vastatur.”

O’Connor also, wishing to wrest its import to his favourite theory of
there having been _gnomons_, while ignorant of its proper force, indulges
in a conjecture of the most lunatic _ostentation_, and translates
_Fiadh-Nemeadh_ by _celestial indexes_.

But though the word does not _literally_ signify either “Towers”--as
Colgan, for want of a better exposition, has set forth--or “celestial
indexes”--as O’Connor, equally at a loss for its proper meaning, has
ventured to promulgate, yet is it indisputable that it stood as the
representative of those _enigmatical_ edifices, as well as that both
writers had the same structures in view as comprehended under the tenor of
this _mysterious_ denomination.[66]

These annals I look upon in three different lights as invaluable
documents--firstly, as they prove the existence of those edifices at the
date above assigned; secondly, as they show that they were distinct things
from the belfries--whether cloicteach or erdam--which shared their
disaster; and, thirdly, because that, even admitting of O’Connor’s
mistranslation, it gives us an insight into their character more
fortuitous than he had anticipated. _Celestial indexes!_[67] Could any one
be so silly as for a moment to suppose that this was a mere allusion to
the circumstance of their height? No; it was no such casual epithet, or
witty effort of hyperbole; but it was, what Sallust has so truly said of
the Syrtes, “_nomen ex re inditum_.”

The identity between this island and the “Insula Hyperboreorum” of
Hecatæus being to be completely established in an ensuing chapter,--the
_bungling_ of natives and the _claims_ of externs notwithstanding,--I
shall not hesitate to assume as _proved_, that ours was the “island”
described.

Allow me then to draw your attention to an extract from Diodorus’s
_report_ thereof:--“They affirm also,” says he, “that _the moon_ is so
seen from this island, that it _appears not so distant_ from the _earth_,
and _seems_ to _present on its disk certain projections like the mountains
of our world_. Likewise that the _God Apollo_ in person visits this island
once in _nineteen_ years, in which the _stars_ complete their
_revolutions_, and return into their old positions; and hence this _cycle_
of _nineteen years_ is called, by the Greeks, the great year.”

Who is it that collates this description with the “celestial indexes”[68]
above produced, that is not, at once, struck with the felicity of the
coincidence? On earth, what could _celestial indexes_ mean but such as
were appropriated to the contemplation of the heavenly bodies?--just as
the name of “Zoroaster”--which, in the Persian language, signifies
“cœlorum observator,” that is, star-gazer, or observer of the
heavens--was given to Zerdust, the great patriarch of the Magi, from his
eminence and delight in astronomical pursuits.

Now, “the moon being so seen from this island that it appears not so
distant from the earth,” is so obvious a reference to the study of
astronomy that it would be almost an insult to go about to prove it; but
when it is said that “it presents on its disk certain _projections_ like
the mountains of our world,” it not only puts that question beyond the
possibility of dispute, but argues furthermore a proficiency in that
department, which it is the fashion _now-a-days_ to attribute only to
_modern_ discoveries.

But have we any evidence of having ever had amongst us, in those “olden
times,” men who by their talents could support this character? Hear what
Strabo says of _Abaris_, whom “Hecatæus and others mention” as having been
sent by his fraternity from the “_island_ of the Hyperboreans” to Delos,
in Greece, in the capacity of a sacred ambassador, where he was equally
admired for his knowledge, politeness, justice, and integrity. “He came,”
says Strabo, “to Athens, not clad in skins like a _Scythian_, but with a
bow in his hand, a quiver hanging on his shoulders, a plaid wrapt about
his body, a gilded belt encircling his loins, and trousers reaching from
the waist down to the soles of his feet. He was easy in his address,
agreeable in his conversation, active in his despatch, and secret in his
management of great affairs; quick in judging of present occurrences, and
ready to take his part in any sudden emergency; provident withal in
guarding against futurity; diligent in the quest of wisdom; fond of
friendship; trusting _very little_ to _fortune_, yet having the entire
confidence of others, and trusted with everything for his prudence. He
spake Greek with a fluency, that you would have thought he had been bred
up in the Lyceum, and conversed all his life with the Academy of
Athens.”[69]

This embassy is ascertained to have taken place B.C. 600; and from what
shall be elsewhere said of the “island of the Hyperboreans”--coupled with
the circumstance of the orator Himerius having called this individual a
Scythian, which Strabo would seem to have insinuated also--we can be at no
loss in tracing him to his proper home.

  “Far westward lies an isle of ancient fame,
  By nature blessed, and Scotia is her name;
  An island rich--exhaustless in her store
  Of veiny silver and of golden ore;
  Her verdant fields with milk and honey flow,
  Her woolly fleeces vie with virgin snow,
  Her waving furrows float with verdant corn,
  And _Arms_ and _Arts_ her envied sons adorn.”

Such is the description of Ireland given by Donatus, bishop of Etruria, in
802; and I have selected it among a thousand other authorities of similar
import, to show that Scotia or Scythia was one, and the _last_, of the
_ancient_ names of this country;[70] while the name of “Hyperborean” was
the distinctive character assigned thereto, not only as descriptive of its
locality towards the north, but as worshipping the wind Boreas.

Did I not apprehend it might be considered irrelevant to the scope of this
work, I could easily prove that the amity, said by Hecatæus to have been
cemented on the occasion of the visit above alluded to, was not that of a
mere return of courteous civilities for a casual intercourse, but one of a
far more tender and _familiar_ nature, viz. the recognition on both sides
of their mutual descent from one common origin: the same people who had
settled in this country, and imported the mysteries of their magic
priesthood, being akin to the first settlers on the coasts of Greece,
which they impregnated with similar initiation. I am anticipated, of
course, to have meant the Pelasgi, who, under another name, belonged to
the same hive as the Indo-Scythæ, or Chaldean Magi, or
Tuath-de-danaan,--_as the head tribe thereof were called_,--who, having
effected an establishment on _this_ happy isle, aloof from the intrusion
of external invasion or internal butcheries, were allowed to cultivate the
_study_ of their _favourite rites_, the fame and eminence of which had
obtained for its theatre, of all nations, the designation of “sacred.” But
I fear it would be encroaching upon the patience of my readers, and
besides anticipating, in point of order, what may by and by follow.

An inconsistency, however, appears in the details, which I cannot here
well overlook. It is this. Himerius has called this our ambassador a
“Scythian”; and Strabo has affirmed, that he was “not clad like a
Scythian.” How, then, shall I cut this knot? Thus. Abaris, as his name
implies, was one of the Boreades, or priests of Boreas, belonging to the
Tuath-de-danaan colony in this island, who were subdued about six hundred
years before this event by the Scythians, whose dress, as well as manners,
differed in all particulars from those of their religious and learned
predecessors.

But though the Scythians, from state policy, had suppressed the
temple-worship when they deposed from the throne their antecedent
Hyperboreans, they were but too sensible of their literary value not to
profit by their services in the department of education. Hence it came to
pass, that the Boreades were still indulged with their favourite costume,
while the inferior communities were obliged to conform to the rules and
the fashions of the ascendant dynasty. In a short time, however, the
Scythian Druids superseded the Danaan Boreades, by the influence of their
own instruction; and the consequence was that of that graceful garb, in
the folds of which our ancient high priests officiated at the altar, or
exhibited in the senate, not a single vestige is now to be traced except
in the word God, _Phearagh_, whom I shall anon introduce, and in the
highlands of Scotland, where a remnant of those Hyperborean or Danaan
priests took shelter from the ruthless Picts, resigning to those
remorseless and intolerant persecutors the ground of the only two temples
which they were able there to raise, as the last resort of their hopes,
and the solace of their exile.[71]

Nor is it alone as accounting for the circumstance of costume that the
above explanation deserves the reader’s regard. An additional insight is
afforded, by its enabling us to account for that boundless superiority
which, the Irish Druids possessed over all other bodies of the same
denomination all over the world. Originally, the Druids were an humble set
of men, without science, without letters, without pretensions to
refinement; but having succeeded here to the fraternity of the
accomplished Danaan Boreades, who, in the revolution of affairs, were
forced to communicate their acquirements to the opposite but prevailing
priesthood, those latter so far profited by the ennobling opportunity, as
to eclipse all other Druids, as well in Europe as in Africa.

Cæsar, in his _Commentaries_, bears direct testimony to their astronomical
research, saying: “Multa præterea de sideribus atque eorum motu, de mundi
ac terrarum magnitudine, de rerum naturâ ac deorum immortalium vi ac
potestate disputant ac juventuti transdunt.”--_De Bel. Gal._ lib. 1-6, c.
xiv. Pomponius Mela, also confirming the fact, says: “Hi terræ mundique
magnitudinem ac forman, motus cœli ac siderum, ac quid Dii velint scire,
profitentur.”--_De Situ Orbis_, lib. 3, c. ii. These two latter
authorities, I admit, were more immediately directed to the _Druids_ of
Britain; but as it is agreed on all hands that _that_ body of
religionists had received the seeds of their instruction from the Irish
_Magi_, who were infinitely their superiors in _all_ literary
accomplishments, I think we may be warranted in extending the commendation
to Ireland also, as the writers indubitably _included_ it under the
_general name_ of _Britain_.

But were all _external_ testimonies silent on the matter, and mercenary
vouchers even assert the reverse, the internal evidence of our language
itself, a language so truly characterised as “more than three thousand
years old,” would afford to the ingenious and disinterested inquirer the
most convincing proof of the ground which I have assumed. In that
language--and the writer of this essay _ought_ to know _something_ of
it--there is scarcely a single term appertaining to time, from _la_ a day,
derived from _liladh_, to turn round,--in allusion to the diurnal
revolution,--up to _bleain_, a year, compounded of _Bel_, the sun, and
_Ain_, a circle, referring to its annual orbit, that does not, in its
formation and construction, associate the idea with the planetary courses,
and thereby evince, not only an astronomical taste, but that astronomy was
the “ruling passion” of those who spoke it.

“The Irish language,” says Davies, an intelligent and respectable Welsh
writer, “appears to have arrived at maturity amongst the Iapetidæ, while
they were yet in contact with Aramæan families, and formed a powerful
tribe in Asia Minor and in Thrace. It may, therefore, in particular
instances, have more similitude or analogy to the Asiatic dialects than
what appears in those branches of the Celtic that were matured in the west
of Europe. Those who used this language consisted partly of Titans, of
Celto-Scythians, or of those Iapetidæ who assisted in building the city
of Babel, and must have been habituated, after the dispersion, to the
dialects of the nations through which they passed, before they joined the
society of their brethren.” We thank this learned author for the
flattering notice which he has been pleased to take of us; and though, in
his subsequent remarks, he steers far wide of our true pedigree, yet a
concession so important as that even here adduced, must command at least
our becoming acknowledgments.

The splendid examples which we have had of primitive teachers of
Christianity in this kingdom, and whom Ledwich himself, reluctant as he
was to afford ordinary justice to Irish merit, is obliged to praise, were
not more remarkable for the sanctified zeal and enthusiastic devotion with
which they propagated the Gospel, than they were for the diversified range
of their literary acquirements, and the moral sublimity of their ideas and
conceptions.[72] Speaking of a production belonging to one of these
worthies, Ledwich remarks: “In this tract we can discover Cumman’s
acquaintance with the doctrine of time, and the chronological characters.
He is no stranger to the solar, lunar, and bissextile years, to the
epactal days, and embolismal months, nor to the names of the Hebrew,
Macedonian, and Egyptian months. To examine the various cyclical systems,
and to point out their construction and errors, required no mean
abilities: a large portion of Greek and Latin literature was also
necessary.”[73]

Here I would have it distinctly noticed, that the above-mentioned
individuals who shone in the galaxy of our early Christian constellations,
had been but just converted from paganism by St. Patrick, and consequently
were not indebted for this “learned lore” to the Romish missionaries, but
to the more elevated genius of their native institutions. This it was that
enabled them to make those astronomical observations which our annals
commemorate; and who can say, amidst the decay of time, the ravages of
persecution, and the fury of fanaticism, what tomes of such labours has
not the world lost? Some few, however, remain, of which we shall adduce
some by way of specimen. Solar eclipses of 495, 664, 810, 884; lunar, of
673, 717, 733, 807, 877; solar and lunar, 864; a comet 911, are recorded
in our annals.

Those of the “Four Masters” additionally record certain extraordinary
celestial phenomena in 743:--“Visæ sunt stellæ quasi de cœlo cadere.”
Again, in 744, they observe: “Hoc anno stellæ item de cœlo frequentes
deciderunt”; while it cannot be too diligently noted, “that, when the rest
of Europe, as Vallancey so justly remarked, through ignorance or
forgetfulness, had no knowledge of the _true figure_ of the earth, in the
eighth century, the rotundity and true formation of it should have been
taught in the Irish schools,” which we shall by and by more pointedly
advert to.

It thus appears manifest that the Irish must, at one time, have not only
possessed, but excelled in, the science of astronomy. How did they acquire
it? is the next question. “Ad illa mihi pro se quisque acriter intendat
animum.” In that passage of Diodorus, to which I have already referred, we
find the following appropriate characteristic:--“It is affirmed that
Latona was born there, and that, therefore, the worship of Apollo is
preferred to that of any other God; and as they daily celebrate this deity
with songs of praise, and worship him with the highest honours, they are
considered as _peculiarly_ the _priests_ of Apollo, whose sacred grove and
_singular_ temple of _round form_, endowed with many gifts, are there.”

Now, it is universally known that Apollo, which, “according to the learned
Pezron, is no other than Ap-haul, or the son of the Sun,” was understood
by the ancients only essentially to typify that powerful planet, “which
animates and imparts fecundity to the universe, whose divinity has been
accordingly honoured in every quarter by temples and by altars, and
consecrated in the religious strains of all nations” and all climes.

His being peculiarly worshipped in this island only shows the intimate
knowledge it possessed of the mysteries of the _solar system_; and that
near converse which we have been already told it possessed with the moon,
is confirmation the most positive of this explanation.

Let me here again recall to the reader’s mind the name of _Cathaoir
Ghall_, or _temple of brightness_, which I have before adduced, and when
we compare _all_ with the _celestial indexes_ recorded in our annals, the
conclusion is inevitable, _that the Round Towers of Ireland were
specifically constructed for the two-fold purpose of worshipping the Sun
and Moon_--as the authors of generation and vegetative heat--_and, from
the nearer converse which their elevation afforded, of studying the
revolutions and properties of the planetary orbs_. Let me, however, before
elucidating the era of their actual erection, with their _Phallic_ form
and their further use, revert to the Mosaic history for the _groundwork_
of my development.

  “And chiefly thou, O Spirit! that dost prefer
  Before all temples th’ upright heart and pure,
  Instruct me, for thou know’st; thou from the first
  Wast present, and, with mighty wings outspread,
  Dove-like sat’st brooding on the vast abyss,
  And mad’st it pregnant. What in me is dark,
  Illumine! what is low, raise and support!
  That to the height of this great argument
  I may assert eternal Providence,
  And justify the ways of God to man.”[74]




CHAPTER V.


Nimrod, the son of Cush, “the mighty hunter before the Lord,” was the
first person,[75] according to Vossius,[76] who introduced the worship of
the _sun_ as a deity. Disgusted with the roving character of his previous
life, and tired of peregrination, he resolves to build himself a permanent
abode, and persuades his followers to embark in the design, “lest they be
scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”[77] Mankind had
already relapsed into the follies of their antediluvian ancestors. The
awful lesson of the watery visitation was read to them in vain, and again
they verified what God had before that memorable epoch with sorrow
declared, “that every imagination of the thoughts of their hearts was only
evil continually.”[78]

In Babel, the city thus agreed upon to be built, as the anchor of their
stability and the basis of their renown,--we find a “_Tower_” mentioned,
“whose top may _reach_,” says our version (but should it not rather be
_point_?) _towards heaven_.

What was the object of this architectural elevation?

Not certainly, as some have supposed, as a place of refuge in apprehension
of a second deluge; for in that case, it is probable, they would have
built it on an eminence, rather than on a _plain_, _whereas_ the Bible
expressly tells us they had selected the latter.

Much less could it be, what the poets have imagined, for the purpose of
scaling the celestial abodes, and disputing with Jehovah the composure of
His sovereignty.

What, then, was it intended for?

Undoubted as an acknowledgment, however vitiated and depraved, of
dependence upon that Being, whose acts shine forth in universal love, but
whose spiritual adoration was now partially lost sight of, or _merged_ in
the homage thus primarily tendered to the _lucid offspring_ of his
_omnipotent fiat_.

This tower, so erected by Nimrod, in opposition to the established system
of religious belief, and which, therefore--but from a _nobler_ reason than
what was generally imagined, viz. his researches in astronomy, and the
application thereto of instruments--procured him the appellation of
_rebel_ from _nemh_, heaven, and _rodh_, an assault, was, I hesitate not
to say, a temple constructed to the celestial host, the sun, moon, and
stars, which constituted the substance of the _Sabian idolatry_.[79]

Shinaar, in Mesopotamia, was the theatre of this dread occurrence--this
appalling spectacle at once of man’s weakness and God’s omnipotence:--Here
the Noachidæ had been then fixed; and the name by which this innovation
upon their previous usages is transmitted, viz. _Ba-Bel_, corroborates the
destination above assigned.[80]

The word “Baal,” in itself an appellative, at first served to denote the
true God amongst those who adhered to the true religion; though, when it
became common amongst the idolatrous nations, and applied to idols, He
rejected it. “And it shall be in that day that you shall call me Ishi, and
shall call me no more Baali.”[81] Another name by which the _Godhead_ was
recognised was Moloch. The latter, indeed, in accuracy of speech was the
name assigned him by the Ammonites and Moabites--both terms, however,
corresponded in sense, “Moloch” signifying king, and “Baal” Lord, that is,
of the heavens; whence transferring the appellation to the Sun, as the
_source_ and _dispenser_ of all _earthly favours_, he was also called
Bolati, _i.e._, “Baal the _bestower_,” as was the moon, Baaltis, from the
same consideration: whilst the direct object of their internal regard was
not, undoubtedly, that globe of fire which illumines the firmament and
vivifies terrestrials, but, physically considered, _nature_ at large, the
_fructifying germ_ of universal _generativeness_.

The Sun, it is true, as the source of light and heat, came in as
_representative_ for all this adoration. Thus viewed, then, it would
appear that the origin of the institution may have been comparatively
harmless. God being invisible, or only appearing to mortals through the
medium of His acts, it was natural that _man_, left to the workings of
unaided reason, should look on yon mysterious luminary with mingled
sentiments of gratitude and awe. We have every reason, accordingly, to
think, that solar worship at first was only emblematical, recognising, in
the effulgence of the orb of day, the creative power of Him, the

  “Father of all, in every age,
    In every clime adored,
  By saint, by savage, and by sage,
    _Jehovah_, _Jove_, or _Lord_”--

who sent it forth on its _beneficent_ errand.

As such, originally they had no temples dedicated to the occasion; they
met in the open air, without the precincts of any earthly shrine: there
they poured forth their vows and their thanksgivings, under the aërial
canopy of the vaulted expanse; nor can it be denied but that there was
something irresistibly impressive in such an assemblage of pious votaries,
paying their adoration to the throne of light in the natural temple of his
daily splendours.[82]

The degeneracy of man, however, became manifest in the sequel, and, from
the frequency of the act, the type was substituted in room of the thing
typified. “Solum in cœlis deum putabant solem,” says Philobibliensis, in
his interpretation of Sanchoniathon. Nor did it stop here, but, proceeding
in its progress of melancholy decay, swept before it the barriers of
reason and moral light; and, from the bright monarch of the stars, who
rules the day, the seasons, and the year, with perpetual change, yet
uniform and identical, bowed before the grosser element of _material
fire_, as his symbol or corporeal representative.

But the worst and most lamentable is yet untold. The sign again occupied
the place of the thing signified, and the human soul was prostrated, and
human life often immolated, to propitiate the favour of earthly fire, now
by transition esteemed a god. They had, it is true, from a _faint_
knowledge of the sacred writings, and a perverted exercise of that
inspired authority, something like an excuse for, at least, a decent
attention in the ordinary management of that useful article. In Lev. vi.
13 it is said: “The fire upon the altar shall ever be burning, it shall
never go out.” This injunction given by the Lord to Moses, to remind His
people of the constant necessity of sacrifice and prayer, the Gentiles
misconstrued into reverence for the fire itself, and “quoniam omnes pravi
dociles sumus,” hence the ready admission with which the doctrine was
embraced, and the general spread of that which was at first but partial
and figurative.

Indeed we find that God Himself had appeared to Moses in a “flame of fire
in the midst of a bush” (Ex. iii. 2), and in presence of the whole
Israelitish host (Ex. xix. 18). “The Lord descended upon Mount Sinai, as
the smoke of a furnace;” while in Ex. xiii. 21, it is declared that “the
Lord went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, and by night in a
pillar of fire, to give them light.” So accordingly we find Elijah, 1
Kings xviii. 24, when challenging the priests of the false divinities,
propose a decision by fiery ordeal. “Call you on the name of your gods,”
he says, “and I will call upon the name of the Lord: and the God that
answereth by _fire_, let him be God; and all the people answered, it is
well spoken.”

The infidels, therefore, who could not concede any superiority to the
religion of the Hebrews, and yet could not deny those manifestations of
divine support, thought they best proved their independence by instituting
a rivalship, and got thereby the more confirmed in their original
idolatry. Their bloody sacrifices themselves originated, we may suppose,
in some similar way. God must, undoubtedly, have prescribed that rite to
Adam, after his fall in Paradise, else how account for the “skins” with
which Eve and he had covered themselves? The beasts to which they belonged
could not have been slain for food; for it was not till a long time after
that they were allowed to eat the flesh of animals. We may, therefore,
safely infer that it was for a sin-offering they had been immolated; and
the subsequent reproof given to Cain by the rejection of his oblation,
evidently for the non-observance of the exact mode of sacrifice
prescribed, coupled with the command issued to Abraham, to try his
obedience, by offering up his own son, are undeniable proofs of the truth
of this inference.

In “Ur” of the Chaldees, a name which literally signifies “fire,” the
worship of that element first originated. Thence it travelled in its
contaminating course, until all the regions of the earth got impregnated
therewith. In Persia, a country with which _this island_ had, of old, the
most _direct communication_, we also find a city denominated “Ur”; and who
does not know that the Persians, having borrowed the custom from the
Chaldean priests, regarded fire with the utmost veneration? Numerous as
were the deities which that nation worshipped, “fire,” on every occasion,
in every sacrifice--like the Janus of the Romans--was invoked the first.
Their Pyrea, in which they not only preserved it ever burning, but
worshipped it as a deity, have been noticed by Brisson--but without the
necessary adjunct of their being an innovation.

Even the ordinary fire for culinary or social purposes participated in
some measure in this hallowed regard; as they durst not, without violating
the most sacred rules, and stifling the scruples of all their previous
education, offer it the least mark of impious disregard, or pollute its
sanctity by profane contact.

It was, however, only as symbolical of the _sun_ that _they_, like the
Chaldeans, paid it this extraordinary reverence--a reverence not limited
to mere religious rules, but which exercised control over and biassed the
decisions of their most important secular transactions. Accordingly, we
learn from Herodotus, lib. vii., as quoted by Cicero in “Verrem,” that
when Datis, the prefect of Xerxes’ fleet, flushed with the result of his
victory over Naxos and the city of Eretria in Eubœa, might easily have
made himself master of the island of Delos, he however passed it over
untouched in honour of that divinity before whom his country had bowed,
having been sacred to Apollo or the sun, and reputedly his birthplace.

But do I mean to say that the Round Towers of Ireland were intended for
the preservation of the sacred fire? Far, very far indeed, from it. That
_some few_ of them were therewith connected--I say _connected, not
appropriated_--may, I think, be well allowed; nay, it is my candid belief,
so far as belief is compatible with a matter so unauthenticated. But
having all through maintained that they were not all intended for one and
the same object, I must have been understood, of course, by the numerous
supporters of that fashionable proposition as including fire-worship
within the compass of my several views. I put it, however, frankly to the
most _ardent_ supporter of that theory, who for a moment considers the
different _bearings_ and peculiarities of those several structures,
comparing them first with one another, and then with the description of
fire-receptacles which we read of elsewhere, whether he can
dispassionately bring himself to say that all our Round Towers, or indeed
above two of those at present remaining, could have been _even calculated_
for that purpose?

Where, let me ask, is it they will suppose the fire to have been placed?
In the bottom? No; the intervening floors, of which the GREATER PORTION
retain evident traces, would not only endanger the conflagration of the
whole edifice, as it is most probable that they were made of wood, but
would also prevent the egress of the smoke through the four windows at the
top, for which use, they tell you, those apertures were inserted.

But I am answered that the tower of Ardmore, which has within it no
vestiges of divisional compartments, could offer no hindrance to the
ascent of the smoke, or its consequent discharge through the four
cardinal openings. To which I rejoin, that if there had _ever_ been a fire
lighted within that edifice, and continued for any length of time, as the
sacred fire is known to have been kept perpetually burning, it would have
been impossible for the inner surface of that stately structure to
preserve the beautiful and white coating which it still displays through
the mystic revolutions of so many ages. The same conclusion applies to the
tower of Devenish, which, though it has no inside coating, yet must its
elegant polish have been certainly deteriorated, if subjected to the
action of a perpetual smoke.

[Illustration: ARDMORE.]

The instance which is adduced of the four temples described by Hanway in
his _Travels into Persia_, proves nothing. It certainly corresponds with
the architectural character of some of our Round Towers, but leaves us as
much in the dark as to the era and use of both as if he had never made
mention of any such occurrence.

To me it is as obvious as the noon-day sun that _they too_ on examination
would be found of a more comprehensive religious tendency than what could
possibly relate to the preservation of the sacred fire; for it is well
known that when temples were at all appropriated to this consecrated
delusion, it was within a small _crypt_ or _arched vault_--over which the
temple was erected--that it was retained. The Ghebres or Parsees, the
direct disciples of Zoroaster, the reputed author of this improved
institution, “build their temples,” says Richardson,[83] “over
_subterraneous fires_.”

Whenever a deviation from this occurred, it was in favour of a low
stone-built structure, all over-arched, such as that which _Hanway met
with at Baku_, and _corresponding in every_ particular with the edifices
of this description to be seen at Smerwick, county Kerry, and elsewhere
throughout Ireland.[84]

The fire-house which Captain Keppel visited at a later period at Baku, in
1824, was a small square building, erected on a platform, with three
ascending steps on each side, having a tall hollow stone column at every
side, through which the flame was seen to issue, all _in the middle of a
pentagonal enclosure_--comprising also a large altar, whereon naphtha was
kept continually burning.

Now, could anything possibly _correspond more minutely_ with Strabo’s
description of the Pyratheia than does this last account? “They are,” he
says, “_immense enclosures_, in the centre of which was erected an altar,
where the Magi used to preserve, as well a quantity of ashes, as the
ever-burning fire itself.” And could anything possibly be _more opposite_
to our Round Towers than all these accounts?

When, therefore, we are told[85] that at the city of Zezd in Persia--which
is distinguished by the apellation of Darub Abadat, or seat of
religion--the Ghebres are permitted to have an Atush Kidi, or fire-temple,
which they assert had the sacred fire in it since the days of Zoroaster,
we must be prepared to understand it as corresponding in architectural
proportion with one or other of the instances just now detailed; and in
truth, from recent discovery, I have ascertained--since the above was
composed--that it is nothing more than a _sorry hut_.

But Pennant’s view of Hindostan is brought forward as at once decisive of
the matter. What says Mr. Pennant, however? “All the people of this part
of India are Hindoos, and retain the _old religion_, with all its
superstition. This makes the pagodas here much more numerous than in any
other part of the peninsula; their form too is different, being chiefly
buildings of a _cylindrical_ or _round tower_ shape, with their tops
either pointed or truncated at the top, and ornamented with something
eccentrical, but frequently with a round ball stuck on a spike: this ball
seems intended to represent the _sun_, an emblem of the deity of the
place.”

To this ascription of this learned traveller I most fully, most heartily
respond. Pagoda is a name invented by the Portuguese, from the Persian
“Peutgheda,” meaning a temple of idols, in which they supposed them to
abound, but which in reality were only so many figures or symbols of the
“principle of truth,” the “spirit of wisdom,” the “supreme essence,” and
other attributes of the Godhead, which, I believe, they in a great measure
spiritually recognised. Those structures, therefore, as the very word
implies, had no manner of relation to the sacred fire, but they had to the
sun and moon, the supposed authors of _generation_ and _nutrition_, of
which fire was only the corrupt emblem; and the different forms of their
constructural terminations, similar to those elsewhere described by
Maundrell, some being _pointed_, and some being _truncated_, harmonises
most aptly with the _radial_ and _hemispherical representations_ of the
two celestial luminaries, as well as with that organ of human
_procreation_ which we shall hereafter more particularly identify. These
are the two Baals dwelt so largely upon in the Scriptures--Baal masculine,
the sun, and Baal feminine, the moon, from both of which the Hindoos
derive their fabulous origin. Indeed it was from their extreme veneration
for the “queen of night” that they obtained their very name; Hindoo
meaning, in the Sanscrit language, the moon; and accordingly we find among
them Hindoo-buns, that is, children of the moon, as we do Surage-buns,
children of the sun, the other parent of their fanciful extraction.

Here then, methinks, we have at once a clue to the character of those
Round Towers so frequent throughout the East, of whose history, however,
the Orientals are as ignorant as we are here of our “rotundities.”
Caucasus abounds in those columnar fanes, and it must not be forgotten
that Caucasus has been claimed as the residence of our ancestors. On Teric
banks, hard by, there is a very beautiful and lofty one as like as
possible to some of ours. The door is described as twelve feet from the
ground, level and rather oblong in its form. Lord Valentia was so struck
with the extraordinary similitude observable between some very elegant
ones which he noticed in Hindostan and those in this country, that he
could not avoid at once making the comparison. The inhabitants, he
observes, paid no sort of regard to those venerable remains, but pilgrims
from afar, and chiefly from Jynagaur, adhering to _their old religion_,
used annually to resort to them as the shrines of their ancient worship.
Yet in the ceremonies there performed we see no evidence of their
appropriation to the sacred fire--however _tradition_ may have ascribed
them as once belonging to the Ghebres! Franklin mentions some he has seen
at Nandukan, as do other writers in other sites. In short, all through the
East they are to be met with, and yet all about them is obscurity, doubt,
and mystery, a proof at once of the antiquity of their date, and of their
not being receptacles for fire, which, _if the fact_, could be _there_ no
secret.

Yes, I verily believe, and I will as substantially establish, that they
were, what has already been affirmed, in reference to those in Ireland,
viz. temples in honour of the sun and moon, the procreative causes of
general fecundity, comprising in certain instances, like them, also the
additional and blended purposes of funeral cemeteries and astronomical
observatories. The Septuagint interpreters well understood their nature
when rendering the “high place of Baal”[86] by the Greek στηλη του βααλ,
or Pillar of Baal, that is, the pillar consecrated to the sun; while the
ancient Irish themselves, following in the same train, designated those
structures Bail-toir, that is, the tower of Baal, or the sun, and the
priest who attended them, Aoi Bail-toir, or superintendent of Baal’s
tower. Neither am I without apprehension but that the name “Ardmore,”
which signifies “the great high place,” and where a splendid specimen of
those Sabian edifices is still remaining, was in direct reference to that
religious column; but this _en passant_.

In the _sepulchral_ opinion I am not a little fortified by the
circumstance of there being found at Benares pyramids corresponding in all
respects, save that of size, to those in Egypt, having also subterranean
passages beneath them, which are said to extend even for miles together. A
column also, besides a sphinx’s head, which has been discovered not long
since in digging amid the ruins of an ancient and unknown city, on the
banks of the Hypanis, bearing an inscription which was found to differ on
being compared with Arabic, Persia, Turkish, Chinese, Tartar, Greek, and
Roman letters; but bore “a manifest and close similarity with the
characters observed by Denon on several of the mummies of Egypt,” gives
strength to the idea of the identity of the Egyptian religion with that of
the Indians, as it does to the identity of destination of their respective
pyramids.




CHAPTER VI.


Now if there be any one point of Irish antiquity which our historians
insist upon more than another, it is that of our ancestral connection with
the Egyptian kings. In all their legends Egypt is mixed up--in all their
romances Egypt stands prominent, which certainly could not have been so
universal without _something_ at least like foundation, and must,
therefore, remove anything like surprise at the affinity our ancient
religion bore, in many respects, to theirs, since they were both derived
from the same common origin.

I have already intimated my decided belief of the application of the
Egyptian pyramids to the combined purposes of religion and science. The
department of science to which I particularly referred was astronomy, the
cultivation of which was inseparably involved in all their religious
rites; for despite of the reverence which the Egyptians seemed to pay to
crocodiles, bulls, and others of the brute creation, in those they only
figured forth the several attributes, all infinite, in the divinity; as
their worship, like that of the ancient Irish, was purely planetary, or
Sabian.

The Indians too have images of the elephant, horse, and other such
animals, chiselled out with the most studious care, and to all intents and
purposes appear to pay them homage; but, if questioned on the subject,
they will tell you that in the sagacity of the former, and the strength
and swiftness of the latter, they only recognise the superior wisdom and
might of the All-good and All-great One, and the rapidity with which his
decrees are executed by his messengers.

If questioned more closely, they will tell you that the Brahmin is but
reminded by the image of the inscrutable Original, whose pavilion is
clouds and darkness; to him he offers the secret prayer of the heart; and
if he neglects from inadvertence the external services required, it is
because his mind is so fully occupied with the contemplation of uncreated
excellence, that he overlooks the grosser object by which his impressions
were communicated. Then with respect to their subterranean temples or
Mithratic caves, of which we have so many specimens throughout this
island, they affirm that the mysterious temple of the caverns is dedicated
to services which soar as much above the worship of the plain and
uninstructed Hindoo, as Brahma the invisible Creator is above the good and
evil genii who inhabit the region of the sky. The world, whose ideas are
base and grovelling as the dust upon which they tread, must be led by
objects perceptible to the senses to perform the ceremonial of their
worship; the chosen offspring of Brahma are destined to nobler and
sublimer hopes; their views are bounded alone by the ages of eternity.

These specimens, though brief, will prove that the spirit of the religion
of ancient India and Egypt was not that farrago of mental prostration
which some have imagined. No, the stars, as the abode, or immediate signal
of the Deity, were their primary study; and even to this day, depressed
and humiliated as the Indians are, and aliens in their own country, they
are not without some attention to their favourite pursuit, or something
like an observatory to perpetuate its cultivation. In May, 1777, a letter
from Sir Robert Baker to the President of the Royal Society of London was
read before that body, which details a complete astronomical apparatus
found at Benares, belonging to the Brahmins.

Such is the remnant of that once enlightened nation, the favourite retreat
of civilisation and the arts, which sent forth its professors into the
most distant quarters of the world, and disseminated knowledge wherever
they had arrived. “With the first accounts we have of Hindostan,” says
Crawford, “a mighty empire opens to our view, which in extent, riches, and
the number of its inhabitants, has not yet been equalled by any one nation
on the globe. We find salutary laws, and an ingenious and refined system
of religion established; sciences and arts known and practised; and all of
these evidently brought to perfection by the accumulated experience of
many preceding ages. We see a country abounding in fair and opulent
cities; magnificent temples and palaces; useful and ingenious artists
employing the precious stones and metals in curious workmanship;
manufacturers fabricating cloths, which in the fineness of their texture,
and the beauty and duration of some of their dyes, have even yet been but
barely imitated by other nations.

“The traveller was enabled to journey through this immense country with
ease and safety; the public roads were shaded with trees to defend him
from its scorching sun; at convenient distances buildings were erected for
him to repose in, a friendly Brahmin attended to supply his wants; and
_hospitality_ and the _laws_ held out assistance and protection to _all
alike_, without prejudice or partiality.... We afterwards see the empire
overrun by a fierce race of men, who in the beginning of their furious
conquests endeavoured, with their country, to subdue the minds of the
Hindoos. They massacred the people, tortured the priests, threw down many
of the temples, and, what was still more afflicting, converted some of
them into places of worship for their prophet, till at length, tired with
the exertion of cruelties which they found to be without effect, and
guided by their interest, which led them to wish for tranquillity, they
were constrained to let a religion and customs subsist which they found it
impossible to destroy. But during these scenes of devastation and
bloodshed, the sciences, being in the sole possession of the priests, who
had more pressing cares to attend to, were neglected, and are now almost
forgotten.”

I have dwelt thus long upon the article of India, from my persuasion of
the intimate connection that existed at one time as to religion, language,
customs, and mode of life between some of its inhabitants and those of
_this_ western island. I have had an additional motive, and that was to
show that the same cause which effected the _mystification_ that overhangs
_our_ antiquities, has operated similarly with respect to _theirs_, and
this brings me back to the subject of the Round Towers, in the _history_,
or rather the _mystery_, of which, in both countries, this result is most
exemplified.

As to their appropriation, then, to the _sacred_ fire, though I do not
deny that _some_ of them _may_ have been connected with it, yet
unquestionably _too much importance_ has been attached to the _vitrified_
appearance of Drumboe tower as if necessarily enforcing our acquiescence
in the universality of that doctrine. “At some former time,” says the
surveyor, “_very strong fires have been burned_ within this building, and
the inside surface towards the bottom has the appearance of
vitrification.”

I do not at all dispute the _accident_, but while the vitrified aspect
which _this tower_ exhibits is proof irresistible that _no fire ever
entered_ those in which _no such_ vitrification appears, I cannot but
_here too_ express more than a surmise that it was not the “_sacred
fire_,” which, when religiously preserved, was not allowed to break forth
in those _volcanoes_ insinuated; but in a _lambent, gentle flame_,
emblematic of that emanation of the spirit of the Divinity infused, as
_light from light_, into the soul of man.

  “Hail, holy Light! offspring of heaven first-born!
  Or of th’ Eternal co-eternal beam!
  May I express thee unblamed? Since God is light,
  And never but in unapproached light
  Dwelt from eternity; dwelt then in thee,
  Bright effluence of bright essence increate!
  Or hear’st thou rather, pure ethereal stream,
  Whose fountain who shall tell? Before the sun,
  Before the heavens, thou wert, and at the voice
  Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest
  The rising world of waters dark and deep,
  Won from the void and formless infinite.”[87]

But to prove that they were not appropriated to the ritual of
fire-worship, _nay, that their history and occupation had been altogether
forgotten when that ritual now prevailed_, I turn to the glossary of
Cormac, first bishop of Cashel, who, after his conversion to
Christianity, in the fifth century, by St. Patrick, thus declares his
faith:--

  “Adhram do righ na duile
  Do dagh bhar din ar n’ daone
  Lies gach dream, leis gach dine
  Leis gach ceall, leis gach caoimhe.”

That is--

  “I worship the King of the Elements,
  Whose fire from the mountain top ascends,
  In whose hands are all mankind,
  All punishment and remuneration.”

No allusion here to “_towers_” as connected with that _fire_ so pointedly
adverted to. And lest there should be any doubt as to the _identity_ of
this fire with the religious element so frequently referred to, we find
the same high authority thus critically explain himself in another place:
“dha teinne soinmech do gintis na draoithe con tincet laib moraib foraib,
agus do bordis, na ceatra or teamandaib cacha bliadhna”--that is, the
Druids used to kindle two immense fires, with great incantation, and
towards them used to drive the cattle, which they forced to pass between
them every year.

Nay, when St. Bridget, who was originally a _pagan vestal_, and
consequently well versed in all the solemnities of the sacred fire,
wished, upon her conversion to Christianity, A.D. 467, to retain this
favourite usage, now sublimated in its nature, and streaming in a more
hallowed current, it was not in a “tower” that we find she preserved it,
but in a cell or low building “like a vault,” “which,” says Holinshed,
whose curiosity, excited by Cambrensis’s report,[88] had induced him to go
and visit the spot, “to this day they call the fire-house.” It was a
stone-roofed edifice about twenty feet square, the ruins of which are
still visible, and recognised by all around as once the preservative of
the sacred element. When Cambrensis made mention of this miraculous fire
of St. Bridget, why did he not connect it with the _Round Towers_, which
he mentions elsewhere? He knew they had no connection, and should not be
associated.

But, forsooth, the Venerable Bede has distinctly mentioned in the _Life of
St. Cuthbert_ that there were numerous _fire receptacles_, remnants of
ancient paganism, still remaining in this island!--Admitted. But does it
necessarily follow that they were the _Round Towers_?[89] No: here is the
enigma solved--they were those _low stone-roofed structures_, similar to
what the Persians call the “Atash-gah,” to be met with so commonly
throughout all parts of this country, such as at Ardmore, Killaloe, Down,
Kerry, Kells, etc. etc. The circumstance of St Columbe having for a time
taken up his abode in this last-mentioned one, gave rise to the idea that
he must have been its founder: but the delusion is dispelled by comparing
its architecture with that of the churches which this distinguished
champion of the early Christian Irish Church had erected in Iona,[90]
whose ruins are still to be seen, and bear no sort of analogy with those
ancient receptacles. Struck, no doubt, with some apprehensions like the
foregoing, it is manifest that Miss Beaufort herself, while combating
most strenuously for the Round Towers as _fire receptacles_, had no small
misgiving, nay, was evidently divided as to the security of her position.
“From the foregoing statements,” she observes, “a well-grounded conclusion
may be drawn that these _low fabrics_ are seldom found but in connection
with the towers, and were designed for the preservation of the sacred
fire; in some cases the lofty tower may have served for both
purposes.”[91] The lofty tower, I emphatically say, was a distinct
edifice.

Again, when St. Patrick in person went round the different provinces to
attend the pagan solemnities at the respective periods of their
celebration, we find no mention made of any such thing as a “tower”
occupying any part in the ritual of their religious exercises. When he
first presented himself near the Court of Laogaire, not far from the hill
of Tara, on the eve of the vernal equinox, and lit up a fire before his
tent in defiance of the legal prohibition, the appeal which we are told
his Druids addressed to the monarch on that occasion was couched in the
following words:--“This fire which has to-night been kindled in our
presence, before the flame was lit up in your _palace_, unless
extinguished this very night, shall never be extinguished at all, but
shall triumph over all the fires of our ancient rites, and the lighter of
it shall scatter your kingdom.” In this notification, as I translate it
from O’Connor’s _Prolegomena_, i. c. 35, there occur two terms to which I
would fain bespeak the reader’s regard; one is the word _kindled_, which
implies the lighting up of a fire where there was none before; the second
is the word _palace_, which is more applicable to a kingly residence or
private abode, than to a _columnar structure_, which would seem to demand
a characteristic denomination.

Another objection more imposing in its character, and to the _local_
antiquary offering no small difficulty to surmount, is that those
above-mentioned low structures must have been erected by our first Roman
missionaries, because that they bear the strongest possible affinity to
the finish and perfection of the early Roman cloacæ or vaults. This
difficulty, however, I thus remove: no one in this enlightened age can
suppose that these stupendous specimens of massive and costly workmanship,
which we read of as being constructed by the Romans in the very infancy of
their State, could have been the erection of a rude people, unacquainted
with the arts. The story of the wolf, the vestal, and the shepherd is no
longer credited; Rome was a flourishing and thriving city long before the
son of Rhea was born, and the only credit that he deserves, as connected
with its history, is that of uniting together under one common yoke the
several neighbouring communities, many of whom, particularly the
Etrurians, were advanced in scientific and social civilisation, conversant
not only with the researches of letters, and the arcana of astronomy, but
particularly masters of all manual trades, and with none more profoundly
than that of architecture.

But who, let me ask, were those Etrurians? none others, most undoubtedly,
than the Pelasgi or Tyrseni, another branch of our Tuath-de-danaan
ancestors, who, as Myrsilus informs us, had erected the ancient wall
around the Acropolis of Athens, which is therefore styled, by Callimachus,
as quoted in the Scholia to the _Birds_ of Aristophanes, “the Pelasgic
Wall of the Tyrseni.” It is now a point well ascertained by historians
that what are termed by ancient writers _Cyclopean walls_--as if
intimating the work of a race of giants, while the true exposition of the
name is to be found in the fact of their having been constructed by a
caste of miners, otherwise called arimaspi, whose lamp, which perhaps they
had fastened to their foreheads, may be considered as their _only
eye_--were actually the creation of those ancient Pelasgi, and, as will
shortly appear, should properly be called Irish.[92] Mycenæ, Argos, and
Tiryns, in Greece, as well as Etruria and other places in Italy, the early
residences of this lettered tribe, abound in relics of this ancient
masonry. In all respects, in all points, and in all particulars it
corresponds with that of those above-mentioned _low_, stone-roofed,
fire-receptacles, so common in this island; which must satisfactorily and
for ever do away with the doubt as to why such features of similarity
should be observed to exist between our antiquities and those of _ancient
Greece_ and _Rome_; not less perceptible in the circumstance of those
edificial remains than in the collateral evidences of language and
manners.

The sacred fire, once observed with such religious awe by every class, and
in every quarter of this island, was imported from Greece into Italy by
the same people who had introduced it here. Let me not be supposed to
insinuate that the people of the latter country, _modernly considered_,
adopted the usage from those of the former country, moderns also; no,
there was no intercourse between these parties for many years after the
foundation of the western capital. Indeed it was not until the time of
Pyrrhus that they knew anything of their respective existences, whereas we
find that the vestal fire was instituted by Numa, A.U.C. 41. What I meant
therefore to say was, that the same early people, viz. the Pelasgi, who
had introduced it into Greece, had, upon their expulsion from Thessaly by
the Hellenes, betaken themselves to Latium, afterwards so called, and
there disseminated their doctrines not less prosperously than their
dominion.

Numa was in his day profoundly skilled in all the mysteries of those
religious philosophers; and his proffered elevation to the Roman throne
was but the merited recompense of his venerable character. His whole reign
was accordingly one continued scene of devotion and piety, in which
pre-eminently outshone his regard to Vesta,[93] in whose sanctuary was
preserved the Palladium, “the fated pledge of Roman authority,” and which
too, by the way, ever connected as we see it was with the _worship of
fire_, would seem to make the belief respecting it also to be of Oriental
origin. This eastern extraction additionally accounts for that dexterous
State contrivance of client and patron established in the early ages of
the Roman government, corresponding to our ancient clanship--both
evidently borrowed from the same Indian castes.

I now address myself to another obstacle which has been advanced by an
Irish _lady_, and of the most deserved antiquarian repute, whose classic
and elaborate treatise on this identical subject, though somewhat
differently moulded, has already won her the applause of that society
whose discriminating verdict I now respectfully await. But as my object
is _truth_, divested as much as possible of worldly considerations, and
unshackled by systems or literary codes, I conceive that object will be
more effectually attained by setting inquiry on foot, than by tamely
acquiescing in dubious asservations or abiding by verbal ambiguities.

What elicited this sentiment was Miss Beaufort’s remark on the enactment
at Tara, A.D. 79, for the _erection of a palace_ in each of the four
proportions subtracted by order of Tuathal Teachmar, from each of the four
provinces to form the present county of Meath. Her words are as
follow:--“Taking the landing of Julius Cæsar in Britain, in the year 55
before Christ, as a fixed point of time, and counting back fifty years
from that, we shall be brought to about one hundred years before the
Christian era, at which time the introduction of the improvements and
innovations of Zoroaster, and that also of fire towers, may, without
straining probability, be supposed to have fully taken place. _That it
was_ not much earlier may be inferred from the before-mentioned ordinance
of the year 79 A.D., to increase the number of towers in the different
provinces.”

With great submission I conceive that the _error_ here incurred originated
on the lady’s part, from mistaking as authority the comment in the
_Statistical Survey_, vol. iii. p. 320, which runs thus:--“It is quite
evident from sundry authentic records, that these round towers were
appropriated to the preservation of the Baal-thinne, or sacred fire of
Baal: first at the solemn convention at Tara, in the year of Christ 79, in
the reign of Tuathal Teachmar, it was enacted, that on the 31st of October
annually, the sacred fire should be publicly exhibited from the stately
tower of Tlactga, in Munster, from whence all the other repositories of
the Baal-thinne were to be rekindled, in case they were by any accident
allowed to go out. It was also enacted, that a particular tower should be
erected for that purpose in each of the other four provinces, Meath being
then a distinct province. For this purpose the tax called Scraball, of
threepence per head on all adults, was imposed.”

Well, for this is quoted _Psalter of Tara_, by Comerford, p. 51; on
referring to which I find the text as thus: “He (Tuathal) also erected a
stately palace in each of these proportions, viz. in that of Munster, the
palace of Tlactga, where the fire of Tlactga was ordained to be kindled on
the 31st of October, to summon the priests and augurs to consume the
sacrifices offered to their gods; and it was also ordained that no other
fire should be kindled in the kingdom that night, so that the fire to be
used in the country was to be derived from this fire; for which privilege
the people were to pay a scraball, which amounts to threepence every year,
as _an acknowledgment to the King of Munster_. The second palace was in
that of Connaught, where the inhabitants assembled once a year, upon the
1st of May, to offer sacrifices to the principal deity of the island under
the name of Beul, which was called the Convocation of Usneagh; and on
account of this meeting the King of Connaught had from every lord of a
manor, or chieftain of lands, a horse and arms. The third was at Tailtean,
in the portion of Ulster, where the inhabitants of the kingdom brought
their children when of age, and treated with one another about their
marriage. From this custom the King of Ulster demanded an ounce of silver
from every couple married here. The fourth was the palace of Teamor or
Tara, which originally belonged to the province of Leinster, and where the
States of the kingdom met in a parliamentary way.”

I now leave the reader to decide whether the word “palace” can be well
used to represent an “ecclesiastical tower,” or indeed any tower at all;
or whether it is not rather a royal residence for the several provincial
princes, that is meant to be conveyed; as is evident to the most
superficial, from the closing allusion to the _palace_ of Tara, “where the
States of the kingdom met in a parliamentary way.” The impost of the
scraball, I must not omit to observe, has been equally misstated in the
survey; for it was not for the purpose of erecting _any_ structures, but
as an acknowledgment of homage and a medium of revenue that it was
enforced, as will appear most clearly on reverting to the original, and
comparing it with the other means of revenue, which the other provincial
kings were entitled to exact. But what gives the complete overthrow to the
doctrine which would identify those _palaces_ with columnar edifices, is
the fact that there are no vestiges to be found of _Round Towers_ in any,
certainly not in all of those four localities specially notified. Wells
and Donaghmore are the only Round Towers now in the county Meath, and
these are not included among the places above designated.




CHAPTER VIII.


To wind up the matter, steadily and unequivocally I do deny that the Round
Towers of Ireland were fire receptacles. I go further, and deny that any
of those eastern round edifices which travellers speak of, were ever
intended for fire receptacles: that they were all pagan structures--and
temples too--consecrated to the most _solemn_ and _engrossing_ objects of
_human pursuit_, however erroneously that pursuit may have been directed,
I unhesitatingly affirm. What then, I shall be asked, was their design? To
this I beg leave to offer a circumlocutory answer. Squeamishness may be
shocked, and invidiousness receive a pretext, but, the spirit being pure,
the well-regulated mind will always say, “Cur nescire, pudens pravé, quam
discere malo?”[94]

Then be it known that the _Round Towers_ of _Ireland_ were temples
constructed by the early Indian colonists of the country, in honour of
that _fructifying_ principle of nature, emanating, as was supposed, from
the sun, under the denomination of Sol, Phœbus, Apollo, Abad or Budh, etc.
etc.; and from the moon, under the epithet of Luna, Diana, Juno, Astarte,
Venus, Babia or Butsee, etc. etc. Astronomy was inseparably interwoven
with this planetary religion; while the religion itself was characterised
by enforcing almost as strict a regard to the body after death, as the
body was expected to pay to a Supreme Essence before its mortal
dissolution. Under this double sense then of _funereal_ or posthumous
regard, as well as active and living devotion, must I be understood to
have used the expression, when previously declaring that our _Sabian
rotundities_ were erected with the twofold view of religious _culture_ and
the _practice_ of that _science_ with which it was so amalgamated.

To be explicit, I must recall to the reader’s mind the destination which
the Brahmins assigned to the Egyptian pyramids, on hearing Wilford’s
description of them--viz. that they were places appropriated to the
worship of Padma-devi.[95] Before I proceed, however, I must state that I
do not intend to make this the basis of what I shall designate my
_disclosures_. It would be very foolish of _me_, if hoping to dislodge a
_world_ of long-established prejudice, to use, as my _lever_, a ray shot
transversely from a volume which has been tarnished by forgery. I need no
such aid, as the sequel will show; and yet were it requisite, no objection
would be valid, as the “_Pundit_” could have had no motive, either of
interest or of vanity, such as influenced his _transcriptions_, here to
mislead his victim. It was the mere utterance of a casual opinion, without
reference to any deduction. Besides it was not the statement of the knave
at all, but that of a number of religious men of letters, who all agreed
in the ascription above laid down. They spoke, no doubt, from some
traditionary acquaintance with the use of those tall round buildings which
so much baffle antiquarians, not more in Ireland than they do in
Hindostan: but the explanation of this their answer will be a happy
inlet--and as such only do I mean to employ it--to the _illustration_ of
what we have been so long labouring at.

The word Padma-devi[96] means “_the deity of desire_,” as instrumental in
that principle of _universal_ generativeness diffused throughout all
nature. Do I mean that gross suggestion of carnal concupiscence?--that
mere propensity of animal appetite which is common to man with the brute
creation? No; it became redeemed, if not justified, by the religious
complexion with which it was intertwined, derived, mayhap, originally from
that _paradisiacal_ precept which said, “increase and multiply”; while the
strain of metaphor under which it was couched, and the spiritual tendency
by which the ceremony was inculcated, prevented offence even to the most
refined taste, the most susceptible fancy, or the most delicate
sensibility.

The love of offspring has ever been a powerful ingredient in man’s
composition. The fair portion of the human species, as every age and
experience can prove, have shown themselves not more exempt from the
control of the same emotions or the influence of the same impulses. It was
so wisely instituted by the great Regulator of all things, nor is the
abuse of the principle any argument against its general utility or
sanctified intent. Search the records of all early States, and you will
find the legislator and the priest, instead of opposing a principle so
universally dominant, used their influence, on the contrary, to bring it
more into play, and make its exercise subservient to the increase of our
species; the law lent its aid to enforce the theme as national, and
religion sanctified it as a moral obligation.

In India this _fervor_ was particularly encouraged: for “as the Hindoos
depend on their children for performing those ceremonies to their names,
which they believe tend to mitigate punishment in a _future state_, they
consider the being deprived of them as a severe misfortune and the sign of
an offended God.”[97] They accordingly had recourse to all the stratagems
which ingenuity could devise to recommend this passion to the inner
senses, and dignify its nature by the studied imagery of metaphor and
grace. In conformity with this sentiment we are favoured by Sir William
Jones with the copy of a hymn, which they were in the habit of addressing
to the above-mentioned “Padma-devi,” or “Mollium mater sæva cupidinum,”
which he thus prefaces with her figurative descent:--

It is Camadeva, that is, the _god_ of desire, the opposite sex he speaks
of, but the principle is the same.

  “Peor, his other name, when he enticed
  Israel in Sittim, on their march from Nile,
  To do him wanton rites, which cost them sore.”[98]

“According to the Hindu mythology, he was the son of Maya, or the general
attracting power;[99] that he was married to Ritty, or Affection; and that
his bosom friend is Vassant, or the Spring: that he is represented as a
beautiful youth, sometimes conversing with his mother, or consort, in the
midst of his gardens and temples; sometimes riding by moonlight on a
parrot, and attended by dancing girls, or nymphs, the foremost of whom
bears his colours, which are a fish on a red ground: that his favourite
place of resort is a large tract of country round Agra, and principally
the plain of Mathra, where Kreshen also, and the nine Gopia usually spend
the night with music and dance: that his bow is of sugar-cane or flowers,
the sting of bees, and his five arrows are each painted with an Indian
blossom of an healing quality.” Tedious and diffuse as has been the
dissertation already, I cannot resist the inclination of transcribing the
hymn also.

  “What potent god, from Agra’s orient bowers,
  Floats through the lucid air; whilst living flowers,
  With sunny twine, the vocal arbours wreathe,
  And gales enamoured heavenly fragrance breathe?

      Hail, Power unknown! for at thy beck
      Vales and groves their bosoms deck,
      And every laughing blossom dresses,
      With gems of dew, his musky tresses.
  I feel, I feel thy genial flame divine,
  And hallow thee, and kiss thy _shrine_.

          Knowest thou not me?--
      Yes, son of Maya, yes, I know
      Thy bloomy shafts and cany bow,
  Thy scaly standard, thy mysterious arms,
  And all thy pains and all thy charms.

  Almighty Cama! or doth Smara bright,
  Or proud Aranga, give thee more delight?
      Whate’er thy seat, whate’er thy name,
      Seas, earth, and air, thy reign proclaim;
      All to thee their tribute bring,
      And hail thee universal king.

  Thy consort mild, Affection, ever true,
  Graces thy side, her vest of glowing hue,
  And in her train twelve blooming maids advance,
  Touch golden strings and knit the mirthful dance.
      Thy dreadful implements they bear,
      And wave them in the scented air,
      Each with pearls her neck adorning,
      Brighter than the tears of morning.
  Thy crimson ensign which before them flies,
  Decks with new stars the sapphire skies.

  God of the flowery shafts and flowery bow,
  Delight of all above and all below!
  Thy loved companion, constant from his birth
  In heaven clep’d Vassant, and gay Spring on earth,
      Weaves thy green robe, and flaunting bowers,
      And from the clouds draws balmy showers,
      He with fresh arrows fills thy quiver,
      (Sweet the gift, and sweet the giver,)
  And bids the various warbling throng
  Burst the pent blossoms with their song.

  He bends the luscious cane, and twists the string,
  With bees how sweet! but ah, how keen their sting!
  He with fine flowrets tips thy ruthless darts,
  Which through five senses pierce enraptured hearts.
      Strong Champa, rich in od’rous gold,
      Warm Amer, nursed in heavenly mould,
      Dry Nagkezer, in silver smiling,
      Hot Kiticum, our sense beguiling,
  And last, to kindle fierce the scorching flame,
  Loveshaft, which gods bright Bela name.

  Can men resist thy power, when Krishen yields,
  Krishen, who still in Mathra’s holy fields,
  Tunes harps immortal, and to strains divine,
  Dances by moonlight with the Gopia nine?

  Oh! thou for ages born, yet ever young,
  For ages may thy Bramin’s lay be sung;
  And when thy Lory spreads his emerald wings,
  To waft thee high above the tower of kings,
      Whilst o’er thy throne the moon’s pale light
      Pours her soft radiance through the night,
      And to each floating cloud discovers
      The haunts of blest or joyless lovers,
  Thy milder influence to thy bard impart,
  To warm, but not consume his heart.”

Amongst the fables that are told to account for the origin of this amorous
devotion, Sir William tells us, is the following, viz.:--

“Certain devotees in a remote time had acquired great renown and respect;
but the purity of the art was wanting; nor did their motives and secret
thoughts correspond with their professions and exterior conduct. They
affected poverty, but were attached to the things of this world, and the
princes and nobles were constantly sending them offerings. They seemed to
sequester themselves from the world; they lived retired from the towns;
but their dwellings were commodious, and their women numerous and
handsome. But nothing can be hid from the gods, and Sheevah resolved to
expose them to shame. He desired Prakeety[100] to accompany him; and
assumed the appearance of a Pandaram of a graceful form. Prakeety appeared
as herself a damsel of matchless beauty. She went where the devotees were
assembled with their disciples, waiting the rising sun to perform their
ablutions[101] and religious ceremonies. As she advanced the refreshing
breeze moved her flowing robe, showing the exquisite shape which it seemed
intended to conceal. With eyes cast down, though sometimes opening with a
timid but a tender look, she approached them, and with a low enchanting
voice desired to be admitted to the sacrifice. The devotees gazed on her
with astonishment. The sun appeared, but the purifications were forgotten;
the things of the Poojah[102] lay neglected; nor was any worship thought
of but that to her. Quitting the gravity of their manners, they gathered
round her as flies round the lamp at night, attracted by its splendour,
but consumed by its flame. They asked from whence she came; whither she
was going? ‘Be not offended with us for approaching thee; forgive us for
our importunities. But thou art incapable of anger, thou who art made to
convey bliss; to thee, who mayest kill by indifference, indignation and
resentment are unknown. But whoever thou mayest be, whatever motive or
accident may have brought thee amongst us, admit us into the number of thy
slaves; let us at least have the comfort to behold thee.’

“Here the words faltered on the lip; the soul seemed ready to take its
flight; the vow was forgotten, and the policy of years destroyed.

“Whilst the devotees were lost in their passions, and absent from their
homes, Sheevah entered their village with a musical instrument in his
hand, playing and singing like some of those who solicit charity. At the
sound of his voice the women immediately quitted their occupations; they
ran to see from whom it came. He was beautiful as Krishen on the plains of
Matra.[103] Some dropped their jewels without turning to look for them;
others let fall their garments without perceiving that they discovered
those abodes of pleasure which jealousy as well as decency has ordered to
be concealed. All pressed forward with their offerings; all wished to
speak; all wished to be taken notice of; and bringing flowers and
scattering them before him, said, ‘Askest thou alms! thou who art made to
govern hearts! Thou whose countenance is fresh as the morning! whose voice
is the voice of pleasure; and thy breath like that of Vassant[104] in the
opening rose! Stay with us and we will serve thee; nor will we trouble thy
repose, but only be jealous how to please thee.’

“The Pandaram continued to play, and sung the loves of Kama,[105] of
Krishen, and the Gopia, and smiling the gentle smiles of fond desire, he
led them to a neighbouring grove that was consecrated to pleasure and
retirement. Sour began to gild the western mountains, nor were they
offended at the retiring day.

“But the desire of repose succeeds the waste of pleasure. Sleep closed the
eyes and lulled the senses. In the morning the Pandaram was gone. When
they awoke they looked round with astonishment, and again cast their eyes
on the ground. Some directed their looks to those who had been formerly
remarked for their scrupulous manners, but their faces were covered with
their veils. After sitting a while in silence, they arose, and went back
to their houses with slow and troubled steps. The devotees returned about
the same time from their wanderings after Prakeety. The days that followed
were days of embarrassment and shame. If the women had failed in their
modesty, the devotees had broken their vows. They were vexed at their
weakness; they were sorry for what they had done; yet the tender sigh
sometimes broke forth, and the eye often turned to where the men first saw
the maid, the women the Pandaram.

“But the people began to perceive that what the devotees foretold came
not to pass. Their disciples in consequence neglected to attend them, and
the offerings from the princes and the nobles became less frequent than
before. They then performed various penances; they sought for secret
places among the woods unfrequented by man; and having at last shut their
eyes from the things of this world, retired within themselves in deep
meditation, that Sheevah was the author of their misfortunes. Their
understanding being imperfect, instead of bowing the head with humility
they were inflamed with anger; instead of contrition for their hypocrisy,
they sought for vengeance. They performed new sacrifices and incantations,
which were only allowed to have effect in the end to show the extreme
folly of man in not submitting to the will of Heaven.

“Their incantations produced a tiger, whose mouth was like a cavern, and
his voice like thunder among the mountains. They sent him against Sheevah,
who, with Prakeety, was amusing himself in the vale. He smiled at their
weakness, and killing the tiger at one blow with his club, he covered
himself with his skin. Seeing themselves frustrated in this attempt, the
devotees had recourse to another, and sent serpents against him of the
most deadly kind; but on approaching him they became harmless, and he
twisted them round his neck. They then sent their curses and imprecations
against him, but they all recoiled upon themselves. Not yet disheartened
by all these disappointments, they collected all their prayers, their
penances, their charities, and other good works, the most acceptable of
all sacrifices; and demanding in return only vengeance against Sheevah,
they sent a consuming fire to destroy his genital parts. Sheevah,
incensed at this attempt, turned the fire with indignation against the
human race; and mankind would have been soon destroyed, had not Vishnou,
alarmed at the danger, implored him to suspend his wrath. At his
entreaties Sheevah relented. But it was ordained that in his temples those
_parts_ should be _worshipped_ which the false devotees had impiously
attempted to destroy.”[106]

[Illustration: CLONDALKIN.]

But what was the form under which this _deity_ was recognised? “Look on
this picture and on that;” and the answer presents itself.[107] The
eastern votaries, suiting the action to the idea, and that their vivid
imagination might be still more enlivened by the very _form_ of the
_temple_ in which they addressed their vows, actually constructed its
architecture after the model of the _membrum virile_, which, obscenity
apart, is the divinely-formed and indispensable medium selected by God
Himself for human propagation and sexual prolificacy.

This was the Phallus, of which we read in Lucian,[108] as existing in
Syria of such extraordinary height, and which, not less than the Egyptian
Pyramids, has heretofore puzzled antiquaries,--little dreaming that it was
the counterpart of our Round Towers, and that both were the prototypes of
the two “_Pillars_” which Hiram wrought before the temple of Solomon.

Astarte was the divinity with whose worship it was thus associated, and by
that being understood the moon,[109] it was natural to suppose that the
study of the stars would essentially enter into the ceremonial of her
worship. Another name by which this divinity was recognised, was Rimmon,
which, signifying as it does _pomegranate_, was a very happy emblem of
_fecundity_, as apples are known to be the most prolific species of fruit.

Lingam is the name by which the Indians designated this idol.[110] Those
who dedicate themselves to his service, swear to observe inviolable
chastity. “They do not, however,” says Craufurd, “like the priests of
Atys, deprive themselves of the means of breaking their vows; but were it
discovered that they had in any way departed from them, the punishment is
death. They go naked; but being considered as sanctified persons, the
women approach them without scruple, nor is it thought that their modesty
should be offended by it. Husbands whose wives are barren solicit them to
come to their houses, or send their wives to worship Lingam at the
temples; and it is supposed that _the ceremonies_ on this occasion, if
performed with the proper zeal, are usually productive of the desired
effect.”[111]

Such was the origin and design of the most _ancient_ Indian pagodas, which
had no earthly connection with fire or fire-worshippers, as generally
imagined. And that such, also, was the use and origin of the Irish pagodas
is manifest from the name by which they are critically and accurately
designated, viz. _Budh_, which, in the Irish language, signifies not only
the _Sun_, as the source of _generative vegetation_, but also as the _male
organ of procreative generativeness_, consecrated, according to their
foolish ideas, to Baal-_Phearagh_ or Deus-_coitionis_, by and by to be
elucidated. This thoroughly explains the word “Cathoir-ghall,” or “temple
of _delight_,” already mentioned as appropriated to one of those edifices,
and is still further confirmed by the name of “Teaumpal na greine,” or
“temple of the sun,” by which another of them is called; while the
ornament that has been known to exist on the top of many of them
represents the crescent of Sheevah, the matrimonial deity of the Indians,
agreeably to what the Heetopades states, viz. “may he on whose diadem is a
crescent cause prosperity to the people of the earth.”

But you will say that my designating these structures by the name of
_Budh_ is a _gratuitous assumption_, for which I have no authority other
than what _imagination_ may afford me; and that, therefore, however
striking may be _appearances_, you will withhold your conviction until you
hear my proofs. Sir, I advance nothing that I cannot support by arguments,
and should not value your adherence were it not earned by truth. This is
too important an investigation to allow _fancy_ any share therein. It is
not the mere settlement of an antiquarian dispute of _individual_ interest
or _isolated_ locality that is involved in its adjustment,--no, its
bearings are as comprehensive as its interest should be universal; _the
opinions of mankind to a greater extent than you suppose will be affected
by its determination_; and I should despise myself if, by any silly effort
of ingenuity, I should attempt to lead your reason captive, or pander to
your credulity, rather than storm your judgment.

This being premised, I shall not condescend, here or elsewhere, to
apologise for the freedom with which I shall express myself in the
prosecution of my ideas. The spirit that breathes over the face of the
work will protect me from the venom of ungenerous imputation. Freedom is
indispensable to the just development of the subject. Nor do I dread any
bad results can accrue from such a course, knowing that it is the
_vicious_ alone who can extract poison from my page,--and they could do it
as well in a museum or picture gallery,--while the _virtuous_ will peruse
it in the purity of their own conceptions, and if they rise not improved,
they will, at least, not deteriorated.

My authority for assigning to the Round Towers the above designation is
nothing less than those annals before adduced.[112] Where is it _there_?
you reply. I rejoin in _Fidh-Nemphed_; which, as it has heretofore puzzled
all the world to develop, I shall unfold to the reader with an almost
miraculous result. _Fidh_, then--as the _Ulster Annals_, or _Fiadh_, as
those of the Four Masters spell it--is the plural of _Budh_, _i.e._
Lingam; the initial _F_ of the former being only the aspirate of the
initial _B_ of the latter, and commutable with it[113]; and _Nemphed_ is
an adjective, signifying _divine_ or _consecrated_, from _Nemph_, the
heavens: so that _Fidh-Nemphed_ taken together will import the
_Consecrated Lingams_, or the _Budhist Consecrations_.

Celestial INDEXES, cries O’Connor; following which _term_--but with a very
different acceptation--the reader must be aware how that, in the early
part of our journey, I ascribed to this _enigma_ an astronomical
exposition; but herein I was supported not only by expediency but by
verity, having, all along, not only connected _Solar_ worship, and its
concomitant survey of the stars--which is _Sabianism_--with _Phallic_
worship,--beginning with the former in order to prepare the way for the
latter,--but shall proceed in detail until I establish their identity.

The Egyptian history, then, of the origin of this deification is what will
put this question beyond the possibility of denial, viz. that “Isis having
recovered the mangled pieces of her husband’s body, the _genitals
excepted_, which the murderers had thrown into the sea, resolving to
render him all the honour which his humanity had merited, got made as many
waxen statues as there were mangled pieces of his body. Each statue
contained a piece of the flesh of the dead monarch. And Isis, after she
had summoned in her presence, one by one, the priests of all the different
deities in her dominions, gave them each a statue, intimating that, in so
doing, she had preferred them to all the other communities of Egypt; and
she bound them by a solemn oath that they would keep secret that mark of
her favour, and endeavour to prove their sense of it by establishing a
form of worship, and paying divine honours to their prince. But that
_part_ of the body of Osiris which had not been discovered, was treated
with more _particular_ attention by Isis, and she ordered that _it_ should
receive _honours more solemn_, and at the same time _more mysterious_,
than the other members.”[114]

Now as Isis[115] and Osiris--two deities, by the way, which comprehended
all nature and all the gods of the ancients--only personated the _Sun_ and
_Moon_, the sources of nutrition and vegetative heat, it is very easy to
remove the veil of this affectionate mythology, and see that it means
nothing more than the mutual dependence and attraction of the sexes upon,
and to, each other; while the fact of the Egyptian “_Osiris_,”[116] which
in _their_ language signifies the _Sun_, and the Irish “_Budh_,” which in
_our language_ signifies the same planet, being _both_ represented by the
_same emblematic sign_;[117] and the _name_ of that sign in both languages
signifying as well _sign_ as _thing_ signified, gives a stamp to my proof
which I defy _ingenuity_ to overthrow.




CHAPTER IX.


What is it, then, that we see here elucidated? Just conceive. For the last
three thousand years and more, the learning of the world has been employed
to ascertain the _origin_ of the doctrine of Budhism. The savants of
France, the indefatigable inquirers of Germany, the affected pedants of
Greece and Rome, and the pure and profound philosophers of ancient India
and Egypt, have severally and ineffectually puzzled themselves to dive
into the secrets of that mystic religion.[118]

“The conflicting opinions,” says Coleman, “which have prevailed among the
most intelligent Oriental writers, respecting the origin and antiquity of
this and the Jaina sects, and the little historical light that has yet
been afforded to disperse the darkness that ages have spread over them,
leave us, at the end of many learned disquisitions, involved in almost as
many doubts as when we commenced upon them.”

“There was, then,” adds Gentil, “in those parts of India, and principally
on the coast of Choromandel and Ceylon, a sort of worship the precepts of
which we are quite unacquainted with. The god Baouth, of whom at present
they know no more in India than the name, was the object of this worship;
but it is now _totally_ abolished, except that there may possibly yet be
found some families of Indians who have remained faithful to Baouth, and
do not acknowledge the religion of the Brahmins, and who are on that
account separated from and despised by the other castes.... I made various
inquiries concerning this singular figure, and the Zamulians one and all
assured me that this was the god Baouth, who was now no longer regarded,
for that his worship and his festivals had been abolished ever since the
Brahmins had made themselves masters of the people’s faith.”

“The worship of Budha,” says Heeren, “concerning the rise and progress of
which we at present know so little, still flourishes in Ceylon.” Again,
“All that we know with certainty of Budha is, that he was the founder of a
sect which must formerly have prevailed over a considerable part of India,
but whose tenets and forms of worship were in direct opposition to those
of the Brahmins, and engendered a deadly hate between the two parties,
which terminated in the expulsion of the Budhists from the country.”[119]

“The real time,” say the _Asiat. Res._ viii. p. 505, “at which Budha
propagated the doctrines ascribed to him, is a desideratum which the
learned knowledge and indefatigable research of Sir W. Jones have still
left to be satisfactorily ascertained.”

“If the Budhaic religion,” says the _Westminster Review_ of January 1830,
“really arrived at predominance in India, its _rise_ in the first place,
and more especially its _extirpation_, are not merely events of stupendous
_magnitude_, but of impenetrable mystery.”

It will soon appear, that however _impenetrable_ heretofore, it is so no
longer. Indeed, a great deal of the principle of their _faith_ has been at
all times understood, but under different associations. It was that which
Job alluded to when he said, “If I gazed upon Orus (the sun) when he was
shining, or upon Järêcha (the moon) when rising in her glory; and my heart
went secretly after them, and my hand kissed my mouth (in worship), I
should have denied the God that is above.”

So far all have arrived at the discovery of this creed, and accordingly,
if you look into any encyclopedia or depository of science for a
definition of the word “Budhism,” you will be told that “it is the
doctrine of solar worship as taught by Budha.” There never was such a
person as Budha--I mean at the outset of the religion, when it first shot
into life, and that was almost as early as the creation of man. In later
times, however, several enthusiasts assumed the name, and personified in
themselves the faith they represented. But the origin of the religion was
an _abstract thought_, which while Creuzer allows, yet he must acknowledge
his ignorance of what that _thought_ was.

The sun and moon were the great objects of religious veneration to fallen
man in the ancient world. Each country assumed a suitable form to their
propensities and peculiarities; but all agreed in centering the essence of
their zeal upon those resplendent orbs to whom they were indebted for so
many common benefits. Those mysteries of faith to which the “_initiated_”
alone had access, and which were disguised in the habiliments of symbols
and of veils, were neither more nor less than representative forms of
_generation_ and _production_. These were the _theme_ which made the
canopy of the firmament to ring with their songs; and these the _spring_
which gave vigour and elasticity to those graceful displays which, under
the name of _dances_, typified the circular and semicircular rotations of
those bright objects of their regard.[120]

The Eleusinian[121] rites themselves were essentially of this kind; for
though the benefits of _agriculture_ were said to be chiefly there
commemorated, this after all resolves itself into the above: for as the
process of the earth’s bearing is similar to that of our own species, and
indeed of all creatures that rest upon her,--no seed bringing forth fruit
until, as the apostle has affirmed,[122] it first dies,--the
representation of this miracle of nature’s vicissitudes led the mind to
the contemplation of general fecundity. And hence the _culture_ of the
ground, and the _propagation_ of human beings, being both viewed in the
same light, and sometimes even named by the same epithet, viz. _tillage_,
were inculcated no less as beneficial exercises than as religious
ordinances. Did a doubt remain as to the accuracy of this connection
between the worship of the ancients and their sexual correspondence, it
would be more than removed by attending to the import of the terms by
which they mystified those celebrations, and which, with the sanctity
attached to the _parts_ themselves, will come consecutively under our
review. One of them, however, is too apposite to be omitted here, and that
is the term by which they designated a certain ceremony still practised on
the coast of Guinea, and which neither the _blandishments_ of _artifice_
nor the _terrors_ of _menace_ could ever prevail upon them to divulge.
This ceremony they call _Belli-Paaro_. The meaning they assign to it is
_regeneration_, or the act of reviving from _death_ to a new state of
existence; and when we see that the name itself is but an inflection of
the _Baal-Peor_ of the Scriptures, the _Baal-Phearagh_ of our forefathers,
and the _Copulative deity_ of the amative universe, it will not be hard to
dive into its character, though so shrouded in types.

But the Budhists, not content with this ordinary veneration, or with
paying homage in _secret_ to that symbol of production which all other
classes of idolators equally, though privately, worshipped,--I mean the
Lingam,--thought they could never carry their zeal sufficiently far,
unless they erected it into an _idol_ of more than colossal
magnitude--_and those idols were the Round Towers_. Hence the name
_Budhism_, which I thus define, viz. _that species of idolatry which
worshipped Budh_ (_i.e._ the Lingam), _as the emblem_ of _Budh_ (_i.e._
the Sun)--Budh signifying, indiscriminately, Sun and Lingam.

Such was the whole substance of this philosophical creed, which was
not--as may have been imagined--a _ritual of sensuality_, but a _manual of
devotion_, as simple in its exercise as it was pious in its intent--a
Sabian veneration and a symbolical gratitude. I shall now give a summary
of their moral code, couched in the following Pentalogue, as presented by
Zaradobeira, chief Rahan at Ava, to a Catholic bishop, who expressed a
wish some years ago to be favoured with a brief outline of their tenets;
it is this:--

1. Thou shalt not kill any animal--from the meanest insect up to man
himself.

2. Thou shalt not steal.

3. Thou shalt not commit adultery.

4. Thou shalt not tell anything false.

5. Thou shalt not drink any intoxicating liquor.

The extension of this first commandment from the crime of homicide to the
deprivation of life of any breathing existence, arose from their doctrine
of the transmigration of souls, which they believed should continue ever
in action, and, after release from one tenement of earthly configuration,
enter into some other of a different species and order.

In this incessant alternation--which was to be one of _ascent_ or of
_descent_, according to the merits of the _body_, which the spirit had
_last_ animated, and which was all considered as a sort of lustral
crucible, for the refining of the vital spark against its reunion with the
Godhead, whence it had originally derived--it is manifest that such
tenderness for the entire animal creation arose from the apprehension of
slaying some relation in that disguise.--Or, did we ascribe it to no
higher motive than a sympathy with fellow-creatures, which, if not equally
responsible, are at all events susceptible of anguish and of pain, this in
itself should teach us to suppress all ebullitions of irreverent sarcasm,
and, if we yield not our acquiescence, to extend to it at least our
commiseration.

  “Pain not the ant that drags the grain along the ground,
  It has life, and life is sweet and delightful to all to whom it
        belongs.”[123]

The _good works_ which they were _additionally_ enjoined to perform were
classified under the two heads of _Dana_ and _Bavana_. By “_Dana_” was
meant the _giving of alms_, and hence the whole fraternity were called
_Danaans_ or _Almoners_.[124] By “_Bavana_” was understood the
_thoughtfully pronouncing_ those three words, _Anuzza_, _Docha_, and
_Anatta_: of which the first implies our liability to _vicissitude_; the
second to _misfortune_, and the third our _inability_ to exempt ourselves
from either.[125]

The exposition of the terms _Tuath_ and _de_, as prefixes to _Danaans_,
forming with it the compound Tuath-de-danaan, I shall reserve for a more
befitting place. Meantime I hasten to redeem my “pledge” as to the
elucidation of the import of the name _Hibernian_.

In the wide range of literary disquisition there is no one topic which has
so engrossed the investigation of studious individuals as the origin of
the word _Hibernia_. The great Bochart, the uncertain Vallancy, the
spiteful Macpherson, the pompous O’Flaherty, and the “antiquary of
antiquaries,” Camden himself,--with a thousand others unworthy of
recognition,--have been all consecutively shipwrecked upon its
unapproachable sand-banks. But the most miserable failure of all is that
of a namesake of my own, _the author of a dictionary upon the language of
his country_, who, in his mad zeal for an outlandish conceit, foists into
his book a term with which our language owns no kindred, and then builds
upon that a superstructure which “would make even the angels weep.”

This gentleman would fain make out[126] that, because those islands have
been denominated the _Cassiterides_, or _Tin Reservoirs_, therefore Eirin,
our own one of them, must have been so called as an _Iron Store_!
forgetting that the genius of our vocabulary has never had a term whereby
to express that _metal_ at all,--that by which we now designate it,
namely, _iarun_, being only a modern _coinage_ from the English word,--as
the general voice of antiquity speaks trumpet-tongued on the point, and
the fragments of our Brehon laws give it insuperable confirmation, that
_iron_ was the last metal which mankind has turned to profit, or even
known to exist, while with us it was an exotic until a very recent
period.[127]

But admitting that _Eirin_ or _Erin_ did signify _the Land of Iron_, then
its Greek formation _Ierne_ must convey the same idea, and so must
_Hibernia_, their Latin inflection; and it would afford me a considerable
portion of merriment to behold any champion for this _iron-cased_ knight
buckle on his _etymological_ armour, and analyse these two last terms so
as to make them indicate the _Land of Iron_.

Yet pitiable as this appears, for the author of an Irish dictionary, its
ingenuity, at all events, must screen it from contempt. But how will the
public estimate the brightness of that man’s intellect, who would state
that _Erin_ is but a _metempsychosis_ of the word _Green_? Will it be
believed that such is the sober utterance of the author of the _Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire_? But lest I should misrepresent, I shall let
him speak for himself, viz.: “Ireland, from its luxuriant vegetation,
obtained the epithet _Green_, and has preserved, with a slight alteration,
the name _Erin_.”[128]

So that a country which piques itself on its _Irishry_, has remained ever
without a cognomen, until the _English_ language has been _matured_; and
then, in compliment to her sister, Britain, has borrowed an adjective from
her _rainbow_, which, however, she had not the good manners to preserve
pure, but allowed to degenerate so far, that the sagacity of a conjurer
could not trace any resemblance between this _vitiation_ and the _original
epithet_ which pourtrayed her _verdure_!

Have we not here the solution of that general disbelief which attaches to
proofs deduced from etymology? It is so in all professions, when quacks
break into the fold, and usurp the office of the legitimate practitioner.
Etymology, in itself, is an exalted _science_, and an _unerring standard_;
but the mountebanks that have intermeddled with her holy tools, and
disjointed the symmetry of her fair proportions, knowing no more of the
_foundation_ of _languages_ than they do of the _origin_ of _spirit_, have
sunk it into a _pandemonium_ of _hackling_, _mangling_, and _laceration_,
at which “the satirist,” perhaps, may laugh, but “the philosopher,” who
has any regard for the right thinking of society, and the implanting in
the tender mind a correct idea of words, at a moment when impressions are
so wrought as to be _ineffaceable_, will feel differently on the subject;
and, if he cannot _reform_, do all that he can to _expose_ it!

How opposite has been the conduct of the learned Abbé MacGeoghegan as to
the origin of this abstruse word! After reviewing in his able work[129]
the opinions offered by the several persons who wrote before him upon the
question, and none of them giving him satisfaction, he freely
acknowledges, when unable to supply the deficiency, that “the derivation
of this name is unknown.” He was right; but the spell is at last broken.

As a sequel to this avowal, I must be allowed to quote at full length the
extract from Avienus,[130] which has been already referred to--

  “Ast hinc, duobus in _Sacram_--sic _Insulam_
  Dixere _prisci_--solibus cursus rati est;
  Hæc inter undas multum cespitem jacit;
  Eamque latè gens _Hibernorum_ colit,
  Propinqua rursus insula Albionum patet,”--

that is, two days’ sail will take you thence (from the Sorlings) to the
_Sacred Island_; as so denominated by the _men of old_. A rich gleby soil
distinguishes this favourite of the waters; and the race of the
_Hibernians_ cultivate it in its wide extent. Close by, again, is situated
the isle of the Albiones.

Without dwelling upon the importance which he attaches to this “Sacred
Island,” while he disposes of England in one single line, I ask any person
at all conversant with letters, whether it was as a vernacular epithet, or
not rather in compliance with his _hexameters_ and the rules of metrical
versification, which rendered inconvenient the exhibition of the _name
itself_ that the poet paraphrased its meaning, and gave _insula sacra_ as
its equivalent?

Is not the country inhabited by the Gauls called Gallia; that occupied by
the Britons, Britannia; that possessed by the Indians, India; that peopled
by the Germans, Germania; and that tenanted by the Arcadians, Arcadia?
Consequently, the land inhabited by the people styled _Hibernians_ must,
by universal analogy, be denominated _Hibernia_. And if this signifies
“Sacred Island,” of course “Hibernian” must mean “an inhabitant of the
Sacred Island.”

Avienus wrote about the three hundredth year of the Christian era, and
cites the authorities whence he derived his information to the following
purpose, viz.:--

“Himilco, the Phœnician, has recorded that he has himself traversed the
ocean, and with his own eyes and senses verified those facts. From the
_remote_ annals of the Phœnicians I copy the same, and present them to you
as handed down from antiquity.”

Himilco, be it remarked, flourished six hundred years before the name of
Christianity was mentioned in the world; and when his acquaintance with
this isle, and that of his countrymen in general, is thus irrefutably
premised, we shall be the more ready to do justice to that observation
made by Tacitus, when, in his _Life of Agricola_, talking of Ireland
relatively to England, he affirmed that “her coasts and harbours were
better known, through commerce and mercantile negotiation,” than those of
the latter country.[131]

Why do I introduce this notice here? To show that it was not to the Latins
Avienus was indebted for his _insight_ into that term, which we thus
pursue. The Romans knew nothing even of the _situation_ of the place that
bore it, until their avarice and their rapacity brought their eagles to
Britain; and, after effecting the subjugation of that heroic island, it is
no small incentive to our vanity to see their historian constrained to
confess that the exhibition of a similar project against the liberties of
Ireland was more with a view to overawe, than from any hopes of
succeeding;[132] while the ignorance which he evinces in another clause of
that very sentence, whence the above extract has been quoted,--placing
Ireland _midway_ between Spain and England,--is proof incontrovertible of
the position which has been assumed.

But it is to me immaterial whether Avienus was aware or otherwise that
“Hibernia” and “Sacred Island” were convertible and synonymous. It is not
by his authority that I mean to establish the fact; for even admitting his
cognisance of the identity of these two terms, he must yet of _necessity_
be unacquainted with the _root_ whence they _both_ had sprung; and,
accordingly, I have only put him here in the foreground--as has been the
plan all through--“to break the ice,” as it were, for the exordium of the
promised _dénouement_.

_Iran_, then, and _Irin_, or, as more correctly spelled, _Eirean_ and
_Eirin_, with an _e_ prefixed to each of the other vowels, as well initial
as intermediate, is the characteristic denomination which all our ancient
_manuscripts_ affix to this country. There is no exception to this
admitted rule. From the romance to the annal, the observation holds good;
it is an _inalienable_ landmark, and of _inviolable_ unanimity.

Dionysius of Sicily, who wrote about fifty years before the _Advent_, and
who cannot be suspected of much partiality towards our forefathers, calls
the land they inhabited by the name of _Irin_.[133] Nor will the
circumstance of his applying to it in another place, the variation _Iris_,
detract from this fact; as it is evident that he only manufactured this
latter, having occasion to use a nominative case which he thought that
_Irin_ would not well represent, and so, with the lubricity of a Greek,
ever sacrificing sense to sound,[134] he gave birth to a conception which
_strangled_ the original.[135]

In the _Life of Gildas_, an early and eminent English ecclesiastic, we
find it called _Iren_, when the biographer, talking of the proficiency
made by his subject in literary pursuits, says that he betook himself to
_Ireland_, which he designates as above, in order to ascertain, by
communion with kindred teachers, the very utmost recesses of theology and
philosophy.[136]

Ordericus Vitalis, in his _Ecclesiastical History_,[137] having occasion
to mention the _Irish_, calls them by the name of _Irenses_, equivalent to
_Iranians_, that is _inhabitants_ of _Iran_, _Iren_, or _Irin_, whichever
of them you happen to prefer. And as these are now established as the
_basis_ of our general search, I shall address myself without further
digression to their syllabic analysis.

To do this the more effectually, and at the same time to comprise within
one dissertation what otherwise might encroach upon two, it is to be
noticed that the country known in the present day as _Persia_, and whither
our labours will be directed at no distant hour, was by its _primitive_
inhabitants called _Iran_ also, and spelled as ours, with an initial _E_.
The prefixing of this letter, in both instances of its occurrence, whether
we regard the _Eastern_ or the _Western_ hemisphere, was neither the
result of chance, nor intended as an operative in the import of the term.
It was a mere _dialectal_ distinction, appertaining to the court-language
of the dynasty of the times, and what is astoundingly miraculous, retains
the same appellation, with literal precision, unimpaired, unadulterated,
in both countries, up to the moment in which I write.

_Palahvi_[138] is the appellation of this courtly dialect in _Persia_, and
_Palahver_ is the epithet assigned to it in _Ireland_; and such is the
softness and mellifluence of its enchanting tones, and its energy also,
that to soothe care, to excite sensibility, or to stimulate heroism, it
may properly be designated as “the language of the gods.”

Thus we see that Ireland and Persia were both called _Iran_; that both
equally admitted of the change of this name to _Eiran_; and that the
_style_ of this variation was similarly characterised in both. How, then,
will the _empyrics_ of etymology recover their confusion: they who would
persuade us that Ireland was so denominated from _Iar_, the
_West_--unless, indeed, they can substitute _East_ for _West_, and show
that Persia was denominated from _Iar_ also.[139] Entangled in this
dilemma, the amiable old General Vallancy, without intimating, however,
that _it_ was what extorted his remark,--after rigidly maintaining through
a series of volumes, that the word had its origin in the above exploded
_Western_ Will o’ the Wisp,--exclaims, in a sentiment of unconscious
self-conviction, that “nothing more can be said of this derivation than
that the name was common to that part of the globe whence they (who
imported it) originally came.”[140]

Arrived, then, at length, at the _fountain-head_ of our inquiry, how shall
we account for it in “that part of the globe whence we originally came”? I
have seen but two efforts to develop the word, as applied to that
quarter: one by Professor Heeren, of the Göttingen University; the other
by “a learned priest of the Parsees,” as recorded by Sir John Malcolm, the
late lamented author of a history of the place itself. And as the former
of these is rather _humorous_, and as the latter contains in it a small
_ingredient of truth_, it is worth while to parade them in the _tail_ of
our inspection.

“Anciently,” says the professor, “they were called by the Orientals
themselves by the common term of _Iran_, and the inhabitants, inasmuch as
they possessed _fixed_ habitations and laws, were styled _Iranians_, in
opposition to the _Turanians_, or _wandering_ hordes of Central
Asia.”[141]

I wonder did the German _historian_ take his cue from the conjecture of
the Irish _lexicographer_? It is literally marvellous if he did not; for,
by a most unaccountable coincidence, while tracing the foundation of a
name, descriptive of two localities at opposite points of this mundane
ball, one boldly asserts, and the other more than insinuates, that its
root is to be found in one and the same _English_ word!--and this, too,
when those countries were blazing in glory, before three words of the
English language were broken into train!

A difference, however, breaks out amongst those partners, which seems to
sever the prospects of their _metallic_ union. It is, that though each
would make _iron_ to be the substratum of their respective hobbies, yet
would _my namesake_ have his so called as _abounding_ therein; whereas,
the _professor_, who betrays a respectable insight into geology, and
fearing that the womb of _Persia_ could not conceive so hard an ore,
wishes us at once to believe that it acquired its _ancient_ epithet from
the _fixedness_ of that metal; and thus would one _ex abundantiâ_, and the
other _ex similitudine_, have the common name of _Iran_ for Ireland and
for Persia be derived from an _English_ word, which was not concocted for
many centuries after the _decay_ of those two regions, when the very metal
it represented first grew into use![142]

“Moullah Feroze, an excellent Palahvi scholar, tells me,” says Sir John
Malcolm, “that _Iran_ is the plural of _Eir_, and means _the country of
believers_.” And again, when he had occasion to consult his oracle, he
states the answer as follows:--

“I gave this inscription[143] to Moullah Feroze, a learned priest of the
Parsees, at Bombay, and he assured me that the translation of De Sacy was
correct. Feroze explained the word _An-Iran_ to mean _unbelievers_. _Eer_,
he informed me, was a Pehlivi word, which signified _believer_; _Eeran_
was its plural: in Pehlivi, the _a_ or _an_ prefixed is a privative, as in
Greek or Sanscrit; and consequently, _An-Eeran_ meant _unbelievers_. The
king of _Eeran_ and _An-Eeran_ he interpreted to mean king of _believers_
and _unbelievers_; _of_ Persia and other nations. It was, he said, a title
like king of the world. This however,” adds Sir John, of himself, “is like
all _conjectures_ founded on etymology, very uncertain.”

It was natural enough that Sir John should express himself slightingly as
to a mode of proof, the principle of which he must have seen violated in
so many instances; and, independently of this, it is an infirmity in human
nature to affect disregard for any knowledge which we do not ourselves
understand. I do not mean, however, to vindicate Feroze’s interpretation;
on the contrary, I purpose to show that it is not only _imperfect_, but
_incorrect_; yet while doing so, I am bound to acknowledge, that, if he
has not hit off the whole truth, he has a part of it; and even _this_ is
such a treat, in the wilderness through which we have been groping for
some time back, that I welcome it as an _oasis_, and offer him my thanks
thus beforehand.

To prove however, that he is in error, I need but confine myself to the
unravelling of his own words. At first he affirms that _Eeran_ is the
plural of _Eer_, and means the _country of believers_; if so, the singular
must mean _the country of a believer_; but he tells us afterwards, that
_Eer_ signifies _a believer_ alone, consequently _Eeran_ must _believers_
alone, without any consideration of the word _country_. And the same
inconsistency, which manifests itself here, applies with equal strictness
to _An-Eiran_ also.

Should these papers ever reach the observance of this distinguished
foreigner, whom I appreciate even for his _approximation_ to the precincts
of the _thought_, they will, I doubt not, readily disabuse him of a
_radical_ misconception. _Eeran_ is not a _plural_ at all, but a
_compound_ word: its constituents being _Eer_ and _An_,[144] of which the
former signifies _Sacred_ and the latter a _Territory_. So that the united
import will be the _Sacred Territory_; and _An-Eeran_, of course, is but
its negative.

This exposition I gain from the Irish language, which I take to be the
primitive Iranian or Persic language. By it I am furthermore enabled to
inform the _German_ “professor” that _Turan_, though now inhabited by
“Nomad tribes,” obtained not its name from that circumstance, but from a
widely different one. Tur[145] means _prolific_, whether as regards
_population_ or _rural produce_; and _An_, as before, a territory--the
whole betokening a _prolific territory_.[146] And he should remember, what
he is not at all unconscious of, that eastern denominations are not varied
by recent occupants, but continue in uninterrupted succession, from age to
age, as imposed at the outset.




CHAPTER X.


Thus far have Ireland and Persia kept company together, both equally
rejoicing in the common name of _Iran_. But now, when we descend to
particulars, this harmony separates. Ireland being an _island_ surrounded
on all sides by water--which Persia is not--it was necessary it should
obtain a denomination expressive of this accident; or, at all events, when
the alteration was so easily formed as by the change of the final _an_
into _in_--_an_ meaning _land_, and _in island_--the transition was so
natural as at once to recommend its propriety.

Hence it is that though we occasionally meet with _Iran_, as applied to
this country, yet do we more frequently find _Irin_ as its distinctive
term; whereas the latter is never, by any chance, assigned to Persia, the
former alone being its universal name. And this is all conformable to the
closest logical argumentation, which teaches that every species is
contained in its genus, but that no genus is contained in its species;
_Irin_, therefore, which is the specific term, may also be called _Iran_
the generic, while _Iran_--except as in _our_ instance, where the
_extension_ of both is identical--could never be called _Irin_: and so it
happens that _Ireland_ is indifferently called by the names of _Iran_ or
_Irin_, the latter alone marking its _insular_ characteristic; whereas
_Persia_, not being so circumstanced, is mentioned only by the general
form of _Iran_.

To simplify this reasoning I must repeat that _Iran_[147] signifies the
_Sacred Land_, and _Irin_,[148] the _Sacred Island_; now every _island_ is
a _land_, but every _land_ is not an island: Persia, therefore, which is
_not an island_, could not be called _Irin_, whereas Ireland, _which is_,
may as well be called one as the other.[149]

_Irin_, then, is the _true_, _appropriate_, _characteristic_ and
_specific_ denomination belonging to this island:--and the words Ire, Eri,
Ere,[150] and Erin, applied also thereto, are but vicious or dialectal
modifications of this grand, original, and ramifying root.

The import of this appellative having spread itself over the globe before
Rome was ever known, under that name, as a city, and when Greece was but
just beginning to peep into the light, the Pelasgi--who were partly
Budhists, allied somewhat to them in religion, and still more akin in
birth and endowments--conveyed, in conjunction with the Phœnician
merchants, to the early Greek inhabitants;[151] and they, by a very easy
process, commuted _Irin_ to _Iérne_, which is but a translation of the
word--ἱερος signifying _sacred_, and νηος an island.

Of this Greek form, Ierne, there were again various inflections and
depraved assimilations, such as Iernis, Iuernia, Ouvernia, Vernia, etc.
And from one[152] of those, the Latins, without, perhaps, exactly knowing
what it meant, conjured up _Hibernia_, but which, however, with
soul-stirring triumph, retains _uninjured_ our original root, the initial
_H_ being nothing more than the aspirate of the Greek ἱερος, sacred; νηος,
_island_, remaining unaltered; and the letter _b_ only interposed for
sound-sake.[153]

So that, whether we consider it as _Irin_, _Ierne_, or _Hibernia_, or
under the multiplied variations which diverge, almost interminably, from
those _three originals_, in the several languages which they
_respectively_ represent, they will be found, each and all, to resolve
themselves into this _one, great, incontrovertible position of the_
“Sacred Island.”

Thus, under heaven, have I been made the humble instrument of redeeming my
country from the aspersions of calumniators. I have shown to
_demonstration_ the real origin of its _sanctified_ renown. I have traced
from the _Irish_, through all the variations of _Greek_ and _Latin_
capricios, its _delineatory_ name; and have proved, beyond the possibility
of rational contradiction, that in all those different changes regard was
still held to the original epithet.

Where, then, are the sneers--of “hallucination,”--of “lunacy,”--and of
“etymological moonshine?” These are very cheap and convenient terms for
gentlemen to adopt, as cloaks to the ignorance of the purport of
denominations imposed at a time when every _word_ was a _history_. In the
early ages of the world whimsicality never mingled with the
circumstantial designation of either person or locality. Every name was
the sober consequence of deliberate circumspection; and was intended to
transmit the memory of events, in the truest colours, as well as in the
most comprehensive form, to the latest generation.

Will this be considered the _vapouring_ of conceit? Is it the _spouting_
of self-sufficient inanity? Let the heartless _utilitarian_, unable to
appreciate the motives which first enlisted me in this inquiry, and which
still fascinate my zeal, at an age when--did not my love for _truth_ and
the rectification of my country’s history _rise superior_ to the
mortification of _alienated_ honour--I should have flung from me letters
and literature in disgust, and betaken myself, an adventurer for
distinction as a soldier,--let such, I say, _conceal within himself_ his
despicable worldly-mindedness, and leave me unmolested, if unrewarded, to
posterity.

  “Come thou, my friend, my genius, come along,
  Thou master of the poet and the song,
  And while the muse now stoops, or now ascends,
  To man’s low passions, or his glorious ends,
  Teach me, like thee, in various nature wise,
  To fall with dignity--with temper rise;
  Formed by thy converse happily to steer
  From grave to gay, from lively to severe;
  Correct with spirit, eloquent with ease;
  Intent to reason, or polite to please.”

The origin of the term “Sacred Island,” being now for ever adjudicated,
the reader will at once see that it belonged to an era long anterior to
Christianity. In assigning to it this _date_,[154] I pretend not to be
_unique_; and, as I should not wish to deprive any brow of the laurels
which it has earned--more especially, where an undisputed enjoyment has
amounted to _prescription_--I shall register, in express words, my
predecessor’s own exposé, which is, that “the isle must have been so named
_because of its nurturing no venomous reptile_”[155]!!! Who will not
smile?

No, sir, the imposers of this name were too sensible of its value, and too
jealous of its use, to expose it to ambiguity. It pourtrayed the sanctity
of the occupying proprietors; and lest there should be any misconception
as to the _species_ of worship whence that “sanctity” had emanated, they
gave _this scene_ of its exercise three other names, viz. _Fuodhla_, _Fudh
Inis_, and _Inis-na-Bhfiodhbhadh_[156]--which at once associate the
“worship” with the _profession_ of the worshippers: for _f_, or _ph_,
being only the aspirate of _b_, and commutable with it, _Fuodhla_--which
is compounded of _Fuodh_ and _ila_, this latter signifying _land_--becomes
_Buodhla_--that is, Budh_land_.[157] _Fudh Inis_, by the same rule, is
reducible to _Budh Inis_, of which the latter means _island_, that is,
Budh-_island_;[158] while _Inis_-na-_Bhfiodhbhadh_ requires no
transposition, being clear and obvious in itself, as the _Island of
Budhism_.

Now, “to make assurance doubly sure,” go to _Keating’s History of
Ireland_, p. 49, and you will there find “the female deities”--an
incorrect expression for the deities worshipped by the females--of the
Tuath-de-danaans, to have been Badhha, Macha, and Moriagan.[159] Of these
the first needs no exposition; the second I shall reserve for another
place, but the third I will here develop. He was the military deity of
this “sacred” colony, and a personification of Budh, under the designation
of Farragh,[160] _i.e._ _Copulation_; and, accordingly, the Scythians, who
incorporated with them, after first dethroning them, adopted this term as
their exhilarating war-shout, while under the veil of the epithet was
really meant the _sun_, whose aid they invoked to give _strength_ to their
_loins_ and _vigour_ to their _arms_.[161]

And yet this is the name which _Spenser_ would derive from that of Fergus,
king of Scotland! Fifteen hundred years and more before Fergus was born,
which, by the way, was not until the sixth century of the Christian era,
the Irish basked in the _sunshine_ of their resplendent war-god, who,
under another and equivalent denomination, viz. Buodh, abbreviated into
_Boo_,[162] and thus with the prefix _a_, implying _to_, or _under the
auspices of_--assumed by the different septs as their distinctive
watchwords, branched out into the national and spirit-stirring
acclamations of _O’Brien_ a-Boo![163] O’Neil a-Boo! etc. etc.; which the
early English settlers, who would fain become _Hibernis ipsis
Hiberniores_, afterwards imitated: such as Butler a-Boo; Shanet-a-Boo;
Grasagh a-Boo; Crom a-Boo, etc.; the last having been that adopted by
Fitzgerald, Duke of Leinster, and still retained as the motto of his
armorial escutcheon.

It is worth while to listen to Spenser’s _gratulation_, while chuckling
himself with the idea of his fancied discovery: “This observation of
yours,” he says to himself, “is very _good_ and _delightful_, far beyond
the _blind conceits_ of some, who upon the same word Farragh have made a
very _blunt_ conjecture.” _Oh patria! Oh mores!_ how little is known of
Ireland! But I am not surprised at _foreigners_, when the very _natives_,
the descendants of the _actors_ in those glorious scenes, are ignorant of
its history!

Take up any document, purporting to give an account of this country, and
you will find it to be composed, either of absurd and nauseous
_exaggerations_ on the one hand, or of gross and calumnious _detractions_
on the other. But though the _wildness_ of the _former_ cannot fail to
generate, in the intellectual amongst all readers, an _unfavourable
impression_; and in those of a different nation, already prejudiced, or
mayhap incapable of separating the gold from the baser metal,
_incredulity_ and _contempt_; yet the _true Irish searcher_, versed in the
antiquities, not only of his own dear “father-land,” but of the kindred
East, which maintained in the old world a religious and incessant
communication with this “Sacred Isle,” will glean in the distortion of
those _maniac effusions_, the _glimmerings_ of that _truth_ whence they
originally emanated--while the _injustice_ of the _calumniator’s_ must,
_of itself_ bring dismay, with the whole train of confusion and dishonour,
upon the mercenary instruments of those foul abuses, as well as upon the
heartless abettors who could have enlisted their vassalage!

Truth, notwithstanding, obliges me to say that the blame should not
altogether be laid upon the historians. They did as much as, under the
circumstances, could be expected at their hands. Two successive invasions
having passed over, and swept away, in the whirlwind of their desolating
fury, all those monuments of learning to which the world had bowed just
before--one from _innate antipathy_ to the _thing_ itself; the other from
_apprehension_ that the contents of those memorials, acting upon the
sensibilities of a high-hearted and proud race, should stimulate their
ardour to the recovery of their lost rights, and the consequent ejectment
of the party who had usurped them[164]--the patriot had little more to
guide him in supplying the deficiencies thus created, than the rude
imagining of his own brain, or the oral traditions of the village
schoolmaster and genealogist.

The rigour, however, of penal observances began, in time, gradually to
relax; and the people ventured to confess that they had still in their
possession such things as _manuscripts_, illustrative of their lineage and
ancestral elevation. This was the signal to some liberal individuals to
prosecute an inquiry for additional memorials; and the result was, that
they rose from the pursuit, if not with a _connected aggregate of
demonstrational evidence_, at least with a _conviction_ on their _minds_,
that those treasured visions of primeval lustre, hereditary and inborn
within the breast of every Irishman, and impossible to be eradicated, were
not yet, _late as was the hour_, without something like a basis to rest
upon.

I would be unjust did I not furthermore avow, that it was not their
enemies alone that waged this ungenerous warfare with the literature of
the Irish. St. Patrick himself was the individual who, in pursuance, as he
conceived, of his apostolic charge, may be said to have perpetrated the
greatest outrage upon our antiquities; having set fire, in a paroxysm of
pious zeal, to no less than _one hundred and eighty volumes_, which he
selected from the great mass of the records of the nation, as embodying
the tenets of _Budhism_ and _Astrology_. The rest, relating to the
notification of national or personal achievements, he left untouched and
secure.

Yet, will it be believed that this was the severest infliction, so far as
_letters_ are concerned, which we have sustained, after all? For as the
_religion_ of the ancient Irish was intermingled with their _history_, and
as the wide diffusion of their _celebrity_ arose from the eminence of
their _religious creed_, the flames of that conflagration have inflicted a
loss upon the antiquarian which _fifteen centuries of study_ have not been
able to repair!

Despite, however, the united inroads of suspicion and mistaken piety, the
Irish have still materials, ample and authentic, for the completion of a
history, not only of _insular_, but, if _properly handled_, of almost
_universal_ elucidation:[165] and of this Toland himself was, in some
measure, aware, when he said that “notwithstanding the long state of
barbarity in which that nation hath lain, and after all the rebellions and
wars with which the kingdom has been harassed, they (the Irish) have
_incomparably_ more ancient materials of that kind for their history, to
which even their _mythology is not unserviceable_, than either the
English, or the French, or any other European nation with whose ancient
manuscripts I have any acquaintance.”

But though resources most unquestionable thus notoriously still abounded,
yet has it not been the fortune of Ireland, hitherto, to meet with any
historian gifted with the widely comprehensive, philosophical views and
suitable education calculated to do her justice; so that, by the untoward
hand of fate, and the iniquitous operation of the old political stroke,
the knowledge of the character in which those papers are couched has
become already so almost extinct, that they lie on the shelves, to all
intents and purposes a _dead_ letter.[166]

I now beg leave to introduce this identical war-god, in his military
costume and hyperborean philabeg, in which, as before observed, the
Scythians never invested themselves; and hope the reader will enjoy a
hearty laugh at the expense of those blunderers, who, in their
_preposterous_, I had almost said _repentant_, devotion to monastic
refinements, would rob the Pagans of this long-cherished _idol_, and
convert his godship into a _Christian_ nonentity!

You will find him--name and all corresponding--described fully in the
_Rites and Ceremonies of all Nations_, as similarly officiating and
worshipped in the East. “There is,” says the author, “in the province of
Matambo, an _idol_ whose priests are _sorcerers_ or _magicians_; and this
image stands _upright_, directly over against the temple dedicated to his
peculiar service, in a _basket made in the form of a bee-hive_.”[167]

[Illustration]

“To this deity in particular they apply themselves for success when they
go out a _hunting_ or _fishing_, and for the relief of all such as are
indisposed![168] _Miramba always marches at the head of their armies_;
and he is presented with the first delicious morsel, and the first glass
of wine that is served up at the governor’s or King of Matambo’s table.”

But a _living_ traveller, in a very interesting work just launched from
the press, and without expecting therein to become my auxiliary, decides
this ascription without further pains. “This village,” says our author
(near Rampore, on the Himalaya range), “instanced the care which the
sacerdotal orders in the East take for their comfort and good. It was a
neat, clean, and substantial place, in all acceptations of the word. These
Brahmin villagers pay no rent of any kind to the state: they live on the
granted lands, but are obliged to keep the _temples_ in repair, to furnish
all the implements, and to take care of the godships within it--these are
_small brass images, with nether garments in the shape of petticoats_.
They are carried in procession, on certain occasions, and the ceremonies
belonging to them are performed twice a day. Mahadeo is the great god of
the mountains.”[169]

But if the advocates of modernism have cause to be annoyed at my depriving
them of this specimen of “the Fine Arts in Ireland,” which they thought
they had appropriated to the prejudice of truth, how much greater must not
be their chagrin at my wrenching from their grasp another “exceedingly
curious” and “richly-ornamented” “ecclesiastic?”[170] Ecclesiastic,
indeed! Yes; but reverenced and revered, by many a beating heart, as the
head of all ecclesiastics, for centuries upon centuries, before the name
of monachism, as connected with Christianity, was ever articulated!

[Illustration]

This, Sir, is no less a personage than Mr. Budha himself, or rather the
personified abstract, in the possession of one of the last queens of the
Tuath-de-danaans, at the moment of the inundation of the Scythian dynasty.
I hope that, after so long an obscuration, and the uncourtly treatment he
has received during the humiliating interval of revolving centuries, you
will--now that he chooses to reveal his proper character, avow his
delegation, and acknowledge the supremacy of that power by which his
empire had been overthrown--treat him as an _Irishman_, with generous
cordiality, and impute not to him a crime which belonged only to his
followers.

But his dress is like a Christian. So much the better, man: we ought to
like him the more for that. But to be serious,--although, as my friend
Horace formerly told me, “what hinders one laughing from speaking
truth?”--all our ecclesiastical ritual, as well of _ceremony_ as of
_costume_, has been borrowed from the Jewish, and that again from the
Pagans, with such alterations only as the allwise Jehovah thought
necessary to recommend. Besides, we have the authority of Dr. Buchanan for
stating that “_Samona_ is a title bestowed on the priests of Godama
(Budha), and is likewise applied to the _images_ of the _divinity_, when
_represented, as he commonly is_, in the _priestly habit_.”[171]




CHAPTER XI.


_Pharaoh_,[172] the titular appellation of the monarchs of Egypt, being
but the _local modification_ of this our Irish _Phearagh_, the mind is
instinctively directed towards that great storehouse of bygone
consequence. And as the best authority that we can command in gaining any
insight into its reverses is through the medium of its own historians, let
us hear what Manetho, a priest of the country, thus transmits:--

“We had formerly,” says he, “a king named Timæus, in whose reign, I know
not why, but it pleased God to visit us with a blast of His displeasure;
when, on a sudden, there came upon this country a large body of _obscure
people_ from the East, and with great boldness invaded the land, and took
it without opposition. Their behaviour to the natives was very barbarous;
for they slaughtered the men, and made slaves of their wives and children.
The whole body of this people were called _Huksos_, or _Uksos_; that is,
Royal Shepherds: for the first syllable, in the _sacred dialect_,
signifies a ‘king,’ as the latter, in the popular language, signifies ‘a
shepherd.’ These two compounded together constitute the word Huksos. These
people are said to have been Arabians.”

“The Vedas, or Sanscrit records of Hindustan, furthermore state that these
invaders were the “Pali,” or shepherds, a powerful, warlike, and
enterprising Indian tribe. While the deadly aversion which existed in the
minds of the Egyptians against the name and office of a shepherd in
Joseph’s day, is a lasting memorial of their visit and their
severity.”[173]

They did not go, however, without leaving behind them other signs. The
pages of Herodotus afford ample evidence of the resemblance between the
Egyptian customs and those of the more remote East. By his description of
the rites and ceremonies, the mode of life, etc., of the priests of Egypt,
they are at once identified with the Brahmins of India. China still
celebrates that festival of lamps which was formerly universal throughout
the extent of Egypt;[174] and “we have the most indubitable authority for
stating that the sepoys in the British overland army from India, when they
beheld in Egypt the ruins of Dendera, prostrated themselves before the
remains of the ancient temples, and offered up adoration to them;
declaring, upon being asked the reason of this strange conduct, _that_
they _saw sculptured_ before them the Gods of their country.”[175]

But the most stupendous and appalling memento of their dominion and
science was the three great pyramids of Geeza, the erection of which,
Herodotus assures us (bk. ii. sec. 128), though the _priests_ would
attribute to Cheops, Cephrenes, and Mycerinus, three Egyptian kings, “yet
the _people_ ascribed them to a _shepherd_ named Philitis, _who at that
time fed his cattle_ in those places”; so consonant with the _invasion_
above authenticated. This is additionally confirmed by the Sanscrit
records already referred to, informing us of _three mountains_, Rucm-adri,
“the Mount of Gold,” Rajat-adri, “the Mount of Silver,” and Retu-adri,
“the Mount of Gems”; having been raised by that Indian colony who had
conquered Egypt; which is only a figurative denotation of those
_factitious heights_, those astounding monuments of religion and
ostentation, which were originally cased with _yellow_, _white_, and
_spotted marbles_, brought from the quarries of Arabia, until stripped by
the rapacity of succeeding colonies.

Belzoni’s testimony is decisive on this point, as his drawing of the
second pyramid represents the upper part of its casing remaining still
entire, about a third of the distance from the summit to the base
downwards. We meet with other pyramids, it is true, chiefly dispersed
about the Libyan deserts, but they are much inferior to the fore-mentioned
three, except one near the mummies, whose dimensions and structure are
very nearly the same with the largest Gezite one. This latter, according
to Greaves, is 693 feet square at the base; its perpendicular height 499
feet; that is, 62 feet higher than St. Peter’s at Rome, and 155 feet
higher than St. Paul’s in London; while the inclining height is 693 feet,
exactly equal to the breadth of the base; so that the angles and base make
an equilateral triangle.[176] Belzoni measures them all differently, and
gives to the second even greater dimensions than are _usually_ assigned to
the first or largest, viz. base, 684; perpendicular height, 456; central
line down front, from apex to base, 568; coating, from top to where it
ends, 140.

The variation arises from the circumstance of the latter gentleman’s
measurement having been taken after the base had been cleared away of all
sand and rubbish; while those of his predecessors applied only as taken
from the level of the surrounding heap. The small ones above noticed are
some quadrilateral, _some round, terminating like a sugar-loaf_, some
rising with a greater and some with a lesser inclination. All commence
immediately south of Cairo, but on the opposite side of the Nile, and
extend, in an uninterrupted range, for many miles in a southerly
direction, parallel with the banks of the river.

After what has been said above, I need scarcely allude to the ridiculous
supposition of those having been built by Joseph as granaries for his
corn! Their form and construction, ill adapted to such an occasion,
refutes that absurdity, as it does the derivation upon which it has been
founded, viz. the _Greek_ words πυρος, wheat, and αμαω, I gather; as if,
forsooth, an _Egyptian_ structure, erected before the _Greek_ language was
ever known to exist, should wait for a designation until Greece should be
pleased to christen it. Still more disposed must one be to discard with
contempt the usual derivation given them, of πυρ, fire; as this not only
labours under the weakness of the former, but betrays an ignorance of the
correct idea of the Greek word πυρος, of which πυρ, fire, is the true
derivation, “quia flammæ instar in _acutum_ tendit”;[177] intimating its
_continually tapering_ until it ends in a _point_; whereas the top of the
Egyptian _pyramids_ never does so end; that of the largest above described
ending in a flat of nine stones, besides two wanting at the angles, each
side of this platform being about sixteen feet; so that a considerable
number of people may stand on it, and have, as from most of ours, one of
the most beautiful prospects imaginable.

Wilkins’s derivation from _pouro_, a king, and _misi_, a race, would seem
plausible enough, being a purely Coptic or Egyptian analysis; but when we
consider the general ascription of them by the people to the _shepherd
Philitis_, whether as one of the _Pali_--that is, shepherds--or Uksi,
which meant the same--king-shepherds above adduced; or as _emphatically
the shepherd_, the son of Israel,[178] it argues a disposition on the part
of the people to assign the honour--if taken in the latter light--to the
workmen employed; if in the former, to a prince of a different dynasty
from those whom the Egyptian priests would fain associate with them. This
derivation, therefore, will not stand; and we have only to betake
ourselves to the ingenious conjecture of Lacroze,[179] which, perhaps,
may give more satisfaction respecting the etymology of the word _pyramid_.
Lacroze derives it from the _Sanscrit term_ Biroumas, and traces an
analogy between Brahma, Birma (which the Indians of Malabar pronounce
Biroumas), and the word Piromis, which means the same thing, namely, a
virtuous and upright character--Piromia meaning, according to him, in the
language of Ceylon, man in general.

Herodotus states,[180] that the priests of Egypt kept in a spacious
building large images of wood, representing all their preceding _high
priests_, arranged in genealogical order, every high priest placing his
image there during his life. They mentioned to Hecatæus, the historian,
when they were showing this edifice to him, that each of the images he saw
represented a _Piromis_, begotten by another _Piromis_, which word, says
Herodotus, signifies, in their language, a _virtuous_ and _honest man_. A
passage from Synesius, the celebrated bishop of Cyrene, in his treatise
“on Providence,” at once coincides with, and is illustrative of this
anecdote. “The father of Osiris and Typhon,” says he, “was at the same
time a _king_, a _priest_, and a _philosopher_. The Egyptian histories
also rank him among the gods; for the Egyptians are disposed to believe
that many divinities reigned in their country in succession before it was
governed by men, and before their kings were reckoned in a genealogical
order by _Peirom_ after Peirom.”

The Japanese celebrate an annual festival in honour of one _Pireun_, who,
they say, was many ages ago king of _Formosa_, and who, being disgusted
with the abandoned morals of his subjects--wealthy traders--consigned
himself solely to the worship of the gods. Forewarned in a dream, he took
flight from the impending visitation, and had scarcely sailed ere the
island, with its inhabitants, sunk to the bottom of the sea. As for the
good king, he arrived safe in China, whence he went over to Japan, where
he has been ever since honoured by the above commemoration.

The true Coptic name for those edifices is Pire monc--which signifies a
_sunbeam_[181]--not so much in allusion to their _form_ as to their
appropriation, which we shall make the subject of a separate inquiry.

It has, I trust, satisfactorily been proved that the erection and
nomination of those wondrous edifices were not of _native_ growth. It has,
I trust, additionally appeared that _both_ were essentially Indian. It may
not now be “ungermane to the matter,” if we would for a moment digress, to
consider the era of their probable date, as introductory to the character
of their probable destination.

Josephus expressly informs us that the Israelites were employed in the
construction of the pyramids. Is there any reason why we should doubt so
respectable an authority? Oh, yes, it is said the Scriptures are against
it--the task of the Israelites during their bondage being exclusively
confined to the making of brick. I deny that the Scriptures either allege
or insinuate any such thing. On the contrary, we may fairly infer, from
Ex. ix. 8, 10, that they were engaged in other servile offices; as also
from Ps. lxxxi. 6, where it is said, “I removed his shoulder from the
_burden_, and his hands were delivered from the _mortar-box_”--not _pots_,
as our translation has it; and such rendering is supported by the
Septuagint, Vulgate, Symmachus, and others.[182]

This ascription receives further countenance from a passage in Diodorus,
i. 2, where, referring to those immense piles, and the ideas of the
Egyptians themselves respecting them, he adds: “They say the first was
erected by Armæus, the second by Amosis, the third by Inaron.” Who is it
that pronounces the last two names, if only spelled, aMosis and inAron,
and recollects, at the same time, what the Scriptures tell us of Moses and
Aaron, that is not at once struck with the similarity of the sound? And as
to Armæus, why it bears so evident an affinity with Aramæus or Aramean,
that one cannot avoid connecting it with the “Aramite ready to perish,”
the very name given to Jacob, Deut. xxvi. 5.[183] Nothing, then, prevents,
so far as I can see, our concluding _one_ of those structures at least--I
say one at least to _conciliate_ the brick-party; and I think, besides, I
have read somewhere, that one of the pyramids, the smaller ones no doubt,
was built of such material--to have been the work of the sons of Israel.
And the rather as it was consonant with the uniform practice of the
ancient Oriental nations to employ captive foreigners on servile and
laborious works.

The usual time, too, assigned to the slavery of the Israelites corresponds
very nearly with that generally allotted to the erection of those masses.
The stay of the sons of Israel in the land of Egypt is generally
understood to have been two hundred and fifteen years. Of these Joseph
ruled seventy; forty is a fair average for the generation that
succeeded--which, added to his seventy, leaves one hundred and five years
to the Exodus. Now we learn from Herodotus that Cheops, the _reputed_
founder of the first or greatest of these pyramids, was the first also of
the Egyptian kings who oppressed, or in any way tyrannised over, his
subjects. His reign is stated to have been fifty years. Cephrenes, who
succeeded, showed himself in every respect his brother, barring, as the
other before him, the approach to every temple, stopping the performance
of the usual sacrifices, and keeping his subjects all the while employed
in every species of oppressive task and laborious drudgery. The period of
his reign is stated to have been fifty-six years, which, added to the
preceding fifty, make one hundred and six, exactly answering to the above
calculation.

The Exodus, besides, is stated to have occurred B.C. 1791; and Herodotus
and Diodorus together, while acknowledging their ignorance of the actual
date of the pyramids, and the impossibility, on their part, to ascertain
it, declare also their conviction that they must have been built at least
about that period.

I have thus, I trust, done honourable justice to the testimony of
Josephus. I have done so for many reasons--firstly, because of the
importance of the subject itself; secondly, from my respect for the merits
of the writer; and, thirdly, because that I think it very probable indeed
that the Israelites may have been occupied in the erection of some of the
minor and later pyramids. But _insuperable_ obstacles stand in the way of
our associating them with the structure of them _all_; and of these _one_
is, the improbability that the victorious invaders would single out the
inoffensive Israelites as particular objects of their oppression, when
policy should suggest to them a directly different course in securing
their adherence in opposition to the native residents. By Josephus’s
account, however, it would appear that the Israelites alone were engaged
upon those edifices; and the Scriptures themselves confine the intimation
of drudgery to the Israelitish race: it therefore is manifest that the
Egyptian _natives_ were favoured by the _then existing_ dynasty, while it
is on all hands agreed, that the _new_-comers had treated during the whole
period of their dominion, the _entire_ Egyptian nation with indiscriminate
rigour and chastisement.

Besides this, that deadly animosity existing in the Egyptian mind to the
name and profession of shepherds, above alluded to, at once identifies
their character with that of the “Uksi,” or “King-shepherds,” to whom we
have before referred, and proves the date of their invasion anterior in
point of time to Israel’s introduction into the land of Egypt. Joseph was
well aware of the particulars of this invasion, and of the sting it left
behind it in the mind of the Egyptians; and accordingly he acquaints his
brothers, whose “trade also had been about cattle,” that “every shepherd
was an abomination to the Egyptians.”[184]

Manetho himself, the Egyptian priest, is my voucher for this deduction,
when he says that, “After these--the shepherd-kings--came _another set of
people_ who were sojourners in Egypt, in the reign of Amenophis. These
chose themselves a leader one who was a priest of Heliopolis, and whose
name was Osarsiph; and after he had listed himself with this body of men
he changed his name to Moses.”

But this, it will be said, is at variance with Moses’ own account, which
states that he obtained his name on being rescued from a watery cradle by
Pharaoh’s daughter. Not in the least, I reply; for it is more than
probable that, after his slaying the Egyptian, and consequent flight, he
dropped his name to ensure concealment, and only resumed it on being
invested with his divine commission. Or, what is more likely still, and
perhaps the truth, that Osarsiph was the name which his “mother” had given
him, and which adhered to him until “he grew up,”--a term in Scripture
which expresses _mature_ age,--until when it was not that the princess had
designated him as Moses.

Strong, too, as my veneration is for Josephus, I cannot conceal either
from myself or from the reader, that his testimony in _this instance_ is
rather of a dubious character. The idea of interpolation I altogether
waive--it is, at _all times_, a contemptible subterfuge. I will take for
granted that the text is genuine; and, on the very face of it, it bears
the impress--in the first place, of inaccuracy, confounding the period of
his countrymen’s _servitude_ with that of their actual _sojourn_ in Egypt;
and, in the second place, of _indistinctness_, attaching a term of obloquy
to those edifices, without condescending to offer therefor any cause. Here
are his own words: “When time had obliterated the benefits of Joseph, and
the kingdom of Egypt had passed into another family, they inhumanely
treated the Israelites, and wore them down in various labours: for they
ordered them to divert the course of the river (Nile) into many ditches,
and to build walls, and raise mounds by which to confine the inundations
of the river (Nile); and, moreover, vexed our nation in constructing
FOOLISH PYRAMIDS, forced them to learn various arts, and inured them to
undergo great labours; and after this manner did they, for _four hundred
years_, endure bondage; the Egyptians doing that to destroy the Israelites
by overmuch labour, whilst we ourselves endeavoured to struggle against
all our difficulties.”

Now, it is not a little remarkable, as connecting the erection of the
pyramids with the “royal shepherd race,” the former occupants of the above
fertile territory, that those immense edifices happen to be situated in
the very vicinity of Goshen. Geeza, where the three _great ones_ stand, is
universally allowed to have been the site whereon Memphis once stood; and
as a west wind took away the locusts, and cast them into the Red Sea (Ex.
x. 19), Goshen, which we find by Gen. xlv. 10, cannot have been far from
Joseph’s own residence, will be more aptly fixed in the vicinity of this
spot within the Heliopolitan nome, than within any other nome or
præfecture, particularly the Tanitic, “where the same wind,” as has been
justly remarked by Dr. Shaw, “would not have blown those insects into the
Red Sea, but into the Mediterranean, or else into the land of the
Philistines.” Goshen, then, was that part of “the land of Rameses,” “the
best of the land” (Gen. xlvii. 6-11) which lay in the neighbourhood of
Cairo, but on the opposite side of the Nile, where, as already observed,
the pyramids are first met with, and whence they proceed in a continued
line along the banks of the river, in a southerly direction for many miles
together.

After reading these details it will be impossible, I conceive, for any
dispassionate mind to remain longer in suspense as to the origin of the
pyramids. The doubt, too, and obscurity in which they have been
heretofore enveloped can be explained with similar ease, if we but
remember the execration in which their Cushite founders were held by the
Egyptians, and their consequent disinclination to associate their name
with such splendid memorials. With this view, indeed, it is not at all
improbable but that active legislative measures were adopted to cancel and
suppress every vestige of proof which could tend to perpetuate the memory
of the obnoxious erectors. So that we must not wonder if, after a lapse of
years, their history was as great a riddle to the Egyptians themselves as
that of _our pyramids_ is to the Irish nation.

A collateral cause for this universal ignorance of their use and origin
was the probable absence of letters on the part of the Egyptians, until
now, for the first time, introduced by those learned Arabians; and though
any one who is acquainted with the oriental disquisitions of Wilfrid, and
the coincidences he establishes between the ancient history of Egypt and
the account given of the customs and dynasties of that kingdom, as drawn
from the Hindoo Puranas, will at once admit that “there must have been a
period when a Hindoo power had reigned in Egypt by right of conquest,” and
established therein the peculiar rites of their religion with the elements
of literature and social civilisation, yet it is probable that during
their sojourn, which, we have seen, was a continued series of warfare,
they kept themselves aloof from all intercourse with the natives, and
checked, as much as possible, the circulation of their science among them.

Some _sparks_ of it, however, must inevitably have transpired; and the
Egyptian intellect was too finely constituted to be insensible to its
value, or allow it to extinguish without food; so that, in the time of
Moses, and long after, their learning and accomplishments were courted by
the philosophers of the day, and were so eminently conspicuous, as to
become a proverb (Acts Apost. vii. 22). Homer, we all know, visited that
favoured land--so did Pythagoras--so did Solon, Thales, Plato, and
Eudoxus; in short, all the sages of antiquity, of whom we read so much,
and whom we peruse with such _recuperative_ pleasure, either finished
their education in that favoured school, or conversed with those who had
themselves done so.

The Egyptians are said to have been the first who brought the “rules of
government,” with the art of making “life easy” and “a people happy”--the
_true end_ of worldly politics--to a regular system. But much as they
excelled other nations in scientific lore, in nothing was their
superiority so conspicuous as in that _magic_ art which enabled them to
cope, for so long a time, and under such trying varieties, even with the
prophet and ambassador of God himself.

These exhibitions are too stubbornly authenticated by scriptural proofs,
as well in the Old as in the New Testament,[185] for any one to affect
disbelief in them without at the same time disbelieving the authenticity
of the Scriptures themselves. Yes, I implicitly subscribe to the truth of
the narration; and as I mean to bring home their _initiation_ in the art,
as well as in their other several accomplishments, to the Chaldean
diviners, or _Aire Coti_ shepherds--a branch of the Tuath-de-danaan
colonists of this our western isle--from whom, or their relatives, under
the designation of Uksi, Indo-Scythæ, or Cushite shepherds--who, if not
all one and the same, were at least mixed and incorporated--the Egyptians
had imbibed it--this, I trust, will plead my excuse for obtruding its
notice here, as well as for dilating so much at large upon the early
history of Egypt.[186]




CHAPTER XII.


I come now, with the same view, to consider the _destination_ of their
famous “Pyramids.”[187] In this pursuit the first thing that strikes us is
the uniform precision and systematic design apparent in their
architecture. They all have their sides accurately adapted to the four
cardinal points, as the four apertures near the summit of most of ours
indicate a similar regard to fidelity to the compass. In six of them which
have been opened, the principal passage preserves the same inclination of
26° to the horizon, being directed towards the polar star. And I doubt
not, were the ground _within_ and _around all_ of _ours_ sufficiently
explored, there would be found, in some at least, regular vistas to
correspond with this description. Their obliquity too being so adjusted as
to make the north side coincide with the obliquity of the sun’s rays at
the summer’s solstice, has, combined with the former particulars, led some
to suppose they were solely intended for astronomical uses; and
certainly, if not altogether true, it bespeaks, at all events, an intimate
acquaintance with _astronomical rules_,[188] as well as a due regard to
the principles of _geometry_.[189]

No one, I believe, has ever questioned the latter fact. Some, induced
thereby, have thought them to be erected for the purpose of establishing
the exact measure of the cubit; of which they happen to contain both in
breadth and height a certain number of multiples. But as they were
evidently constructed by persons well versed in all the niceties of exact
measurement, and who consequently had no occasion for such colossal
reference to refresh their memories, like the Lancasterian apparatus, it
is ridiculous to suppose them erected with this view, nor should I have
alluded to it but to expose its weakness. Others have fancied them
intended for sepulchres; and as the Egyptians, _taught by their ancient
Chaldean victors_, connected _astronomy_ with their _funereal_ and
_religious ceremonies_, they seem not in this to be far astray, if we but
extend the application to their _sacred bulls_ and _other animals_, and
not merely to their _kings_, as Herodotus would have us suppose.

The immense sarcophagus lying in the interior of the first or Great
Pyramid, with the _bone_ found by the Earl of Munster[190] in the second,
must put this question beyond the possibility of doubt; as Sir Everard
Home, after a laborious examination of the properties of this relic, found
it accurately to agree with the lower extremity of the thigh-bone of an
ox, while it corresponded with that of no other animal.

In conformity with this conclusion were the discoveries of Belzoni some
time before, in Upper Egypt, which abounds in specimens of the most
splendid antiquities, in a catacomb amongst which, called “Bîban el
Moluk,” that is “the gates of the king”--meaning thereby the _universal
king of the ancients_, the generating principle of vegetation and life, of
which _Apis_ and _Mnevis_, _Osiris_ and _Typhon_, were but the
representatives among the Egyptians, as other nations had adopted
equivalent forms and names, according to the genius of their climes and
languages--I mean the Sun--well, in one of the numerous chambers of this
catacomb, Belzoni discovered an exquisitely beautiful sarcophagus of
alabaster, 9 feet 5 inches long, by 3 feet 9 inches wide, and 2 feet 1
inch high, covered within and without with hieroglyphics, and figures in
intaglio, nearly in a perfect state, sounding like a bell, and as
transparent as glass: from the extraordinary magnificence of which, he
conceives, it must have been the depository of the remains of Apis; in
which idea he is the more confirmed by having found the carcass of a
_bull_ embalmed with asphaltum, in the innermost chamber.

The passage in Herodotus, to which I before referred, appears to throw
some light on the intricate subject which we are now pursuing. In lib. ii.
p. 124, etc., “the father of historians” tells us that the two kings, who
succeeded each other on the throne of Egypt, after the happy reign of
Rhampsinitus and his predecessors, and to whom the building of those
pyramids was reputedly ascribed, had shown themselves indeed _brothers_,
not more by affinity of blood than by the similar outlines of their
cruelty and intolerance. No species of oppression was by them left
unattempted; no extreme of rigour or rapacious plunder by them unenforced:
but what peculiarly characterised the hardship of their tyranny was the
restraint they put upon the _religion_ and pious exercises of their
subjects; closing the portals of the _temples_ where they were wont to
adore, and preventing the oblation of their usual sacrifices.

Though Herodotus has been justly honoured with the designation of “Father
of Historians,” he has also, perhaps, not so very justly been called “the
Father of Errors”; and, as he himself admitted his incapability of
obtaining any satisfactory insight into the original of those structures,
may we not fairly conclude that, in the extract now cited, he either
confounds those princes with the _foreign dynasty_ which we have already
established, or else, from the ignorance _superinduced_ to obliterate
their memory, mistakes the erection of some of the _minor_ and _later_
ones, which this “par nobile fratrum” may, indeed, have devised, in
imitation of the three “_mountains_” built by the Uksi. What he states,
however, is of value, as it points to a _previous form of worship_, and a
_system of government_ by an alien house. The prohibition of sacrifices
and the closing the temple doors make this as clear as words can delineate
anything. All we want, then, is to be informed what the particular temples
alluded to were: and that they were the _pyramids_, will, I think, be
conceded by everyone who has carefully perused the arguments here set
down, and who has not his judgment warped by favourite plans of literary
systems and speculative hypotheses.

This conclusion receives additional force from the conversation which
Wilford, in his “Dissertation upon Egypt and the Nile,”[191] tells us he
had with several learned Brahmins, when, upon describing to them the form
and bearings of the great Egyptian pyramid, one of them asked if _it had
not a communication under ground with the river Cali_? Being answered that
such communication was spoken of as having once existed, and that a _well_
was still to be seen, they unanimously agreed that it was a _temple_
appropriated to the worship of _Padma-devi_, and that the supposed _tomb_
was a _trough_, which, on certain festivals, her priests used to fill with
the sacred water and lotos-flowers.

Mr. Davison, British Consul to Algiers, when accompanying Mr. Wortley
Montague to Egypt, in 1763, discovered here a chamber, before unnoticed,
and descended, to a depth of 155 feet, the three successive reservoirs.
The principal oblique passage has, since then, been traced by the very
enterprising master of a merchant vessel, Captain Caviglia, 200 feet
farther down than by any former explorer, and found to communicate with
the bottom of the well, which is now filled with rubbish. A circulation of
air being thus procured, he was emboldened to proceed 28 feet farther,
which brought him to a spacious hall, 66 feet by 27 feet, unequal in
altitude, and directly under the centre of the pyramid. In no instance yet
recorded has any appearance presented itself of human remains within those
apartments, nor indeed was there any possibility of conveying such
thither, unless placed there before the erection of the pile itself; for
the _extremities_ of the gallery, which leads into the _great chamber_,
are so _narrow_ and _circumscribed_, that it is _with difficulty_ one can
effect an _entrance into it, even by creeping upon his belly_.

The _symbolical anatomy_ prefigured in this contrivance, and which equally
exhibits itself in all the temples of the ancients, as well _under_ as
_over ground_, is such as almost to have tempted me to make _this_ the
occasion on which I should uncover another secret of their mystic code.
But a more _concentrated_ opportunity will occur as we advance, and for
which this intimation will answer as a prelude; meanwhile, I would have
the reader soberly to bethink himself, what possible use could _dead
bodies have of wells of water_? Is not _such_ the _type_, as it is also
the _accompaniment_, of _life_ and activity? And does not _this_, of
itself, subvert the absurdity of those temples having been erected as mere
mausoleums for kings?

I have already hinted my confident belief _that if the ground all, within,
and around our pyramids were sufficiently examined_, there would not be
wanting indications of subterraneous passages. I am the more confirmed in
this, my belief, from the appearances that presented themselves on the
demolition of _that_ at Downpatrick, in 1790, “to make room for the
rebuilding of that part of the old cathedral next which it stood, and from
which it was distant about forty feet. When the tower was thrown down,”
continues Dubourdieu, in his _Statistical Survey_ of the county, “and
cleared away to the foundation, another foundation was discovered under
it, and running directly across the site of the tower, which appeared to
be a continuation of the church wall, which, at some period prior to the
building of the tower, seemed to have extended considerably beyond it.”
With great deference, however, to the authority of so respectable a
writer, I hesitate not to proclaim that the second foundation so
discovered was _not_ a “continuation of the church wall,” but the remnant
of some _pagan_ structure, appertaining to the tower itself--in fact a
_Vihâr_, or college for its priests--or else the vestige of some larger
temple, and connected therewith, previously existing on the same locality.

That this announcement is correct will be apparent, from the _superiority
of masonic skill_ exhibited in this _foundation_, as well as in its having
been upon a larger scale and ampler dimensions than what the Christian
“cathedral” had ever occupied; “in the walls of which,” says my authority,
“there are many pieces of cut stone that have evidently been used in some
former building. The same circumstance may also be observed in several of
the ruined churches at Clonmacnoise.”[192]

Nor ought this relic of an ancient pagan edifice to excite our surprise,
when we are told that the temple of the “Syrian goddess,” which existed
in the days of Lucian, was not that which was originally erected by
Deucalion, but one built _many ages_ after, on the _same site_, by Attis,
Bacchus, or Semiramis.

With the church, therefore, or other Christian edifice, this “foundation”
had no relation. St. Patrick was the first who erected one in that
vicinity, to which he gave the name of Sgibol Phadruig, or Patrick’s
Granary; having been built on the identical spot on which Dichu, son of
Trichem, of the tribe of the Dalfiatachs, and lord of the territory of
Lecale, had a granary constructed to preserve his corn, before that his
gratitude for the saint, by whom he was just converted, induced him to
consecrate the place where that event occurred, by raising thereon a house
to the God of nature and of harvests.

Its situation, be it observed, was “two miles from the city of Down”;[193]
different, therefore, from that of the cathedral, as was also its _form_:
having been built from north to south, at the solicitation of Dichu
himself, agreeably to the plan of the former storehouse.

This took place in 433-34; and though, for concession’ sake, I may
admit,--_what yet is far from being my conviction_,--that _some_ of our
Round Towers may have been erected _subsequently_ to the Christian era,
yet positive I must be that _no one_ of them _was after the successful
mission_ of the Apostle of Ireland; and the explosion of the doctrines
with which even the _most modern of them_ may happen to be
associated,--while the majority, and the _real ones_, I shall prove,
belong to an infinitely earlier date.

As a further inducement to explore for cavities beneath, and connected
with, our Round Towers, I beg leave to bring under review what Maundrel
relates of two Round Pillars, which he met with in his journey from Aleppo
to Jerusalem, on the sea-coast, a little to the south of Aradus, in the
neighbourhood of Tripoli. He describes one of them as thirty-three feet
high, composed of a pedestal, ten high and fifteen square, surmounted with
a tall cylindrical stone, and capped with another in the form of a
_pyramid_. The second was not quite so high--thirty feet two inches--its
pedestal, which was supported by four lions, rudely carved at each corner,
was in height six feet, being sixteen feet six inches square; the
superstructure upon which was one single stone cut in the shape of a
_hemisphere_. Each of these pillars, of which he gives accurate drawings,
has under it several catacombs or sepulchral chambers, the entrances to
which lie on the south side. He pronounces a third which he met with, as
“a very ancient structure, and probably a place of sepulchre.”[194]

With the opinion of this judicious traveller I altogether concur, provided
only, as said before, in reference to the pyramids, that the application
be extended to the sacred bulls and crocodiles, serpents, dragons, and
heifers, with the whole train of _bestial_ divinities, which both Indians
and Egyptians, and all the other polished nations of antiquity, thought
proper to adopt as objects of their regard, and treat with the
homage--though only _commemorative_, as they will tell you--of the One
Great Supreme.[195]

This extension of the use will at once afford a solution of the otherwise
unaccountable and unnecessary _size_ of those cavities, and is further
supported by Savary’s remark, made on occasion of his searching for the
Egyptian Labyrinth, viz. that “amidst the ruins of the towns of Caroun,
the attention is particularly fixed by several narrow, low, and very long
cells, which seem to have had no other use than that of containing the
bodies of the sacred crocodiles; these remains can only correspond with
the labyrinth.” While Herodotus’s declaration, of his not being allowed to
enter its vaults, on the score of their “containing within them the bodies
of the fifteen kings, together with the _sacred crocodiles_,” should
afford it a determination no longer liable to doubt.

Archer, also, when mentioning a very ancient Hindoo temple, at the south
end of the fort of Gualior, resembling in shape those on the Coromandel
coast, and decorated with much carving, says that “there was a
subterranean communication with the plain at the north end, but the
passage has been so long neglected as to be impassable.”

Am I not justified, therefore, in the conviction, from what I have already
intimated, as to the _complicated_ design of those sacred piles, that _our
Round Towers_ would be found similarly furnished with subterranean
chambers? I do respectfully urge that such is my _firm belief_, and that
it would be well worth the while of the learned community to investigate
the accuracy of the surmise here put forward.




CHAPTER XIII.


Another characteristic, to which I would fain attract the reader’s regard,
is the circumstance of their being erected in the vicinity of _water_. At
Glendalough, what a magnificent lake salutes the Tower? In Devenish and at
Killmalloch, is not the same the case? In other parts of the country,
also, we find them similarly located. And even where nature has not been
so lavish of her _inland seas_, yet is water, of some shape, always to be
seen contiguous to our towers.

What use, it will be asked, do I mean to make of this argument? or how
seek support from the accidental propinquity of this element? Remember my
remark upon the article, before, in connection with the Egyptian Pyramids.
Captain Mignan, besides, tells us that a tradition, handed down from time
immemorial, says that “near the foot of the ruin of El Mujellebah,” which
he takes to be that of the Tower of Babel, “is a _well_, invisible to
mortals”; and, as all Eastern heathenism, whence ours was deduced, partook
in some degree of the same usages and properties, I think it very probable
the correspondence will apply in this as well as in other peculiarities;
and the rather as from symptoms of vaults, which have already appeared,
and the hollow sounds, or echoes, which invariably accompany, the
proposition does not come unwarranted, however singly put forth or
without something like argument to recommend its trial.

We know that in Hieropolis, or the “Holy city,” in _Syria_, where a
Temple, with a _Tower_, was erected to _Astarte_, there stood adjacent a
_lake_, where _sacred fishes_ were preserved, in the midst of which was a
stone altar, which was _said_, and really _appeared_, to float; whither
numbers of persons used to swim every day to perform their devotions.
Under this temple they showed the cleft where it was said the waters
drained off after Deucalion’s flood, and this tradition brought on the
extraordinary ceremony now about to be narrated, something similar to
which our ancestors must formerly have practised _here_.

“I have,” says Lucian,[196] “myself seen this chasm, and it is a very
small one, under the temple. Whether it was formerly larger and since
lessened I cannot tell, but that which I have seen is small. In
commemoration of this history they act in this manner: twice in every year
water is brought from the sea to the temple, and not by the priests only,
_but by all Syria_ and Arabia. Many come from the Euphrates to the sea,
and all carry water, which they first pour out in the temple, and
afterwards it sinks into the chasm, which though small, receives a
prodigious quantity of water, and when they do so, they say, Deucalion
instituted the ceremony as a memorial of the calamity above named, and of
his deliverance from it.”

Twice a year a man went up to the top of the Priap, and there remained
seven days. His mode of getting up was thus:--He surrounded _it_ and
_himself_ with a chain, and ascended by the help of that and certain
pegs, which, stuck out of its sides for the purpose, lifting the chain up
after him at each resting interval--a method of ascent which will be
readily understood by those who have seen men climb up the palm trees of
Egypt and Arabia. Having reached the summit he let down the chain, and by
means thereof drew up all the necessaries in the way of food, and withal
prepared himself a seat, or rather nest on his aërial tabernacle.

[Illustration:

  View him now mounted on his sacred tower,
  He looks around with conscious sense of power.]

On these occasions crowds used to come with offerings, and the custom was
for each to declare his name to the priests; upon which one below cried it
out to him on the top, who thereupon muttered a prayer, which, in order to
arrest the attention of the congregation, and enliven their devotion, he
_all the while_ accompanied by striking a bell.

One way of their sacrificing was as shocking as it would be otherwise
ridiculous. They crowned victims with garlands, then drove them out of the
temple-court, on one side whereof was an abrupt steep, where falling they
thereby perished. Nay, some tied up their very children in sacks, and then
shoved them down, reproaching them as wild beasts, miserably to perish.

This whole proceeding, only under a mythological garb, was in direct
harmony with the directions given and the practice pursued by God’s own
people. The man ascending to the top of the tower had a parallel in that
declaration of the Lord recorded in Ex. xxiv. 1, 2, 3, viz.: “And he said
unto Moses, come up unto the Lord, thou, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and
seventy of the elders of Israel, and worship ye afar off. And Moses alone
shall come near the Lord; but they shall not come nigh, neither shall the
people go up with him. And Moses came and told the people all the words of
the Lord, and all the judgments; and all the people answered with one
voice, and said, ‘All the words which the Lord hath said, will we
do.’”[197]

His staying there seven days corresponded with Lev. viii. 33, 34, 35: “And
ye shall not go out of the door of the tabernacle of the congregation in
seven days, until the days of your consecration be at an end: for seven
days shall ye consecrate you. As he hath done this day, so the Lord hath
commanded to do, to make an atonement for you. Therefore shall ye abide
at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation day and night seven
days, and keep the charge of the Lord, that ye die not; for so I am
commanded.” And again, Ezek. xliii. 25: “Seven days shalt thou prepare
every day a goat for a sin-offering: they shall also prepare a young
bullock and a ram out of the flock, without blemish. Seven days shall they
purge the altar, and purify it; and they shall consecrate themselves.”

The enrolment of their names was also sanctioned by Divine command, as Ex.
xxviii. 29: “And Aaron shall bear the names of the children of Israel in
the breastplate of judgment upon his heart, when he goeth in unto the holy
place, for a memorial before the Lord continually.” Whilst the ringing of
the bell is particularly enforced by a triple repetition, Ex. xxviii. 33,
34: “And beneath upon the hem of it thou shalt make _pomegranates_ of
blue, and of purple, and of scarlet, round about the hem thereof; and
_bells_ of gold between them round about. A golden _bell_ and a
_pomegranate_, a golden _bell_ and a _pomegranate_, upon the hem of the
robe round about.”

This last-cited text is of the most inconceivable advantage in the
development of the subject which we thus pursue. The most superficial must
have noticed how that, in the tracing of this analogy between the
ceremonies of the Gentiles and the Hebrews, I have studiously guarded
against its appearing an imitation, on the part of the former, from the
ritual of the latter. The priority in point of date will certainly appear
on the Gentile side. Meanwhile, ere other links of conformity crowd upon
our path, it will be well to take heed to the frequency of the word
_pomegranate_, as occurring in the Scriptures. It has already appeared
that one of the names of the _Syrian goddess_, in whose honour the
Hieropolitan Priaps were erected, was _Rimmon_. This epithet you have had
before expounded as expressive of that _fruit_; and as we see that, both
in the Jewish and the pagan formulæ, it occupied so prominent a
position,[198] it must occasion you no surprise if, by and by, I discover
it amongst the mouldings[199] of our consecrated and venerable Round
Towers.

As to their devotions at the lake, and the propinquity of the lake itself
to the temple, it is in direct similitude to the “molten sea,” mentioned 1
Kings vii. 23, 24, 25, 26, “the brim whereof was wrought like the brim of
a _cup, with flowers_ of lilies,” etc.;--while the cruel and shocking
sacrifice with which the whole terminated, was the exact respondent of the
Mosaical scapegoat.[200]

Let it not be wondered at, therefore, if on the summit of one of our Round
Towers are to be found the traces of the apparatus for a bell. For
independently of what Walsh and others inform us of, viz. that the
Irish--enjoying tranquillity and repose after the expulsion of the Ostmen,
and so recalling their attention to the cultivation of Christianity after
their release from that scourge--converted those structures of exploded
paganism to the only obvious use to which they could then be made
subservient, namely, that of _belfries_, for the summoning together of the
people to public worship, some remnants of which it is but natural may yet
remain--independently, I say, of this, have I not here shown that _bells_
entered essentially into the code of the pagan ceremonial, from whence it
is more than probable, nay, a downright certainty, that the first
Christian ecclesiastics adopted the use, as the Mohammedans, in their
minarets, did so likewise.[201]

The instance to which I have referred in an early part of this volume, of
astonishment created in the English minds, on their first beholding one of
those implements, was that of Gildas, who, having finished his education
at Armagh, and returned to Britain about the year 508, was engaged by
Cadoc, abbot of the church of Mancarban, to superintend the studies of his
pupils during his absence for a twelvemonth. Having done so most
successfully, and without accepting of any remuneration for his labour, we
find, in an ancient life of Cadoc, in the Tinmouth MS., Lambeth observes
that “Cadoc, returning to his monastery, found Gildas a noble scholar,
with a very beautiful _little bell_, which he brought with him from
Ireland.”

Those bells, then, we may be sure, appertained exclusively to the service
of the Round Towers.[202] Having none of these in England, of course they
had no bells, and hence the surprise manifested on the above occasion. In
Ireland, too, they must have been, now, comparatively obsolete.[203] And
hence we find, according to Primate Usher, that their (restored) use was
not general in the _churches_ here before the latter end of the seventh
century; while another writer assures us that it was not until the ninth
century that large ones were invented for the purpose of suspension.[204]

The shape of the Irish _pagan_ bells was precisely the same as of those
in the present day. They were called crotals, or bell-cymbals. Oblong
_square_ ones, some of bell-metal, some of iron, from twelve inches to
eighteen inches high, with a handle to sound them by, have been also dug
up in our various bogs. Of these the museum of the Dublin Society
possesses one; another is preserved by the Moira family. The writer of
this article not having seen either of these relics, is rather diffident
in the conjecture which he is now about to express; but from the account
received of that in the possession of the house of Moira, he feels
strongly disposed to identify its origin with the worship of the
above-mentioned deity, Astarte. Lucian expressly tells us that under the
veil of this goddess was really meant the _moon_; and that “the host of
heaven,”--including sun, moon, and stars, and typifying the fulgor of that
Omniscient germ whence they all had emanated,--constituted the object of
the ancient Irish adoration, no one, I believe, can longer question. Now,
in Hall’s _Tour through Ireland_, 1813, I see this bell described as
having “a hole in one of its sides like a quarterly moon”; and not knowing
whether this is the effect of accident or corrosion, or a symbolical
property in its original shape, I trust I shall not be deemed fanciful if
I ascribe it as a reference to that planet in whose vain solemnities it
had been primarily exercised.

Whether this exposition prove eccentrical or otherwise, and, by
inspection, it can be readily ascertained, I cannot presume to determine;
nor indeed does it value much.[205] With one thing, however, I am
gratified, that in Archer’s _Travels in Upper India_, published, as before
observed, within the last few weeks, I find that distinguished soldier and
shrewd observer, delineate a piece of architecture similar in all
particulars to this Syrian Priap--the allusion to which has recalled me to
ring this second chime upon the bells--and as the notice is of value, I
shall give it in his express words: “A curious structure,” says he, “is at
the bottom of the hill (Dutteah). It consists of five _conical pillars_,
with green painted tops, in a line from east to west; the two larger ones
in the centre: the _pillars_ have _tiles stuck in them resembling steps_.
We could not learn what was its meaning or use. The village is wholly
_Jain_, and is named Serrowlee.”

It is not difficult to understand why no information could be obtained,
from the _present_ inhabitants, as to the object of those edifices. Their
remote _antiquity_ is a sufficient reply. But I flatter myself that the
reader, who has accompanied me from the outset of this antiquarian voyage,
can now supply the defect, and explain that _they were a series of Round
Towers_, or _Phalli, erected by the aboriginal Buddhists_, of whom the
_Jaina_ are only the wretched remains; and that those “tiles” which are
“stuck in them, resembling steps,” _were for the purpose of ascending by
the aid of a hoop_, such as we have shown at Hieropolis. The projecting
stones in _our_ Priaps, or the cavities that appear after their removal,
are thus also accounted for.




CHAPTER XIV.


The universal ignorance which prevails throughout the East as to the
origin of those antiquities which excite the wonder of every traveller
makes it necessary that we should again direct our course towards that
hemisphere, to redeem, if possible, its venerable remains from that moral
night which successive ages have accumulated around them.

Persia[206] was the source which poured its vivifying light into the
mental obnubilation of our European ancestors. By a reverse of those
casualties from which no condition can be exempt, Persia has, in her turn,
been made the theatre of darkness; and though, under the fostering
auspices of British institutions, the mist has, to a large amount, been
dispelled, yet is the proudest era of her splendour left still
unexplored, and that is the epoch which called forth into life those
monuments of literature and philosophical eminence, which, resisting the
corrosion of time and the assaults of war, still proudly elevate their
heads towards those orbs, with whose pompous ceremonial they were
essentially connected, and whose generative properties they typically
symbolised--I mean the Round Towers.

This was the moment of Persia’s halcyon pride: this the period of her
earthly coruscation: to this have all the faculties of my ardent mind with
vigour been addressed; and while, in the humble consciousness of
successful investigation, I announce its issue to have far exceeded my
hopes, I shall avail myself of the industry of preceding inquirers to
throw light upon the intervals of value which intervene; but, lest I
should intrude upon the province of their well-earned honours, I shall, in
every such case of borrowed assistance, allow the writers themselves to
speak; by which it will additionally appear that, with much good taste,
and with historical honesty, they have left a vacuum in their researches,
for which the public mind has been long athirst, and which my exclusive
resources could alone supply.

“The Persian empire,”[207] says Heeren, “owed its origin to one of those
great political revolutions which are of such frequent occurrence in Asia,
and the rise and progress of which we have already considered in general.
A rude mountain tribe of nomad habits rushed with impetuous rapidity from
its fastnesses, and overwhelmed all the nations of Southern Asia, (the
Arabians excepted), from the Mediterranean to the Indus and Iaxartes. The
mighty empires which arose in Asia were not founded in the same manner
with the kingdoms of Europe. They were generally erected by mighty
conquering nations, and these, for the most part, nomad nations. This
important consideration we must never lose sight of, when engaged in the
study of their history and institutions.”

“Not only is Persia[208] Proper memorable on account of its historical
associations, but also for the architectural remains which it continues to
present. The ruins of Persepolis are the noblest monuments of the most
flourishing era of this empire, which have survived the lapse of ages. As
solitary in their situation as peculiar in their character, they rise
above the deluge of years, which for centuries has overwhelmed all the
records of human grandeur, around them, or near them, and buried all
traces of Susa and of Babylon. Their venerable antiquity and majestic
proportions do not more command our reverence, than the mystery which
involves their construction awakens the curiosity of the most unobservant
spectator. Pillars which belong to no known order of architecture;
inscriptions in an alphabet which continues an enigma; fabulous animals
which stand as guards at the entrance; the multiplicity of allegorical
figures which decorate the walls,--all conspire to carry us back to ages
of the most remote antiquity, over which the traditions of the East shed a
doubtful and wandering light.”

“The Persians have taken more pains than almost any other nation to
preserve their records in writing; yet it has been their fate, in common
with most other nations of antiquity, to be indebted for the stability of
their fame to foreign historians. Notwithstanding the pains they took to
register the acts of their government, the _original documents of their
history_, with a few accidental exceptions, have altogether perished. And
the inscriptions of Persepolis, like the hieroglyphics of the Egyptians,
will, in a manner, have outlived themselves, unless a complete key be
discovered to the alphabet in which they are composed.”

Now, as a set off to these extracts, it will be necessary to remark that,
though true in substance, they are only so as descriptive of a particular
epoch. Empire after empire rolled over, in succession, before that which
the historian here delineates, and which was but the motley combination of
a rugged swarm of mountaineers, who stalked with ferocious insensibility
over the consecrated relics of monumental glory.

Herodotus and Arrian were the authorities that seduced him into this
mistake, the former of whom states that “the Persians originally occupied
a small and craggy country, and that it was proposed in the time of Cyrus
that they should exchange this for one more fertile; a plan which Cyrus
discouraged as likely to extinguish their hardy and warlike pursuits”; and
the latter, that “the Persians, when, under Cyrus, they conquered all
Asia, were a poor people, inhabiting a hilly region”;[209] but those
writers were as misinformed, as to all events and particulars relating to
this locality, anterior to the time specified above, as any of their
contemporaries; and when we reflect how very recent an era in the history
of the world was that in which Cyrus appeared, it will be seen how fragile
a substratum was that which the professor had adopted for the erection of
his materials. We read accordingly, in Terceira’s Spanish history of that
country, that “there was not at that time (A.D. 1590) one man in Persia
(these were the direct descendants of Cyrus’s men) that understood their
_ancient_ letters, for having often seen some plates of metal with
_ancient_ inscriptions on them, I made inquiry after the meaning of them;
and men _well versed_ in their _antiquities_, and _studious_, told me that
was _Fars kadeem, ancient Persian_, after the old fashion, and _therefore_
I should find _no man_ that understood it.”

Indeed the reasonings of Heeren himself,--and learned I cheerfully
acknowledge them,--would seem to make him rise above the narrowness of his
Grecian supporters.

“Even previous,” says he, “to the time when the Arabs, with the sword in
one hand and the Koran in the other, overran and subdued Persia, they were
the more open to settlers from the North and East, from the circumstance
that Persia was situated on the great highway of nations, by which the
human race spread itself from East to West. All that is meant to be
asserted is, that the various races who successively had dominion in these
parts, all belonged to the same original stock.

“This fact, which the observations of the best modern travellers tend to
confirm, may explain how it has come to pass that many districts,
anciently celebrated for their fertility, are at present barren and
unproductive. A single invasion, by destroying the water-courses, is
sufficient to reduce, in a short time, a fertile and flourishing country
to an arid desert; and to how many such disastrous contingencies has not
Persia at all times been exposed!”

“Another fact, suggested by the languages of Asia and the ancient dialects
of Persia, is too important to be passed over in silence. Not only in the
Persian territory but in other parts of Eastern Asia, particularly the two
Indian peninsulas, we find languages which still subsist, mixed up with
others which are preserved to us only in a few written names. To this
class belong, in Persia, the Zend and Pahlivi, already mentioned; in
Hindustan, the celebrated Sanscrit, as well as the Pali in the Burman
peninsula.

“Accordingly, we shall venture to consider as the same parent stock the
race which bore rule in Iran, comprehending all the inferior races, and
which may be termed in general the Persian or Medo-Persian, inasmuch as
the countries in its occupation were termed, in a wider sense, the land of
Persia.

“They have been denominated by Rhode (Heilige sagen, etc.) the people of
Zend, not improperly, if we consider the Zend as the original language of
all the race ... not confined to Persis, properly so called, but extending
over the steppes of Carmania and to the shores of the Caspian. Even at the
present day they are comprised under the general name of Persia, though
Farsistan, the original country of the Persians, forms a very small part
of this territory.

“The Semitic and the Persian were, therefore, the principal languages of
Asia; the latter being spoken as far as the Indus. Our knowledge of the
languages prevalent on the other side of that river is as yet too
defective to enable us to speak with anything like certainty. Possibly it
may be reserved for our own age to arrive at important conclusions on this
subject, if the affinity between the Zend and the Sanscrit, the sacred
languages of Persia and Hindustan, should be established,--if the spirit
of discovery which characterises the British nation should succeed in
rescuing from oblivion some more remains of ancient Indian literature, and
a second Anquetil Duperron present the public with the sacred books of the
Brahmans, with the same success that his predecessor has illustrated those
of the Parsees.”

Though I cannot avoid concurring in the laudable hope that “our own age”
may witness important conclusions on this subject, still it strikes
me,--_and I earnestly urge it as worthy of the notice of a Reform
Ministry_, that until the _Irish Language_ be raked from its ashes, no
accuracy can ever be obtained either in the Zend, Pahlavi, or Sanscrit
_dialects_, which are but emanations from it, or in the _subject matter_,
historical or religious, which they profess to pourtray.

“In the interior of these districts is situated a considerable lake,
called the Lake Zevora, unquestionably the _Aria Palus_ of antiquity. A
large river, anciently bearing the same name, at present called the
Ilmend, empties itself into this inland sea from the deserts to the
south-east, and Christie fell in with another stream farther to the north,
called the Herat, near a town of the same name.

“I consider (with Kinneir) the city of Herat to be same with the ancient
Aria, or, as it was also called, Artacoana. We are told that Alexander on
his march to Bactriana inclined to the south to visit Aria. We must
carefully distinguish between the terms Aria and Ariana, as used by the
Greeks. The former was applied to a province which we shall have occasion
to describe in the sequel. The latter is equivalent to Iran, and appears
to have been formed from the ancient term in the Zend language, Eriene.
The whole of Iran composes a sort of oblong, the Tigris and Indus forming
its sides to the east and west; the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean bounding
it to the south; and the Caspian, with Mount Taurus and the river Oxus,
shutting it in to the north. These were also the limits of the ancient
Ariana (see Strabo, p. 1048), except that, towards the west, its boundary
was an imaginary line separating it from Persia Proper. Of this more
extensive district, Aria (according to Strabo) formed only a part,
distinguished by its superior fertility. Herodotus appears to have been
unacquainted with the term Aria; he merely mentions the Arii as a nation
allied to the Medes.

“Aria, lying to the east of Media, derived its name from the river Arius,
the modern Heri: and the Arians and Medes were originally the same race;
the Medes, according to Herodotus, having originally borne the name
Arians. It is apparent, from the same place (Herod. vii. 62) that what
were called the _Median habits_ were not confined to Media Proper, but
extended to the countries lying eastward, and as these touch on Bactria,
we cannot be surprised at the conformity which prevailed.”

These latter quotations I have thought fit to introduce to show the
ignorance of the modern Greeks,--those of Cyrus and Herodotus’s
days--compared with their Pelasgic predecessors--_Iran_, the real name for
all those countries of higher Asia as far as the Indus,[210] being
called, in the Zend, _Eriene_, the Greeks, whose intercourse with the East
now for the first time began, without troubling their brains to ascertain
what the word in either form meant, transmuted this latter into _Ariana_,
whereas their forefathers, the Pelasgi, a literary and a religious tribe,
changed its namesake in the West, our own _Iran_--which in the Pahlavi
dialect was called _Erin_, and in the Zend would also be called
_Eriene_--into _Ierne_, thereby evincing their knowledge of the import of
the term, and registering their subscription in its _sacred_
attributes.[211]

The following, however, is more to the point, and in itself sufficient to
redeem the professor’s entire work from any occasional inclination to
Grecian subserviency.

“It cannot be doubted that at some remote period antecedent to the
commencement of historical records, one mighty race possessed these vast
plains.

“The traditions of this race preserve some very important particulars
respecting their descent, their ancient abodes, and their gradual
dissemination through the land of Iran. These traditions are preserved in
the beginning of the Vendidat, the most important, and it is probable, the
most ancient of all their sacred books, the collection of which is styled
the Zendavasta, to which we shall have occasion to refer hereafter. The
first two chapters of this work, entitled _Fargards_, contain the above
traditions, not wrapt up in allegory, but so evidently historical as to
demand nothing more than the application of geographical knowledge to
explain them. With the exception of the Mosaical Scriptures, we are
acquainted with nothing which so plainly wears the stamp of remote
antiquity, ascending beyond the times within which the known empires of
the East flourished; in which we catch, as it were, the last faint echo of
the history of a former world, anterior to that great catastrophe of our
planet, which is attested in the vicinity of the parent country of these
legends, by the remains of the elephant, the rhinoceros, and the mammoth,
and other countries properly belonging to the countries of the South. It
would be a fruitless labour to attempt to assign dates to these remains,
but if the compiler of the _Vendidat_ himself, who was long anterior to
the Persian, and as we shall have occasion to show, probably also to the
Median dynasty, as known to us, received them as the primeval traditions
of his race, our opinion of their importance may be fully justified.

“These legends describe as the _original_ seat of the race, a delicious
country, named Eriene-_Veedjo_, which enjoyed a climate singularly mild,
having seven months summer and five of winter. Such was the state at
first, as created by the power of Ormuzd; but the author of evil, the
death-dealing Ahriman, smote it with the plague of cold, so that it came
to have ten months of winter and only two of summer. Thus the nation began
to desert the paradise they at first occupied, and Ormuzd successively
created for their reception sixteen other places of benediction and
abundance, which are faithfully recorded in the legend.

“What then was the site of the Eriene referred to? The editors and
commentators on the Zendavesta are inclined to discover it in Georgia, or
the Caucasian district; but the opinion must necessarily appear
unsatisfactory to anyone who will take into account the whole of the
record, and the succession of places there mentioned as the abodes of the
race. On the contrary, we there trace a gradual migration of the nation
from east to west, not as this hypothesis would tend to prove, from west
to east. The first abode which Ormuzd created for the exiled people was
Soghdi, whose identity with Sogdiana is sufficiently apparent; next Môore,
or Maroo, in Khorasan; then Bakhdi, or Balkh (Bactriana), and so on to
Fars itself, and the boundaries of Media or India. The original country of
Eriene must therefore lie to the east of Leed, and thus we are led, by the
course of tradition, to those regions which we have already referred to as
the scene of the traditions and fables of the nation, viz. the mountainous
tracts on the borders of Bucharia, the chain of Mustag and Beloorland, as
far as the Paropamisan range on the confines of Hindustan, and extending
northwards to the neighbourhood of the Altain chain. This savage and
ungenial region enjoys at present only a short summer, at the same time
that it contains the relics of an ancient world, which confirm, by
positive proof, the legend of the Vendidat, that anciently the _climate_
was of a _totally different character_. When the altered nature of their
original seats compelled the race to quit them, Ormuzd prepared for them
other places of repose and abundance, within the precincts of that
territory which has _preserved to the present day the appellation of Iran;
the nation carrying with them the name of Eriene, which is obviously the
same with Iran_.

“Jemshid, the father of his people, the most glorious of mortals whom the
sun ever beheld. In his day animals perished not: there was no want either
of water or of fruit-bearing trees, or of animals fit for the food of
mankind. During the light of his reign there was neither frost nor burning
heat, nor death, nor unbridled passions, nor the work of the Deevs. Man
appeared to retain the age of fifteen; the children grew up in safety as
long as Jemshid reigned the father of his people.[212]

“The restoration of such a golden age was the end of the legislation of
Zoroaster, who, however, built his code on a religious foundation
agreeably to the practice of the East; and the multifarious ceremonies he
prescribed had all reference to certain doctrines intimately associated
with his political dogmata; and it is absolutely necessary to bear in mind
their alliance, if we would not do injustice to one part or other of his
system.

“On these principles Zoroaster built his laws for the improvement of the
soil by means of agriculture, by tending of cattle and gardening, which he
perpetually inculcates, as if he could not sufficiently impress his
disciples with a sense of their importance.

“According to his own professions he was only the restorer of the doctrine
which Ormuzd himself had promulgated in the days of Jemshid: this
doctrine, however, had been misrepresented, a false and delusive magia,
the work of Deevs, had crept in, which was first to be extinguished, in
order to restore the pure laws of Ormuzd.

“Even Plato, the first Grecian writer who mentions Zoroaster, speaks of
him as _a sage of remote antiquity_; and the same is established by the
evidence of Hermippus and Eudoxus, which Pliny has preserved. The second
Zoroaster, supposed by Toucher to have flourished under Darius Hystaspes,
is the mere figment of some later Grecian authors of little credit.

“On the whole, we _are compelled_ to carry back Zoroaster to the period
when Bactriana was an independent monarchy, _a period anterior to the very
commencement of the Median empire_, as related by Herodotus, ascending
_beyond the eighth century_ before the Christian era. Whether we must
refer him to a _still more ancient epoch_, prior to the Assyrian monarchy,
the chronological notices we have already given are all that can be
afforded, except we be prepared to transport the sage beyond the _utmost
limits of recorded_ history.”

As I have no longer occasion, however, for the _sage_ than to show that he
was a _reformer_; and though at least “eight (more likely _eighteen_)
hundred years before the Christian era,”--yet was he even then,
comparatively, a _modern_,--I shall now turn to other sources to ascend to
the dynasties that had preceded him.

“The rare and interesting tract on twelve religions,” says Sir W. Jones,
“entitled the Dabistan, and composed by a Mohammedan traveller, a native
of Cashmere, named Moshan, but distinguished by the assumed surname of
Fani, or Perishable, begins with a wonderfully curious chapter on the
religion of Hushang, which was _long anterior to Zeradust_ (_Zoroaster_),
but had continued to be _secretly professed_ by many learned Persians,
even to the author’s time; and several of the most eminent of these
dissenting, in many points, from the Ghabres, and persecuted by the ruling
powers of their country, had retired to India, where they compiled a
number of books, now extremely scarce, which Moshan had perused, and with
the writers of which, or with many of them, he had contracted an intimate
friendship. From them he learned that a _powerful monarchy had been
established for ages in Iran for the accession of Cayemurs_; that it was
called the Mahabadean dynasty, for a reason which will soon be mentioned;
and that many princes, of whom seven or eight only are named in the
Dabistan, and among them Mahbul, or Maha Beli, had raised the empire to
the zenith of human glory. If we can rely on this evidence,--_which to me
appears unexceptionable_,--the Iranian monarchy must have been the oldest
in the world.”

Sir John Malcolm had some scruples as to the authenticity of this
production, and entered upon a very severe analysis of its contents;
merely because the _idols_ which the ancient Persians are therein stated
to have adored, and the _mode_ of their adoration, were dissimilar to
those of India! Was it necessary that they should be alike? It is true,
that from Persia everything Indian flowed; but there, on its importation,
it partook of the peculiarities of the soil and climate; while, even in
Persia itself, a great degeneracy occurred; and the deterioration and
moral laxity, thus superinduced, was what the virtuous Zeradust so
deplored, and what _kindled_ his _fervour_ to new model the system.

But “the introduction of the angel _Gabriel_,” he says, “appears of
itself enough to discredit the whole work.” Was Sir John sure that this
rendering was literal? He himself admits that he was “following a
Mohammedan author, who has certainly made a _free_ translation of the
Pahlavi text.” And, if so in one case, why not in another? But even
admitting that there was no _freedom_ at all used in the matter; and that
_Gabriel_ is the rigid version of the name of the messenger employed, this
should not, _in the least_, affect our reliance upon the Dabistan, as I
shall adduce a greater _coincidence_ than this, nay, a downright
_identity_, not only of _name_ but of _essence_, between the divine
dispensation in all previous ages, and the spiritual form of it with which
we are at present blessed.

But you will say, perhaps, that Moshan Fani’s authorities were, in a great
measure, _floating_, and dependent upon _histories_ of a merely oral
stamp, which--wanting as they do, the impress of lettered perpetuity, and
subject, as they are, to variation, both of curtailment and of addition,
besides the colour of depreciation or enhancement, which they must
furthermore undergo, according to the nature of the successive _media_
through which they pass,--cannot, after repeated transfusions, retain much
similarity with the original truth, nor afford to a rational and thinking
mind, however they may gratify selfish or national love, much stability
for conviction or satisfactory acquiescence?

To the first I shall reply that it seems not correct, as the manuscripts
by which he was guided appear still in existence; and this was not without
its influence on Sir John’s own scepticism, when he declares, that “the
doubtful authority of this work has received some support from the recent
discovery of a volume in the ancient Pahlivi, called the Dussadeer, or
Zemarawatseer, to which its authors refer.”

Then, as to the _vanity_ alluded to, the compiler may well be acquitted of
any, as being of a different creed, and proverbially intolerant, he could
not, _did not truth oversway_, have felt much communion of pleasure in
celebrating the glories of a defunct religion. And though I concede that
_that_ species of information, which arises from the traditions of
successive races of men, cannot be so satisfactory as that which is
_stereotyped_ in alphabetic characters; nay, that, according as it
diverges from its first outlet, it is likely to diverge also from
exactness; still I do insist, that the prevalence of those _traditions_,
wherever they occur, argues some alliance with _fact_ and _reality_; just
as idolatry itself, in all its ramifications, is but the corrupt
transmission of original pure religion.




CHAPTER XV.


The objections against the Dabistan being thus superseded, and the idea of
its being an “invention”[213] having never crossed anyone’s thoughts, I
shall now give a bird’s-eye view of its tenour in Sir John’s own summary
thereof.

“It has been before observed,” says he, “that the idolatrous religion
which Mohsin Fani ascribes to the ancient Persians, bears no resemblance
to the worship of the Hindoos: it seems nearest that which was followed by
a sect of _Sabians_, who, we are told, _believed in God_, but _adored the
planets_, whom _they deemed his vicegerents, that exercised an influence
over all created things in the world_. This sect of Sabians were said to
follow the _ancient_ Chaldeans, and to inherit their skill in astronomy, a
science built upon the same foundation as the adoration of the
planets.[214] And this leads us to remark, that the very title of the work
from which Mohsin Fani gives an account of this worship, appears more like
that of a treatise upon astrology, than upon religion. He calls it
_Akheristan_, or _the region_ of the _stars_. It is, however, impossible
to enter into any minute comparison of the religion he ascribes to the
ancient Persians, and the sect of Sabians that have been noticed, _because
we have only a very general account of the tenets of the latter_.”

As to the _impossibility_ here complained of, it is obvious that _there is
none_: whoever has digested even the early part of this essay will own it
was but _ideal_. With this I should have contented myself, but that I feel
called upon to correct another misconception, which the above may have
produced.

That Sabaism meant _idolatry_ in the way there insinuated, I utterly and
altogether repudiate. It was the religion of the early Greeks before their
degenerate mythology had loaded it with so many absurdities;[215] and that
it was so, is evident from the term in their language, which expresses “to
worship,” viz. σεβομαι, an evident derivation, from which is anglicised,
Sabaism.[216] The object of this religion was the host of heaven, meaning
the sun, moon, and stars. The names assigned to the reputed idols, viz.
Uranus, _i.e._ Heaven, and Gea, _i.e._ Earth, with the energies of the sky
and nature typified under the names of the “Cyclops” and “Giants,”
incontrovertibly demonstrate the truth of this position.

I have said that the name Cyclops, in this religious code, was meant to
figure forth the energies of the atmosphere; I need but mention their
denominations to establish my proof. They are “Steropes,” from στεροπη,
lightning; Argues, from αργης, quick-flashing; and Brontes, from βροντη,
thunder. Even the celebrated name of _Hercules_[217] himself, and the
twelve labours poetically ascribed to him,--who, we must observe, many
ages before the Tirynthian hero is fabled to have performed his wonders,
or his mother Clymena to have been born, had temples raised to him in
Phœnicia and Egypt, as well as at Cadiz and the Isle of Thasos,--are
nothing more than a figurative denotation of the annual course of the
solar luminary through the signs of the Zodiac.

In support of this I shall quote the authority of Porphyry, who was
himself born in Phœnicia, and who assures us that “they there gave the
name of Hercules to the sun, and that the fable of the twelve labours
represents the sun’s annual path in the heavens.” Orpheus, or the author
of the hymns that pass under his name, says that Hercules is “the god who
produced time, whose forms vary, the father of all things and destroyer of
all; he is the god who brings back by turns Aurora and the night, and who
moving onwards from east to west, runs through the career of his twelve
labours; the valiant Titan, who chases away maladies, and delivers man
from the evils which afflict him.” The scholiast on Hesiod likewise
remarks, “The zodiac in which the sun performs his annual course is the
true career which Hercules traverses in the fable of the twelve labours;
and his marriage with Hœbe, the goddess of youth, whom he espoused after
he had ended his labours, denotes the renewal of the year at the end of
each solar revolution.” While the poet Nonnas, adverting to the sun as
adored by the Tyrians, designates him Hercules Astrokiton (αστροχιτων), or
the god clothed in a mantle of stars; following up this description by
stating that “he is the same god whom different nations adore, under a
multitude of different names--Belus, on the banks of the Euphrates; Ammon,
in Libya; Apis, at Memphis; Saturn, in Arabia; Jupiter, in Assyria;
Serapis, in Egypt; Helios, among the Babylonians; Apollo, at Delphi;
Æsculapius, throughout Greece,” etc. etc.

Even the father of history himself, the great Colossus of the Greeks,
whilst claiming for his countrymen the honour of instituting their own
theogony, evinces in the attempt more of misgiving and doubt than was
consistent with the possession of authentic information. His words are
these: “As for the gods whence each of them was descended, or whether they
were always in being, or under what shape or form they existed, the Greeks
knew nothing till very lately. Hesiod and Homer were, I believe, about
four hundred years older than myself, and no more, and these are the men
who made a theogony for the Greeks; who gave the gods their appellations,
defined their qualities, appointed their honours, and described their
forms; as for the poets, who are said to have lived before these men, I am
of opinion they came after them.”

But even this assumption, were it conceded to the utmost, would not
militate against the doctrine which I have laid down; for Homer’s
education was received in Egypt, and India was the medium which
illuminated the latter country; nothing, therefore, prevents our yielding
to the stream of general authority in ascribing the introduction to the
Pelasgi. The word χρονος itself, or “the father of Jove,” was nothing more
than an equivalent with the Latin _tempus_; and for the very best possible
reason, because the revolutions of this planet, as of the other celestial
orbs, came, from their periodical and regular appearances, to be
considered the ordinary measurements of the parts of duration or time.

It must, no doubt, appear a contradiction that Chronos--the “son of
Uranus, and Terra,” as we were told at school, and the first person, as
somewhere else stated, who was honoured with a crown--should be called an
“orb,” and have “periodical appearances”; and that those appearances
should regulate our estimate of days, weeks, years, and seasons. The
difficulty, however, will cease, when we consider that though the _sun_,
_moon_, and _stars_ were the primary objects of false worship, the
deification of dead men, deceased heroes, afterwards crept in, the
consequence of which was a mixed kind of idolatry, consisting of _stars_
and _heroes_, or _heroines, deceased_--a planet being assigned to each as
the greatest possible honour. “That whom men could not honour in presence,
because they dwelt far off, they took the counterfeit of his visage from
far, and made an express image of a king, whom they honoured, to the end
that by their forwardness they might flatter him that was absent, as if he
was present.”[218]

Let us now see how the religion of the ancient Irish harmonises with that
of the Dabistan, as illustrated in the composition of some of our ancient
names. Here _Baal_, or _Moloch_, and _Astarte_ are obviously in the
foreground; whilst the popular and vernacular names for those luminaries
amongst the peasantry themselves, namely, _Grian_ for the _sun_, _Luan_
for the _moon_, _Righ_ for _king_, and _Rea_ for _queen_, in their
appropriation to several localities throughout the country, indicate but
too plainly the melancholy tale of their former deification.

To instance some few of those names, that strike me as _demonstrative_ of
this Sabian worship, I shall begin with

Baltinglas.[219]--This name of a town and mountain in the county of
Wicklow, and province of Leinster, is equivalent to Baal-tinne-glass, that
is, “Baal’s-fire-green,” alluding to the colour of the grass at the spring
season. These _igneous_ betrayals of human frailty and superstition were
celebrated throughout Ireland at both the _vernal_ and _autumnal_
equinoxes, in honour of the twin divinities so often adverted to in the
course of this book. The eve of the vernal one was called _Aiche
Baal-tinne_, that is, the night of Baal’s fire, the eve of the autumnal,
_Aiche Shamain_, that is, the night of the moon’s solemnity; on both which
occasions fires were lighted on all “_the high places_” dedicated to their
worship.

The return of these respective seasons gave rise to various superstitions
amongst the illiterate populace, one of which was that of borrowing a
piece of money at the first sight of the new-moon, if they had it not
themselves, as an omen of plenty throughout the month.[220] And their
praying to that luminary, when first seen after its change, is so well
known as to be mentioned even by a French writer, whom Selden, _De Diis
Syriis_, quotes in these words:--“Se mittent a genoux en voyant la lune
nouvelle, et disent en parlant a lune, laise nous ausi sains que tu nous
as trouvé.”[221]

The new moon nearest to the winter solstice was celebrated with peculiar
ceremonies. On that night the chief Druid, attended by crowds of the
people, used to go into the woods, and cut with a golden sickle a branch
of the mistletoe of the oak, which he would carry in procession to the
sacred grove. This golden sickle or crescent corresponded in form and
nature with that which Aurelius Antoninus, the Roman emperor, wore at his
coronation, to intimate his adherence to the Phœnician doctrines in which
he had been early instructed--his adopted name still further intimating
that he had been, what _it_ literally signifies, Heliogabalus, that is,
priest of the sun.[222] The crescent itself is the favourite badge of
_Sheevah_, the _matrimonial_ deity of the Indians, which he is represented
as wearing in front of his crown.

After the introduction of Christianity, its first preachers wishing to
defer to the prejudices of the inhabitants, yet not so as to interfere
with the celebration of Easter at the vernal equinox, with an
accommodating policy, retained the Baal-tinne ceremonial, only
transferring it to the _saints’ days_; thus _diverting_ their attention
from their former devotion, and fixing it upon those who, in their zealous
propagation of the gospel truths, may be considered as Christian
_stars_;--conformably to that gracious character of “a burning and shining
light,” which our Saviour Himself applied to His precursor, St. John.

In honour of this apostle, June 24th, the day of his nativity, was
substituted, in the old ecclesiastical calendar, for the pagan solstice
festival, and called solstitium vulgi, the vulgar solstice.

The intention of the transfer was, however, lost sight of by the
illiterate; and when they would kindle their fires on the tops of
_mountains_ on those occasions, they used to blend with them the features
of the pagan institution, by passing children and cattle between them for
the purpose of purification.

The propriety, therefore, of thus subserving to deep-rooted prejudices,
has by some been impugned; but “surely,” after all, to use the words of a
very able writer, “they were much wiser and better who, in those early
times, grafted the evangelical upon the druidical culture, than they who,
in subsequent times, instituted a system of extirpation in order to
regenerate.”

The other pagan solemnities were similarly metamorphosed, and partook of
similar transmutations. The 1st of May alone retained the name and
characteristics of its original appropriation, being still called “_La
Beuil-tinne_,” that is, the day of Baal’s fire, as familiarly as the name
_Christmas_ is given to the 25th of December. On it, too, fires are
kindled on “high places,” as before; and children and cattle purified by
passing between them;--

              --------“Yet, oh! remember
  Oft I have heard thee say, the secret heart
  Is fair Devotion’s temple: there the saint
  Even on that living altar lights the flame
  Of purest sacrifice, which burns unseen,
  Not unaccepted.”[223]

I next turn to Killmalloch, the ancient name of which, as given by
Ptolemy, was Macollicon,--a metathesis for Mallochicon; and the final,
_icon_, which is only a Greek termination, being taken away, leaves
Malloch, that is, Moloch, the Apollo or great divinity of the ancient
universe.

To divert the natives from this misplaced enthusiasm, one of the early
converts to Christianity assumed to himself the name of _Maloch_; and
then prefixing to it the adjunct _Kill_, made it the _church_ of _Maloch_,
instead of the _city_ of _Moloch_.

Here is still to be seen, careering towards the skies, one of those
“_singular_ temples of round form,” of the existence of which Vitruvius
was so ignorant, but whose dogmatic enunciation of “monopteres” and
“peripteres,” sounds as feebly in _my_ ears, as Montmorency’s assumption
that the round towers were dungeons!--and the violence which this
structure has latterly undergone--by the effort made to incorporate it
with the Christian cathedral, built beside it in rivalship, after an
interval of nearly three thousand years--is one of the most triumphant
evidences which truth can produce in suppression of error. My soul burned
with earnestness to visit this hallowed scene, upon which I had revolved
so much, and which I associated in my fancy with the recorded glories of
Apollo. I have, at last, seen it; and he must be indeed a slave to
faction, or the dupe of prejudice, who will not subscribe to that evidence
which the very stones proclaim.

Apollo’s Temple, or the Round Tower, stands at the corner of the
cathedral, subsequently built half-around it: and, as you ascend the
parapet of the latter, by an _intermural_ staircase, having to pass,
afterwards, from one side of this parapet to the other, just at the very
corner by which the Tower is girt, the pass being very narrow, and almost
terrific in dimensions, wholly defenceless besides, on the right hand
which looks down into the body of the cathedral, the constructors of this
latter edifice were obliged, in their desire to intermarry Christianity
with paganism, to scoop off, or rather to file, about six inches of the
_ancient_ rotund structure, all along, on the left, to the height of the
human figure, so as to allow more room; yet even thus mutilated, I could
not but reverence and bow down before the Tower.

  “For, even the faintest relics of a shrine,
  Of _any_ worship, wake some thoughts divine.”[224]

After this transformation, Kilmalloch assumed an entirely Christian
aspect; and the monastic buildings that crowded the town surpassed, in
their style, anything similar throughout the island. The materials,
however, of which those were constructed, being inferior in quality to the
_Tuathan_ composition, did not long keep place; so that now, whilst the
Round Tower still maintains its bold preoccupancy, the Christian churches
exhibit but a pile of ruins!

The dreariness of this once imperial site is a moving instance of worldly
vicissitudes; and one can scarcely avoid, when passing by the loneliness
of its dilapidated mansions, applying the apposite and melancholy
apostrophe attributed to Ossian, “Why dost thou build the hall, son of the
winged days? Thou lookest from thy towers to-day; yet a few years, and the
blast of the desert comes, it howls in thy empty courts.”

Ard-Mulchan, the name of a village in the barony of Duleck, county Meath,
comes from _Ard_, the high place, or mound, _Mulchan_ of Moloch. And,
however extraordinary it may appear to some readers, I cannot but hazard
my opinion, that the name of the individual to whom St. Patrick had been
sold during his captivity in this island, viz. _Milco_-Mac-Huanan, that
is, Milco, the son-of-Huanan, originated in the circumstance of the
family’s devotion to the service of this idol; and if a doubt remained as
to the justness of this conclusion, it will, methinks, be removed, when
we consider the close of his mortal career, and the unfortunate blindness
with which he clung to his fatuity.

He was a petty prince of that part of the country, afterwards called
Dalruadia, or the principality of the Dalruads, from the prevalence of
that demi-tribe, in Ulster; and when Patrick--in prosecution of that
mission of grace, to which he had been deputed by divine interposition;
and impelled, perhaps, moreover, by a compassionate zeal and Christian
recollection of his previous bondage--undertook, amongst other
conversions, that of his former master, we find that the sentiment was not
reciprocated on _his_ part; but that, either ashamed of allowing himself
to be persuaded, in his old age, to abandon the religion in which he had
been early initiated; or marked out by Providence as an awful victim to
the prevailing superstition, he plunged himself into a fire which had
accidentally broken out in his castle, and so was consumed by that element
which he had before worshipped as his God!

Athlone,--or as anciently and correctly written, Ath-luain,--the name of a
town situated on the river Shannon, where _it is fordable_, bounding
Leinster in Westmeath, and Connaught in Galway, is compounded of the words
_Ath_, which signifies a ford, and _luain_, of the moon. The common people
still call it Blah-luin, an evident corruption of _Baile-ath-luin_, that
is, the village of the ford of the moon; equivalent to Moon-ford-town.
This name establishes the analogy of the Syrian Astarte with the worship
here paid to the “queen of night,” and the many lunettes, or gold
crescents, found buried in the _neighbourhood_, are “confirmation strong”
of the inference deduced.

The moon, whose course through the heavens regulated the months of the
early lunar year, and whose influence was regarded by the ancients, in
common with that of the sun, as one of the _fertilising principles_ of
_nature_, and as exerted chiefly amid wilds and woods, at a distance from
the crowded abodes of man, had in this spot, apparently, a peculiar claim
for her special appropriation. For here the aged majesty of the river
Shannon, the Ganges of Ireland,--as we find reciprocally that Shannon is
one of the Gangian names, and Saor, or Suir, the name of another Irish
river, meaning “sacred” water, belongs also to the Indus itself,--displays
its imposing grandeur in all the varieties of sublime and delightful
scenery. Not far off is one of those beautiful lakes into which this
monarch of waters expands himself, to bask, as it were, in repose, from
the tiresome gaze attending the crowded path of his ordinary travels--

  “Tho’ deep, yet clear; tho’ gentle, yet not dull;
  Strong without rage; without o’erflowing full.”[225]

Lough Rea is the name of the lake above referred to, which, from its
proximity to Athlone, gives concurrent sanction to the derivation above
assigned. For _Rea_, in Irish, corresponds to Malcoth, or Astarte, _i.e._
queen, that is, Shamaim, of the heavens; as _Righ_ does to Baal, or
Molock, master, or king of the same; and both re-echoed in the _regina_
and _rex_ of the Latins.[226]

I should further notice, that in the Barony of Castle-_reagh_--a name,
which, though prefaced by a _modern_ adjunct, still testifies its
devotion, at one time, to the moon--there has been, some years ago, dug up
one of those beautiful plates of gold, shaped like a half-moon, at once
confirmatory of the propriety of the local name, and of the nature of the
worship of its primitive incumbents having been lunar or Sabian. This
relic is now in the possession of the Downshire family.

In reference to _Shannon_, to which I have before adverted, as being one
of the names of the _Ganges_, it is not a little curious that _Durga_, the
supposed divinity of this water, and whose festival is annually solemnised
all through Hindoostan, should be represented by _Derg_, the supposed
divinity of the _Shannon_, and should have its name still more perpetuated
in the Irish word _Dearg-art_, that is, the abode of Derg, in Lough Derg,
the lower lake upon this river.

From its mouth to its source this noble stream is characterised with
relics of primeval worship, corresponding, in form and tendency, with
those on the banks of its Indian namesake. Scattery Island, or, as it
should more properly be called, Inis Catty, situated very near where it
discharges itself into the sea, retains a beautiful Round Tower, to which
has been afterwards appended, in the Christian times, the mystical number
of seven churches, and the ruins of which are still perceptible. The
circumstance of an early professor of our heaven-taught religion having
taken up his secluded residence within the precincts of this spot, has led
many moderns to suppose that the river obtained its name from him, whereas
the word _Shannon_ is derived from _Shan Aoun_, that is, the “aged river”;
and the saint received his name from that _pious policy_ before
explained, as well as from the constancy of his abode in its vicinity--not
_vice versâ_.[227]

Killeshandra, the name of a town in the county of Leitrim, on the borders
of the county of Cavan, signifies, in Irish, “the temple of the moon’s
cycle,” or circle. In Sanscrit, which is a dialect of the aboriginal
Irish,[228] it denotes exactly the same. We find besides Herodotus making
mention, B. xi. c. 98, of a city in Egypt, during the Persian dominion,
called Archandra, that is, “the city of the moon.” He asserts that it is
not Egyptian, neither derived from the wife of Danaus, the daughter of
Archander: yet the opposite may be well supported without at the same time
injuring this derivation, for the daughters of Danaus were certainly
initiated in the _Phallic rites_; nay, they were the persons who first
imported them into Attica: and it is eminently worth notice, that this was
the very spot[229] where the Tuath-de-danaan kings happened to be
stationed upon the first Scythian deluge; the word “Kill” having been
_prefixed_ to it only upon the introduction of Christianity.

Granard, the name of a town in the county of Longford, is compounded of
the words _Grian_, the sun, and _ard_, a height, that is, the sun’s
high-place. Nor, I suspect, will it be deemed an over-effort of criticism,
if I repeat, that in our Irish _Grian_ is to be found the root of that
epithet of Apollo, _Grynæus_,[230] which was also the name of a city of
Asia Minor, consecrated to his worship, and favoured, as Strabo informs
us, with a grove, a temple, and an oracle of that deity. The river
Granicus, too, was derived therefrom, because its source lay in Mount Ida,
sacred to _Grian_, or the sun, whereon was situated the _Idean stone_,
upon which, we are told, Hector was wont to sacrifice; and corresponding
to the _Cromleachs_, so common throughout this island. The word _Carne_,
also, meaning a heap of stones, on which an inferior order of clergy,
thence called _Carneach_, used to officiate, belongs to the same root, as
both Ovid and Macrobius declare that it was called, by the ancients,
Grane.[231]

As Lough _Rea_ had been dedicated to the moon, so was the other luminary
also honoured with a lake,--called after his name,--which we find in the
adjoining country, where Lough _Grany_ signifies the Lake of the _Sun_; as
we do also _Beal-ath_, or Ath-en-righ, that is, the _Ford of Baal_, or the
_Ford of the King_, _i.e._ the _Sun_; corresponding to _Ath-lone_, or
_Ford of the Moon_.

The above are but a few of those imperishable memorials intertwined round
those haunts which our forefathers have trod; the import of which,
however, has been so perverted by _modern scribblers_, as to give occasion
to O’Flaherty to give up their solution in despair, and, as a cover to his
retreat, to pronounce them “as outlandish in their sound as the names of
the savages in some of the American forests.”[232] In this rhodomontade,
however, he was much more fortunate than he had intended, or, as the
Englishmen say of our countrymen, “he blundered himself into the right.”
Little did he suspect how near a connection there existed between the two
people whom he affected, thus ridiculously, to associate; and anyone who
attends to the position which I subjoin, independently of many others that
could be brought in support of it, will admit the happiness of this
unintentional coincidence. The Algan Kinese are the most influential and
commanding people in the whole of North America; their name in Irish
indicates as much, namely, _Algan-Kine_, or _Kine Algan_,[233] a _noble_
community. The language of this people is the master one of the whole
country; and, what is truly remarkable, understood, as Baron de Humboldt
asserts, by all the Indian nations except two. What then are we to infer
from this obvious affinity? Most undoubtedly, that a colony of the same
people who first inhabited Ireland, and assigned to its several localities
those characteristic names which so disconcerted the harmony of Mr.
O’Flaherty’s acoustic organs, had fixed themselves, at an early date, in
what has been miscalled the _New World_.

Small, however, as is the number of the names here selected, they are
enough, I flatter myself, to establish the prevalence of our Sabian
ritual. But what puts this matter beyond anything like a question is the
inscription upon a stone, still extant, in the county of Dublin, evidently
a symbol of the _Sun_ and _Moon_, which, like Osiris and Isis of Egypt,
were considered by the ancient Irish as _united_ in matrimony.

  “God, in the nature of each being, founds
  Its proper bliss, and sets its proper bounds:
  But as He framed a whole the whole to bless,
  On mutual wants built mutual happiness;
  So from the first, eternal order ran,
  And creature linked to creature, man to man.
  Whate’er of life all quickening ether keeps,
  Or breathes through air, or shoots beneath the deeps,
  Or pours profuse on earth, one nature feeds
  The vital flame, and swells the genial seeds.
  Not man alone, but all that roam the wood,
  Or wing the sky, or roll along the flood,
  Each loves itself, but not itself alone,
  Each sex desires alike, _till two are one_.”--POPE.




CHAPTER XVI.


“Woman, the poetry of Nature,” says an elegant writer of the present day,
“has ever been the theme of the minstrel, and the idol of the poet’s
devotion. The only ideas we entertain of a celestial nature are associated
with her; in her praise the world has been exhausted of its beauties, and
she is linked with the stars and the glories of the universe, as if,
though dwelling in a _lowlier_ sphere, she belonged to a _superior_
world.”

This deification of the _female character_ was the true _substance_ of
those imaginary _goddesses_, so sadly disfigured by the circumscribed
stupidity of Greek and Roman mythologists. _Juno_, _Baaltis_, _Diana_,
_Babia_, _Venus_, _Aphrodite_, _Derceto_, _Militta_, _Butsee_,
_Semiramis_, _Astarte_, _Io_, _Luna_, _Rimmon_, _Lucina_, _Genitalis_,
_Ourania_, _Atargatis_, etc. etc., were all but fictitious and ideal
forms, resolving themselves into _one and the same representation_ of that
sweetest ornament of the creation, _woman_; and the same terms being
applied to the _moon_, with the same _symbolic_ force and the same
_typical_ significance, illustrates the aptitude of that _tributary_
quotation, with which this chapter has commenced, and to the beauty of
which the heart of every “man that is born of woman” must feelingly
respond.

Europa itself, now geographically appropriated, as a denomination, to one
of the quarters of the globe, was originally synonymous with any of the
above-mentioned names; and partook in the acquiescence paid by adoring
millions to the all-fascinating object of so refined an allegory.

Of all those various epithets, however vitiated by time, or injured by
accommodation to different climates and languages, the import--intact and
undamaged--is still preserved in the _primitive Irish tongue_, and in that
alone; and with the fertility of conception whereby it engendered _all
myths_, and kept the human intellect suspended by its _verbal
phantasmagoria_, we shall find the _drift_ and the _design_, the _type_
and the _thing typified_, united in the ligature of one _appellative
chord_, which to the _enlightened_ and the _few_ presented a chastened yet
sublime and microscopic _moral_ delineation; but to the _profane_ and the
_many_ was an impenetrable night producing submission the most slavish,
and mental prostration the most abject; or, whenever a ray of the
_equivoque_ did happen to reach their eyes--perverted, with that
propensity which we all have to the depraved, into the most reckless
indulgence and the most profligate _licentiousness_.

In the limits here prescribed for the development of our _outline_--which
even the most heedless must have observed, instead of being compressed, as
intended within the compass of one volume could more easily have been
dilated to the magnitude of four--it cannot be supposed that I could
dwell, with much minuteness, upon the several collateral particulars to
which I may incidentally refer. As, however, that _twofold tenour_ to
which I have above alluded, may require something more in the way of
illustration, I shall take any two of the aggregate of names there
collected, and in them exemplify what has been said.

Suppose them to be _Militta_ and _Astarte_. Of these, then, the first
means _appetency_, such as is natural between the sexes; and the second
_dalliance_, of the same _mutual_ sort; and while both alike typify the
_delights_ of _love_, they both equally personate the _mistress_ of the
_starry_ firmament whose influence was courted for the maturity of all
such connection, as the season of her splendour is the most suitable for
its gratification.

From _Astarte_ (Ασταρτη), the Greeks formed _Aster_ (Αστηρ) a star,
thereby retaining but one branch of this duplicity. The Irish deduced from
it the well-known endearment, _Astore_; and I believe I do not exaggerate
when I affirm that, in the whole circuit of dialectal enunciations, there
exists not another sound calculated to convey to a native of this country
so many commingling ideas of _tender pathos_, and of _exalted adventure_,
as this syllabic representation of the _lunar_ deity.[234]

Such was _Sabaism_,--composed of love, religion, and astrology: such too
was _Budhism_, as I have already shown; and _Phallism_ being but another
name, equivalent with this latter, it follows that the whole
three--_Sabaism_, _Budhism_, and _Phallism_--are, to all intents and
purposes, but _identically one_.

This being about to be demonstrated, a few pages forwards, as _the oldest
species of worship recognised upon earth_, it were needless, one would
hope, to enter into a comparison in point of antiquity between it and any
of its living derivatives. But as many learned men, misled by that cloud
which heretofore enveloped the subject, have promulgated the belief that
_Brahminism_ was the parent stock, whence _Budhism_, with its adjuncts,
diverged as a scion, I shall, omitting others, address myself to the
consideration of Mr. Colebrooke’s arguments, which I select from the mass
in deference to a character so honourably interwoven with the revival of
Eastern literature.

“The mythology of the orthodox Hindus,” says this venerable and good man,
“their present chronology, adapted to astronomical periods, their
legendary tales, and their mystical allegories, are abundantly
extravagant, but the Jains and the Bauddhas surpass them in monstrous
exaggerations of the same kind. In this rivalship of absurd fiction it
would not be unreasonable to pronounce that to be the most modern which
has outgone the rest.”

His second position is, that “the Greek writers who mention the Bramins,
speak of them as a flourishing society, whereas the Budhists they
represent as an inconsiderable handful: therefore,” etc.

To the first I shall oppose Dr. Buchanan’s testimony, who states that
“however idle and ridiculous the legends and notions of the worshippers of
Bouddha may be, they have been in a great measure adopted by the Brahmins,
_but with all their defects monstrously aggravated_.”

And even had we not this rebutting evidence the inference in itself is
decidedly weak; for it would go equally to establish that _Romanism_ is
more recent than _Protestantism_, as containing a greater number of
ceremonial observances than this latter does: whereas the reverse is what
_reason_ would lead us to conclude, namely, that _ritual multiplications_
are the growth of _longevity_, and that the retrenchment of their number
is what reformation aspires to.

I make a free-will offering, unrestricted and unimpeded, of all the value
that can belong to Grecian historians--the Greeks, whom their own
countryman, Lucian, so justly banters as distinguished for nothing so much
as a total indifference to truth! But admitting them to be as veracious as
they were notoriously not so, the intercourse, of the very earliest of
them, with India and its dependencies, was much too modern, to allow their
statements to be further conclusive, than as refers to the time being: and
I am very ready to allow that, at the particular moment described, the
Budhists were in the wane, while the Brahmins ruled ascendant--nay, that
there were but a few straggling votaries of the former creed then existing
at all in that country, the latter, though schismatics from the
ecclesiastical root, having, by gaining over the civil power on their
side, effected their expulsion many ages before.

The subterranean temples of Gyah, Ellora, Salsette, Elephanta, and those
other monuments of piety and civil eminence which still shed a lustre over
India, and which no subsequent state of the arts could rival, much less
eclipse, owe their existence to an era anterior to this catastrophe. The
Budhists were the architects when in the zenith of human power. The
sculptures and devices establish this fact: for of the whole list of
deities personated in those inscriptions, the Brahmins have retained none
but such as suited their purpose. These, in all conscience, were numerous
enough; and as the Brahmins, when at the helm, permitted not the
introduction of “strange gods,” it is evident that those, which they have
in common with the Budhists, are but _cullings_ from the “mother-church,”
ill-understood and worse interpreted; the similarity, however, being still
so great as, after a lapse of centuries, to give rise to the question of,
whether the stem or the branch, the sire or the offspring, had the
priority in point of time!

“J’ai remarqué,” says the philosopher Bailly, “que les Brames aimaient à
être appellés Paramènes, par respect pour la mémoire de leurs ancêtres,
qui portoient ce nom.”[235] Monsieur Gebelin is more explicit. “Pausanias
nous dit, que Mercure, le même que Butta, ou Budda, un des fondateurs de
la doctrines des Paramènes, ou Brames, est appellé Paramon.”[236]

This Paramon, who had seceded from the Budhist doctrine, and placed
himself at the head of that sect who still bear his name, was the son of
_Budh-dearg_, a religious denomination, most painfully inexplicable to
inquirers into those matters, but which _one, at least_, from his
acquaintance with the Irish language, should have better known. “I think,”
says Vallancey, “_dearg_ is a contraction for _darioga_, rex supremus,
which corresponds with the Chaldæan _darag_, dux, an epithet given to
_Budya_!”

All those words, in fact, _dearg_, _darioga_, and _darag_, are _one and
the same_, adjuncts, it is true, of Budya, but meaning neither _dux_,
_rex_, nor _supremus_, except inasmuch as they were _his_ epithets, the
correct rendering being _red_, which, added to Budh, signifies the _Red
Lingam_, the _Sardana-palus_, the _Eocad_, the _Penis sanctus_, the _god_
of _nature_, the _ruber palus_, the _Helio-go-balus_, the _corporeal
spirit_, the _agent of production_, the _type of life_, as it is also the
_concurrent symbol of universal dissolution_.

These several terms, which are, each and all, convertible, pourtray not
only the procreative powers of the _male_ world personified, but likewise
its symbols, which were the _Round Towers_; and not these only, but
_Obelisks_[237] also, and _naturally erect_ stones,[238] which though not
circularly fashioned, yet typified, in their ascension, the upward bent of
all vegetable growth.

This is the true solution of those enigmatical _lithoi_, by which the
ancients represented the _bounty_ of Providence. _Maghody_ was the name
appropriated to him under this character; and the import of this word
conveying, literally, the idea of the _Good God_, shows the philosophic
feeling, no less than it does the religious seriousness, of the grateful
contrivers.[239] And while reminded by the thought, perhaps I may be
permitted, with humble deference, to suggest to literary gentlemen
occupied in the translation of Eastern manuscripts, that whenever they
meet with any proper name of the inconceivable Godhead, or of any place or
temple devoted to his use, and beginning with the word _Magh_; such as
_Magh_-Balli-Pura;[240] they should not render _Magh_ by _great_,--which
hitherto had been the practice,--but by _good_; as it is not the _power_
of the divinity that is thereby meant to be signified, but his _bounty_:
such as his votaries chiefly supplicated, and such as was most influential
to ensure their fealty.

“Christnah, the Indian Apollo, is the darling,” says Archer, “of the
Hindoo ladies; and in his pranks, and the demolishing pitchers of milk, or
milk-pitchers, has acquired a fame infinitely surpassing that enjoyed by
the hero of the agreeable ditty entitled _Kitty of Coleraine_!”

I confess I do not understand the levity of temperament which betrays
itself in this witticism. For my part I cannot contemplate any form of
religion without a sensation of awe. There may be much imposture, much
also of hypocrisy, and no small share of self-delusion amongst
_individuals_ of every sect, but sincerity will be found in the
_aggregate_ of each: and where _certainty_ is not attainable by finite
comprehensions, nay, where _unity_ is incompatible with freedom of thought
and will, it would more become us, methinks, to make allowance for each
other’s weaknesses, than to vilify any worship, which, after all, may only
differ from our own as to mode. Christianity, beyond a question, does not
inculcate such intolerance. The _true_ follower of that faith recognises
in every _altar_ an evidence of common piety; perceives in every
articulation of the name of _Lord_, a mutual sense of dependence and a
similar appeal for succour; and taking these as inlets into the character
of the supplicant, he traces an approximation to that hope whereby he is
himself sustained, and rejoices in the discovery: yet it is no less true,
that, when superadded to these generalities, he beholds the “image” of his
Creator, acknowledging the mission of the second Godhead, and, by reliance
on the all-fulness of his immaculate atonement, immersed in the waters of
regenerating grace, his bosom expands with _more_ gladness, and he
welcomes the stranger as a brother.

That the rebuke here intended is not gratuitous or uncalled for, I refer
to the testimony of Sir William Jones, who, with some infusion, I regret,
of the same irony and incredulity, offers the following portrait, the
result of tardy conviction of the superhuman qualifications of this
identical Christnah, viz.: “The prolix accounts of his life are filled
with narratives of a most extraordinary kind, and most strangely
variegated. This incarnate deity of Sanscrit romance was not only cradled,
but educated among shepherds. A tyrant, at the time of his birth, ordered
all the male infants to be slain. He performed amazing, but ridiculous
miracles, and saved multitudes partly by his miraculous powers, and partly
by his arms: and raised the dead, by descending for that purpose into the
infernal regions. He was the meekest and best tempered of beings; washed
the feet of the Brahmans, and preached indeed sublimely, but always in
their favour. He was pure and chaste in reality, but exhibited every
appearance of libertinism. Lastly, he was benevolent and tender, and yet
fomented and conducted a terrible war.”

Mahony, also, is a reluctant witness to the same effect. “The religion of
Bhoodha,” says he, “as far as I have had any insight into it, seems to be
founded on a mild and simple morality. Bhoodha has taken for his
principles _wisdom_, _justice_, and _benevolence_; from which principles
emanate ten commandments, held by his followers as the true and only rule
of their conduct. He places them under three heads, _thought_, _word_, and
_deed_; and it may be said that the spirit of them is becoming and
well-suited to him, whose mild nature was first shocked at the sacrifice
of cattle.”[241]

I have already shown that Budha is but a title, embodying an abstract;
that, therefore, it was not limited to one individual, but applied
indiscriminately to a series. As I shall soon bring this succession nearer
to _our own fire-hearths_, and, in a way, perhaps, which may, else,
electrify over-sensitive nerves, it may be prudent that I should premise
another citation, descriptive of an answer, made by a dignitary of their
creed, to the last-mentioned author upon his enunciating a principle of
the Hindoo doctrine. “The Hindoos,” rejoined the priest, “must surely be
little acquainted with this subject, by this allusion to only one
(incarnation). Bhoodha, if they mean Bhoodha Dhannan Raja, became man, and
appeared as such in the world at different periods, during ages before he
had qualified himself to be a Bhoodha. These various incarnations took
place by his supreme will and pleasure, and in consequence of his superior
qualifications and merits. I am therefore inclined to believe, that the
Hindoos, who thus speak of the incarnation of a Bhoodha, cannot allude to
him whose religion and law I preach, who is now a resident of the hall of
glory, situated above the twenty-sixth heaven.”

Now it is stated in the Puranas, that a giant, named Sancha-mucha-naga, in
the shape of a _snake_, with a mouth like a _shell_, and whose abode was
in a shell, having two countenances, was killed by _Christnah_; and as
this irresistibly directs our reflection to the early part of the Book of
Genesis, I shall adduce what Mr. Deane has set forth on this latter head.

“The tradition of the serpent,” says he, “is a chain of many links, which,
descending from Paradise, reaches, in the energetic language of Homer,

  ‘Τοσσον ἕνερθ’ ἀϊδεω, ὅσον ουρανός ἐστ’ ἀπο γαίης,’

but conducts, on the other hand, upwards to the promise, that ‘the seed of
the woman should bruise the serpent’s head.’... The mystic serpent entered
into the mythology of every nation, consecrated almost every temple,
symbolised almost every deity, was imagined in the heavens, stamped upon
the earth, and ruled in the realms of everlasting sorrow.... This
universal concurrence of traditions proves a common source of derivation,
and the oldest record of the legend must be that upon which they are all
founded. The most ancient record of the history of the serpent-tempter is
the Book of Genesis! In the Book of Genesis, therefore, is the fact from
which almost every superstition connected with the mythological serpent is
derived.”[242]

That “the oldest record of the legend must be that upon which they are
all founded,” no one can gainsay, inasmuch as the parent is always senior
to the offspring: but it is not quite such a _truism_ that “the most
ancient record of the history of the serpent-tempter is the Book of
Genesis.” Before a line of it was ever written, or its author even
conceived, the allegory of the serpent was propagated all over the world.
Temples, constructed thousands of years prior to the birth of Moses, bear
the impress of its history. “The extent and permanence of the
superstition,” says the erudite ex-secretary of the Asiatic Society, now
Professor of Sanscrit in the University of Oxford, “we may learn from
Abulfazl, who observes that in seven hundred places there are carved
figures of snakes, which they worship. There is, likewise, reason to
suppose that this worship was diffused throughout the _whole_ of India,
as, besides, the numerous fables and traditions relating to the _Nagas_,
or _snake-gods_, scattered through the Puranas, vestiges of it still
remain in the actual observances of the Hindus.”

To explore the origin, however, of this Ophite veneration, all the efforts
of ingenuity have hitherto miscarried: and the combination of _solar_
symbols with it, in some places of its appearance, has, instead of
facilitating, augmented the difficulty. “The portals of all the Egyptian
temples,” observes the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, “are decorated with the
same hierogram of the _circle_ and the _serpent_. We find it also upon the
temple of Naki Rustan, in Persia; upon the triumphal arch at Pechin, in
China; over the gates of the great temple of Chaundi Teeva, in Java; upon
the walls of Athens; and in the temple of Minerva, at Tegea--for the
Medusa’s head, so common in Grecian sanctuaries, is nothing more than the
Ophite hierogram, filled up by a human face. Even Mexico, remote as it was
from the ancient world, has preserved, with Ophiolatreia, its universal
symbol.”[243]

How would Mr. Deane account for this commixture? “The votaries of the
sun,” says he, “having taken possession of an Ophite temple, adopted some
of its rites, and thus in process of time arose the compound religion,
whose god was named Apollo.”

But, sir, the symbols are _coeval_, imprinted _together_ upon those
edifices at the _very moment_ of their construction; and, therefore, “no
process of time” was required to amalgamate a religion whose god (it is
true) was Apollo, but which was already inseparable, and, though compound,
one.

[Illustration]

I have before established the sameness of design which belonged,
indifferently, to _solar_ worship and to _phallic_. I shall, ere long,
prove that the same characteristic extends equally to _ophiolatreia_; and
if _they all three be identical_, as it thus necessarily follows, where is
the occasion for surprise at our meeting the _sun_, _phallus_, and
_serpent_, the constituent symbols of each, _embossed upon the same
table_, and _grouped_ under the same _architrave_?

“Here,” says a correspondent in the supplement to the _Gentleman’s
Magazine_ of August last, “we have the umbilicated _moon_ in her state of
opposition to the sun, and the sign of fruitfulness. She was also, in the
doctrines of Sabaism, the northern gate, by which Mercury conducted souls
to birth, as mentioned by Homer in his description of the Cave of the
Nymphs, and upon which there remains a commentary by Porphyry. Of this
cave Homer says--

  ‘Fountains it had eternal, and two gates,
  The northern one to men admittance gives;
  That to the south is more divine--a way
  Untrod by men, t’ immortals only known.’

“The _Cross_, in Gentile rites, was the symbol of reproduction and
resurrection. It was, as Shaw remarks, ‘the same with the ineffable image
of eternity that is taken notice of by Suidas.’ The _Crescent_ was the
lunar ship or ark that bore, in Mr. Faber’s language, the Great Father and
the Great Mother over the waters of the deluge; and it was also the emblem
of the boat or ship which took aspirants over the lakes or arms of the sea
to the Sacred Islands, to which they resorted for initiation into the
mysteries: and over the river of death to the mansions of Elysium; the
_Cockatrice_ was the snake-god. It was also the basilisk or cock-adder.
‘Habet caudem ut coluber, residuum vero corpus ut gallus.’ The Egyptians
considered the basilisk as the emblem of eternal ages: ‘esse quia vero
videtur ζωῆς κυριεύειν καὶ θανάτον, ex auro conformatum capitibus deorum
appingebant Ægyptii.’ What relation had this with the Nehustan or Brazen
Serpent, to which the Israelites paid divine honours in the time of
Hezekiah? What is the circle with the seasons at the equinoxes and
solstices marked upon it?--the signs of the four great pagan festivals
celebrated at the commencement of each of these seasons? The corner of the
stone which is broken off probably contained some symbol. I am not
hierophant enough to unriddle and explain the hidden tale of this
combination of hieroglyphics. We know that the sea-goat and the Pegasus on
tablets and centeviral stones, found on the walls of Severus and
Antoninus, were badges of the second, and the boar of the twentieth
legion; but this bas-relief seems to refer, in some dark manner, to
matters connected with the ancient heathen mysteries. The form of the
border around them is remarkable. The stone which bears them was, I
apprehend, brought in its present state from Vindolana, where, as I have
observed, an inscription to the Syrian goddess was formerly found. The
station of Magna also, a few years since, produced a long inscription to
the same goddess in the Iambic verse of the Latin comedians; and a cave,
containing altars to Mithras, and a bust of that god, seated between the
two hemispheres and surrounded by the twelve signs of the Zodiac, besides
other signa and ἄγαλματα of the Persian god, was opened at Borcovicus only
about ten years since. These, therefore, and other similar remains, found
in the Roman stations in the neighbourhood of Vindolana, induce me to
think that the symbols under consideration, and now for the first time
taken notice of, were originally placed near the altars of some divinity
in the station of the Bowers-in-the-Wood. I know of no establishment that
the Knights Templars had in this neighbourhood.”

The modesty of “V. W.” is not less than his diligence; and both, I
consider, exemplary and great. But he will excuse me when I tell him that
the _Cross_, the _Crescent_, and the _Cockatrice_, are still _maiden_
subjects after his hands. Neither Faber, Shaw, nor Suidas, pretend even to
approach those matters, save in their _emblematic_ sense; and, as every
emblem must have a substratum, I for one, cannot content myself with that
remote and secondary knowledge which is imparted by the _exoteric type_,
but must enter the penetralia, and explore the secrets of the _eisoteric
temple_.

  “As an old serpent casts his scaly vest,
  Wreaths in the sun in youthful glory dress’d;
  So, when Alcides’ mortal mould resign’d,
  His better part enlarg’d, and grew refin’d;
  August his visage shone; almighty Jove
  In his swift car his honoured offspring drove:
  High o’er the hollow clouds the coursers fly,
  And lodge the hero in the starry sky.”[244]




CHAPTER XVII.


“Chilly as the climate of the world is growing--artificial and systematic
as it has become--and unwilling as we are to own the fact, there are few
amongst us but who have had those feelings once strongly entwined around
the soul, and who have felt how dear was their possession when existing,
and how acute the pang which their severing cost. Fewer still were the
labyrinths unclosed in which their affections lay folded, but in whose
hearts the name of _woman_ would be found, although the rough collision
with the world may have partially effaced it.”

This instinctive influence, which the daughters of Eve universally
exercise over the sons of Adam, is not more irresistible in the present
day, than it proved in the case of their great progenitor. _Love_, however
disguised--and how could it be more beautifully than by the scriptural
penman?--_love, in its literal and all-absorbing seductiveness_, was the
simple but fascinating aberration couched under the figure of the
_forbidden apple_.

All the illusions of fancy resolve themselves into this sweet abyss. The
dreams of commentators may, therefore, henceforward be spared; the
calculations of bookmakers, on this topic, dispensed with: whatever be
_my_ fate, one consolation, at least, awaits me, that in addition to the
_Towers_, I shall have expounded the mysteries of Genesis.

In the _Irish_ language, which, as being that of ancient Persia, or
_Iran_, must be the oldest in the world, and of which the _Hebrew_,
brought away by Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees,[245] is but a distant and
imperfect branch,--well, in this primordial tongue, the nursery at once of
science, of religion, and of philosophy, all _mysteries_, also, have been
matured: and it will irrefutably manifest itself, that in it, exclusively,
was woven that elegantly-wrought veil, of colloquial illusiveness, which
shrouds the _nature_ of our first parents’ downfall.

How, think you, was this accomplished? By assigning to certain terms a
twofold signification, of which one represented a certain _passion_,
_quality_, or _virtue_, and the other its _sensible index_. To the latter
alone had the _multitude_ any access; while the sanctity of the former was
guarded against them by all the terrors of religious interdicts.

For instance, in the example before us, _Budh_, or _Fiodh_,--which is the
same thing,--means, primarily, _lingam_, and secondarily, a _tree_. Of
these, the latter, which was the popular acceptation, was only the
_outward signal_ of the former, which was the _inward_ mystified
_passion_, comprehended only by the initiated. When, therefore, we are
told that Eve was desired not to taste of the _tree_, _i.e._ _Budh_, we
are to understand that she was prohibited what _Budh_ meant in its true
signification, viz. _lingam_: in other words, that when cautioned against
the _Budh_, it was not an _insensible tree_, its symbolic import, that
was meant thereby, but the _vital phallus_, its _animate_
prototype:--that, in short, “_missis_ ambagibus,” the word _Budh_ was to
be taken, _not figuratively_, but _literally_.[246]

[Illustration: FROM THE RUINS OF THE PALENCIAN CITY.]

Again, in this cradle of literary wonders--the Irish language--every
letter in its alphabet expresses some particular _tree_; but its second,
_Beth_,--whence the _Beta_ of the Greeks, and a formative only of _Budh_,
the radix,--signifies in addition to the _tree_ which it
represents[247]--_knowledge_ also! And _here, obvious as light, and
impregnable to contradiction, you have the tree of knowledge, in natural
nakedness, divested of all the mystery of pomiferous verbiage, and
identified in attributes, as in prolific import, with the name and essence
of the sacred_ Budh![248]

Here then we have, at length, arrived at the _fountain-head_ and _source_
of the _mystery_ of _Budhism_. Eve herself, I emphatically affirm, was the
_very first Budhist_. And, accordingly, we find that, in former ages,
women universally venerated the _Budh_, and carried images of it, as a
talisman, around their necks and in their bosoms![249]

But if Eve was the first Budhist, the first priest of the Budhist order
was her first-born, but apostate son Cain: and in his acknowledging the
bounty of _Budh_, the _sun_, who matures the fruits of the earth,--and
thereby recognising Jehovah only as the God of _nature_ and of
_increase_,--rather than in looking forward by faith to the redemption by
_blood_, as a different sacrifice would have intimated, consisted “the
whole front and bearing” of his treason and offence.[250]

“If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? And if thou doest not
well, a sin offering lieth at the door”[251]--the means of propitiation
are within your immediate reach.

The endearing tone in which this is conveyed bespeaks an appeal to some
usage familiar to the party. It betokens indisputably, that on previous
occasions, when Cain had acted “well,” he had met with no rejection. And
for the truth of this Jehovah refers to the defendant’s own experience and
self-convincing consciousness.

Cain, therefore, was a priest under a former dispensation, and a favoured
one, too, and his being deprived of this office, or, in other words, “cast
off from the presence of the Lord,” was the great source and origin of his
present wretchedness.

But if a priest, he must have been so to a larger congregation than his
father, mother, and brother: and besides, he, as well as Abel, must have
had _wives_; but the Scriptures do not tell us that Adam and Eve, as
individuals, had any _daughters_; it follows, therefore, that the consorts
of the two brothers must have sprung from some _other_ parents. There,
then, were more men and women on the earth than Adam and Eve: and this is
still further confirmed by the apprehensions expressed by Cain himself,
after the murder of Abel, lest he might be slain by someone meeting him.

Yes, in the paradisaical state, before “sin entered into the world,” the
earth was as crowded with population as it is at present, and Adam and Eve
are only put as representatives, male and female, of the entire human
species all over the globe.[252]

Here I cannot do better than set the reader right as to the rendering of a
subsequent text, which says that “God set a mark upon Cain lest any one
meeting him should kill him”; nor can I recollect another instance wherein
human ingenuity, while struggling after truth, has been more directly
instrumental in the dissemination of error.

One would suppose that the setting “a mark upon” a person, instead of
allaying his fears of being molested by those meeting him, should, on the
contrary, aggravate them, from its extraordinary aspect. Besides, in the
innumerable fantasies which commentators have conjured up as
specifications of this “mark,” no vestige whatsoever has been yet traced
on the human form to justify the inference.

We are obliged, therefore, at last, to recur to the _truth_, and it
fortunately happens that this is accessible by only translating the
original as it should properly be, thus, viz. “And God _gave_ Cain a
_sign_ lest any meeting him, should kill him.”

The only question now is what that _sign_ was, which God _gave_ to Cain?
And to resolve this, we have but to bethink ourselves of his
dereliction,--namely, the offering worship to Budh, _i.e._ _nature_, or
the _sun_: and his refusing to sacrifice, in consequence of such devotion,
anything endowed with _life_, of which Budh, _i.e._ Lingam,--according to
the double acceptation of the word,--was the type, as it is also the
_sign_ of Budh, the sun,--and we have infallibly developed the answer and
the secret.

Stamping the nature of his crime, and at the same time indicating that, in
the now fallen condition of man, this badge of his revolt would be rather
a security against trespass, and a passport to acceptance than an
inducement to annoyance, God shows to Cain, as much in derision as in
anger, the _substantial_ image of that deity to which he had but just
before done homage, viz. Budh; and thereupon, Cain goes, and, on “the land
a wanderer,” he erects this _sign_ into a deified _Round Tower_.

Perhaps the reader would like to have some _collateral_ proofs for these
startling interpretations. I shall give them, as convincing as the
solution itself is irrefutable and true.

The Maypole festival, which the Rev. Mr. Maurice has so satisfactorily
shown to be but the remains of an ancient institution of India and Egypt
(he should have added Persia, and, indeed, placed it first), was, in fact,
but part and parcel of this Round Tower worship. May the 1st is the day on
which its orgies were celebrated; nor is the custom, even now, confined to
the British Isles alone, but as naturally prevails universally throughout
the East, whence it emanated _of old_ to us. Lest, too, there should be
any mistake as to the object of adoration, we are told in the second
volume of the _Asiatic Researches_, in a letter from Colonel Pearce, that
Bhadani, _i.e._ Astarte, _i.e._ Luna, _i.e._ Venus, _i.e._ “Mollium mater
cupidinum,” was the goddess in whose honour those festivities were raised.

Now as astronomy was connected with all the ceremonies of the ancients,
the sun’s entrance into Taurus, which in itself bespeaks the vigour of
reanimated productiveness at the vernal equinox, was the symbol in the
heavens associated by the worshippers with this allegorical gaiety. But
this event takes place a little earlier every year than the preceding one,
by reason of what astronomers call the _precession_, so that at present
it occurs at a season far more advanced than it did at first.

Theory and observation both concur in establishing that 72 years is the
period which the equinox will take to precede 1 degree of the 360 into
which the heavens are divided,--2160 years 30 degrees, that is, one
sign,--and 25,920, 360 degrees, or the twelve signs of the Zodiac. If,
therefore, we compute at this rate the precise year at which the vernal
equinox must have coincided with the 1st of May,--which must certainly
have been the fact at the origin of the institution,--it will prove to
have been about the four thousandth before the Christian era, which
exactly corresponds with the time of Cain, and irrefutably confirms the
origin which I have assigned to the worship of the Budh, Tower, Phallus,
or Maypole.

Mr. Maurice’s position deserves to be remarked. “_I have little doubt,
therefore_,” says he, “_that May-day, or at least the day on which the sun
entered Taurus, has been immemorially kept as a sacred festival from the
creation of the earth and man, originally intended as a memorial of that
auspicious period and that momentous event_.”

It is with extreme reluctance that I would dissent from a writer who has
contributed so largely as the gentleman before us towards the restoration
of literature; but since we agree as to the _era_ of the origin of the
festival, and _substantially_ as to its _design_, I have the less
hesitation in recording my belief that _it was not the creation of the
earth or of man_ that was intended to be commemorated, but the
commencement of a _new dispensation_, consequent upon _man’s
defection_.[253]

Lord, from the Shaster, quotes the following abstract, marking the opinion
of the Easterns themselves, as to Adam and Eve having had many
contemporaries. This relates an interview between a different couple.
“Being both persuaded that God had a hand in this their meeting, they took
council from this book, to bind themselves in the inviolable bond of
marriage, and with the courtesies interceding between man and wife, were
lodged in one another’s bosoms: for joy whereof the sun put on his nuptial
lustre, and looked brighter than ordinary, causing the season to shine
upon them with golden joy; and the silver moon welcomed the evening of
their repose, whilst music from heaven, as if God’s purpose in them had
been determinate, sent forth a pleasing sound, such as useth to fleet from
the loud trumpet, together with the noise of the triumphant drum. Thus
proving the effects of generation together, they had fruitful issue, and
so peopled the East, and the woman’s name was Sanatree.”

This _Maypole_ ceremony, under the name of _Phallica_, _Dionysia_, or
_Orgia_, which last word, though sometimes applied to the mysteries of
other deities, belongs more particularly to those of Bacchus,[254] was
celebrated, at one time, throughout Attica with all the extravagance of
religio-lascivious pomp. Archer, in his _Travels in Upper India_, arrived
at a village just a few hours only after the May gaieties were over, and
found the _pole_ still standing. “The occasion,” says he, “was one of
festivity, for all had strings of flowers about their heads, and they
spoke of the matter as one of great pleasure and amusement.” As, however,
he did not come in for the actual observances, I shall supply the omission
by detailing the form of its celebration in our own country.

“Anciently,” says M’Skimin, in his _History of Carrickfergus_, “a large
company of young men assembled each May-day, who were called May-boys.
They wore above their other dress white linen shirts, which were covered
with a profusion of various coloured ribbons, formed into large and
fantastic knots. One of the party was called King, and the other Queen,
each of whom wore a crown, composed of the most beautiful flowers of the
season, and was attended by pages who held up the train. When met, their
first act was _dancing to music round the pole_, planted the preceding
evening; after which they went to the houses of the most respectable
inhabitants round about, and having taken a short jig in front of each
house, received a voluntary offering from those within. The sum given was
rarely less than five shillings. In the course of this ramble the King
always presented a rich garland of flowers to some handsome young woman,
who was hence called ‘the Queen of May’ till the following year.”

With this compare the description given by the author of the _Rites and
Ceremonies of all Nations_, of a similar worship as celebrated amongst the
Banians. “Another god,” says he, “much esteemed and worshipped by these
people, is called _Perimal_, and his image is that of a _pole_, or the
_large mast of a ship_. The Indians relate the following legend concerning
this idol. At Cydambaran, a city in Golcondo, a penitent having
accidentally pricked his foot with an awl, let it continue in the wound
for several years together; and although this extravagant method of
putting himself to excessive torture was displeasing to the god Perimal,
yet the zealot swore he would not have it pulled out till he _saw the god
dance_. At last, the indulgent god had compassion on him, _and danced, and
the sun, moon, and stars danced along with him_. During this celestial
movement, a chain of gold dropped from either the sun or the god, and the
place has been ever since called Cydambaran. It was also in memory of this
remarkable transaction _that the image of the god was changed from that of
an ape to a pole_, thereby intimating (adds the good-natured expositor of
himself) that all religious worship should reach up towards heaven, that
human affections should be placed on things above.”

Now, this mysterious _Peri-Mal_ is but a euphony for _Peri-Bal_, that is,
the _Baal-Peor_ before explained: and when you remember the destination
which I have there assigned him, you will perceive the propriety of his
having been represented by a _mast_ or May-_pole_. As to the Indian
legend, it only shows the antiquity of the rite, superadded to that
religious _investment_ which was meant as a shield against profanation.

Vallancey also mentions the following additional custom, which he himself
witnessed in the county of Waterford:--“On the first day of May, annually,
a number of youths, of both sexes, go round the _parish_ to _every couple
married within the year_, and oblige them to give a ball. This is
ornamented with gold or silver coin. I have been assured, they sometimes
expended three guineas on this ornament. The _balls are suspended by a
thread, in two hoops placed at right angles, decorated with festoons of
flowers. The hoops are fastened to the end of a long pole, and carried
about in great solemnity, attended with singing, music, and dancing._”

The _mummers_, in like manner, who went about upon this day, demanding
money, and with similar solemnities, as if for the _moon in labour_, were
derived from the same origin. In Ceylon this practice is confined to
“women alone,”[255] who, as the editor of the _Rites and Ceremonies_,
etc., informs us, “go from door to door with the image of _Buddu_ in their
hands, calling out as they pass, ‘Pray, remember _Buddu_.’[256] The
meaning is, that will enable them to sacrifice to the god. Some of the
people give them money, others cotton thread, some rice, and others oil
for the lamps. Part of these gifts they carry to the priests of _Buddu_,
and the remainder they carry home for their own use.”

The money collected in Ireland, on the same occasion, would appear to have
been somewhat similarly expended, having been “mostly sacrificed to the
jolly god; the remainder given to the poor in the neighbourhood.”

  “Here, for a while, my proper cares resigned,
  Here let me sit in sorrow for mankind;
  Like yon neglected shrub, at random cast,
  That shades the steep, and sighs at every blast.”[257]




CHAPTER XVIII.


When I cast back my eye upon this narrative, through the long perspective
of ages which it involves, I confess I feel incommoded by some misgivings
of self-distrust. When I consider the _mighty_ individuals, of
_transcendent_ powers and almost _inexhaustible_ resources, who, having
reconnoitred its coast, either _perished_ in the impotency of effecting a
landing, or, more wisely, _receded_ from it as impregnable, I am _thrown
back_, as it were, upon myself, and impeded by the comparison of my own
littleness.

But if “God has often chosen the small things of the earth to confound the
great”; and if success in past undertakings be any guarantee against the
illusiveness of inward promise; if the roads be all chalked, the posts
lighted, and the sentinels faithful, why, _then_, allow the influence of
petty fears to mar, at all events, the _project_ of an ennobling
enterprise?

In that cherished volume, whence our first lessons upon religion have been
deduced, and which, as embodying the principles of our _happiness_ here,
and our _hopes_ hereafter, has been honoured with the _pre-eminent_ and
distinctive appellation of the _Bible_, or _Book_, there occur numerous
phrases of _mysterious_ import, but _pregnant_ significancy, which pious
men, unable to solve, have contented themselves with classifying as under
the head of “above reason”--“contrary,” and “according to,” being the two
other constituents of their predicamental line.

Those _conventional_ terms which _expediency_ alone has invented are, to
say the least, arbitrary; and as all men have an equal right to form a
_specification_ of their subject-matter, I shall, without disconcerting
the _order_ of the above _division_, endeavour only to rescue the points
to which I refer from immersion in the _first_ class;[258] or--if allowed
the latitude of _parliamentary_ elocution--to take them out from the
condemnation of _Schedule A_.

To begin, then, with the following text, viz. “_The sons of God_ saw the
daughters of men that they were fair, and they took them wives of all
which they chose.”[259]

What do you understand by the expression “sons of God”?

His peculiar people, you reply; such, for instance, as _called upon His
name_;[260] or, perhaps, Seth’s descendants in opposition to those of
Cain, the unrighteous.

Turn, sir, to the beginning of the first and second chapters of _Job_, and
read what you are there informed of.

“Now there was a day when the _sons of God_ came to present themselves
before the Lord, and Satan came also among them.” And, “Again, there was a
day, when the _sons of God_ came to present themselves before the Lord,
and Satan came also among them to present himself before the Lord.”

Well, what is your answer now? or will it not be different from what it
was before? Can you seriously imagine that it was _any_ race of
_ordinary_ human beings that was thus denominated? _And_ are you not
compelled to associate the idea with some one of the other _superior_
productions of omnipotent agency?

I will make you, sir, if you have candour in your constitution,
acknowledge the fact. Listen--“Where wast thou when I laid the foundations
of the earth? Declare if thou hast understanding: when the morning stars
sang together, and all the _sons of God_ shouted for joy.”[261]

Here allusion is made to a period antecedent to the existence of either
_Cain_ or _Seth_. The _myriads_ of revolving ages suggested by the
interrogatory set even _fancy_ at defiance; nor are their limits demarked
by the _vague_ and _indefinite exordium_ of even the talented and
otherwise highly-favoured legislator, Moses himself.[262] And yet, in this
incomprehensible _inane_ of time, do we see the _sons of God shouting for
joy_, before the species of man--at least in his degenerate
sinfulness--had appeared upon this surface!

It is manifest, therefore, that some _emanation_ of the Godhead, distinct
from _mere_ humanity, is couched under the phrase of “the sons of God”;
and accordingly we perceive that, when they “went in unto the daughters of
men, and they bare children to them,” it is _emphatically_ noticed, as an
occurrence of _unusual_ impress, that “the same became mighty men, which
were of old, men of renown.”[263]

At the commencement of the verse, whence the last extract has been taken,
you will find the name of _giant_ mentioned; and instantly after, as if
in _juxtaposition_, nay, as if _synonymous_ with it in meaning, is
repeated “the sons of God”: thereby identifying both in nature and in
character, and proving their sameness by their convertibility.

The Hebrew word from which _giant_ has been translated, signifies _to
fall_: and what, do you suppose, constituted this _apostasy_? In sooth,
nothing else than that _carnal intercourse_, which they could not resist
indulging with the “daughters of men,” _when their senses told them they
were lovely_.[264] Thus do both names corroborate my truth; while both
reciprocally illustrate each other.

“It may seem strange,” says Wilford, “that the posterity of Cain should be
so much noticed in the Puranas, whilst that of the pious and benevolent
Ruchi is in a great measure neglected. But little is said of the posterity
of Seth, whilst the inspired penman takes particular notice of the
ingenuity of the descendants of Cain, and to what a high degree of
perfection they carried the arts of civil life. _The charms and
accomplishments of the women are particularly mentioned._ ‘The same became
mighty men, which were of old, men of renown.’”

And again,--“We have been taught to consider the descendants of Cain as a
most profligate and abominable race. This opinion, however, is not
countenanced, either by sacred or profane history. That they were not
entrusted with the sacred deposit of religious truths, to transmit to
future ages, is sufficiently certain. They might, in consequence of this,
have deviated gradually from the original belief, and at last fallen into
a superstitious system of religion, which seems, also, a natural
consequence of the fearful disposition of Cain, and the horrors he must
have felt, when he recollected the atrocious murder of his brother Abel.”

This, so far as it goes, is satisfactory enough; but it is _groping in the
dark_, and _without a pilot_. A few pages, in the distance, will, however,
bring us to the right understanding of these points also; meanwhile, I
return to the Mosaical record, for the insight therein afforded into the
history of Cain.

We are told then that he “knew his wife, and she conceived and bare
_Enoch_”: and as this name signifies _initiation in sacred rites_, as well
as it does an _assembly of congregated multitudes_,--in which latter sense
it was accurately applied to the “city” which he had “builded,”--it shows
that the new religion bade fair for perpetuity.

_Irad_, the name of Enoch’s son, proves the crowning finish of the matured
ceremonial, for intimating, as it does, _consecrated to God_, we are
naturally led to connect its bearer with the profession of that worship
which his name represented.

As _Irad_ signifies _consecrated to God_, so _Iran_ does _the land of
those so consecrated_; and accordingly we may be assured that it was in
_that precise region_ that the Budhists had first established the
_insignia_ of their empire.[265]

Let us now inquire what light will the _Dabistan_ afford to our labours.
It is known that Sir John Malcolm was no ready convert to its merits; his
abridgment of it, therefore, cannot be suspected of any colouring; and, as
I like the testimony of reluctant witnesses, I shall even make _him_ the
interpreter of its recondite contents.

“In almost all the _modern_ accounts of Persia,” says he, “which have been
translated from Mahomedan authors, _Kaiomurs_ is considered the _first
king of that country_; but the Dabistan, a book professedly compiled from
works of the ancient Guebrs, or worshippers of fire, presents us with a
chapter on a succession of monarchs and prophets who preceded Kaiomurs.
According to its author the Persians, previous to the reign of Kaiomurs,
and consequently _long before the mission of Zoroaster_, venerated a
prophet called _Mah-abad_, or the Great (rather the _Good_) Abad, whom
they considered as the father of men. We are told in the Dabistan that
_the ancient Persians deemed it impossible to ascertain who were the first
parents of the human race_. The knowledge of man, they alleged, was quite
incompetent to such a discovery; but they believed, on the authority of
their books, that Mah-abad was the person left at the _end of the last
great cycle_, and consequently the father of the present world. The only
particulars they relate of him are, that he and his wife, having survived
the former cycle, were blessed with a numerous progeny, who inhabited
caves and clefts of rocks, and were uninformed of both the comforts and
luxuries of life; that they were at first strangers to order and
government, but that Mah-abad, inspired and aided by Divine Power,
resolved to alter their condition; and, to effect that object, _planted
gardens_, _invented ornaments_, and _forged weapons_. He also taught men
to take the fleece from the sheep, and to make clothing; he built cities,
constructed palaces, fortified towns, and introduced among his descendants
all the benefits of art and commerce.

“Mah-abad had thirteen successors of his own family; all of whom are
styled _Abad_, and deemed prophets. They were at once the monarchs and the
high priests of the country; and during their reigns, the world, we are
informed, enjoyed a golden age, which was, however, disturbed by an act of
Azer-abad, the last prince of the Mahabadean dynasty, who abdicated the
throne, and retired to a life of solitary devotion.

“By the absence of Azer-abad his subjects were left to the free indulgence
of their passions, and every species of excess was the consequence. _The
empire became a scene of rapine and of murder._ To use the extravagant
expression of our author (the Dabistan), _the mills, from which men were
fed, were turned by the torrents of blood that flowed from the veins of
their brothers; every art and science fell into oblivion; the human race
became as beasts of prey, and returned to their former rude habitations in
caverns and mountains_.

“Some sages, who viewed the state of the empire with compassion, intreated
Iy-Affram, a saint-like, retired man, to assume the government. This holy
man, who had received the title of Iy (pure), from his pre-eminent
virtues, refused to attend to their request, till a divine command,
through the angel _Gabriel_, led him to consent to be the instrument of
restoring order, and of reviving the neglected laws and institutions of
Mah-abad. Iy-Affram founded a new dynasty, which was called the Iy-abad;
who, after a long and prosperous reign, suddenly disappeared, and the
empire fell again into confusion. Order was restored by his son, Shah
Kisleer, who was with difficulty prevailed upon to quit his religious
retirement to assume the reigns of government. His successors were
prosperous till the elevation of the last prince of the dynasty, whose
name was Mahabool. This monarch, we are told, was compelled by the
increasing depravity of his subjects to resign his crown.

“He was succeeded by his eldest son, Yessan, who, acting under divine
influence, supported himself in that condition which his father had
abandoned. This prince founded a new dynasty, which terminated in his
descendant, Yessan-Agrin. At the end of his reign the general wickedness
of mankind exceeded all bounds, and _God made their mutual hostility the
means of the Divine vengeance, till the human race was nearly extinct_.
The few that remained had fled to woods and mountains, _when the
all-merciful Creator called Kaiomurs, or Gilshah, to the throne_.”

We only now want a key to unlock the portals of this _Magh-abadean_
household; and I flatter myself that _this_, which I am about to tender,
will consummate to an accuracy that very desirable purpose.

Cain’s immediate progeny are they which are included under the above
denomination. Their faith and worship are exactly symbolised under its
derivative dress. _Magh_, as before explained, is _good_; and _Abad_, a
_unit_; that is, when combined, the _Good One_, or _Unit_, the author of
fruitfulness and productiveness--in which light alone, as all-bountiful
and all-generous, was he recognised by this family.

_This unity_ of the Godhead was what was _religiously_ comprehended under
the _Phallic_ configuration of the Round Tower erections; and this,
furthermore, elucidates that heretofore enigmatical declaration of the
Budhists themselves, viz. that the pyramids, in which the sacred relics
are deposited, “_be their shape what it will, are an imitation of the
worldly temple of the Supreme Being_.”[266]

But if _Magh-abadean_ was the name adopted by them with this _spiritual_
tendency, _Tuath-de-danaan_ was that which pictured them a sacerdotal
institution. The last member of this compound I have already expounded. It
remains that I develop what the two first parts conceal.

_Tuath_, then, is neither more nor less than a dialectal modification for
_Budh_, which, according to the licence of languages, transformed itself,
otherwise and indifferently, into _Butt_, Butta, Fiod, Fioth, _Thot_,
_Tuath_, _Duath_, _Suath_, Pood, Woad; and in the two last forms--of which
one is Gothic, and the other Tamulic--admitted a final syllable,--which
was but an insignificant termination,--namely, _en_, making _Pooden_ and
_Woad-en_; or _Poden_ and _Woden_.

In these several variations, and the innumerable others which branch
therefrom, while the _sensible_ idea is preserved underneath, there is
superinduced another of a more refined complexion. Thus, _Budh_, while it
primarily represents the _sun_, its type, the _penis_; and again, _its_
sign, a _tree_, expresses also the attributes of _magic_, _science_,
_divination_, and _wisdom_.

These were the consequences of that _mysterious_ garb in which the priests
invested the _true_ elements of their religion. Being themselves the sole
possessors of its inward secrets, and all literature and erudition going
hand in hand also therewith, it was so dexterously managed, that a sort of
reverential feeling attached, not only to those _qualities_ in the
abstract, but to the consecrated _personages_ who were their depositories.
Hence, while _Budh_ came to signify _divination_ and _wisdom_, _Budha_,
its professor, did a _divine_ and _wise man_; and _Tuath_, being only a
modification of the former epithet, _Tuatha_ is the corresponding
transmutation of the latter.

_Tuatha_, therefore, signifies _magicians_;[267] and so we have the
_first_ component of _Tuath-de-danaans_ elucidated. The _second_ requires
no _Œdipus_ to solve it, _De_ being but the vernacular term whereby was
expressed the _Deity_; and as I have previously established the import of
_Danaans_ to have been _Almoners_, it follows that the aggregate tenour of
this religious-compound-denomination is _the Magician-god-almoners_, or
the Almoner-magicians of the Deity.

As from _Budh_ was formed _Fiodh_, so from Fiodh arose Fidhius; and as I
have before shown that _Hercules_ and _Deus_ were synonymous terms, and
both personifications of the _Sun_, so, accordingly, we find that this
_symbolical_ adjunct was reciprocally appropriated to one as to the other.

I dwell upon those terms with the more impressive force, because that _the
spirit of no one of them_ has ever before been developed. _Me Deus
Fidhius_, and _Me Hercules Fidhius_, we where taught at school to consider
as appeals to the _God of Truth_, and the _Hercules of Honour_. Most
assuredly those virtues are comprehended under the _radix_ of the great
_mysterious_ Original; but the dictionaries and lexicons that gave us
those significations knew no more of what that _Original_ was than they
did of the connection between soul and body.

Deus _Fidhius_, then, means God the _Budha_, and as such the _All-wise_,
the _All-sacred_, the _All-amiable_, and the _All-hospitable_; and
_Hercules_ Fidhius, that is, _Hercules_ the Budha, is, in sense and
meaning, exactly the same.

The Latin word _Fides_, and the English _Faith_, are but direct emanations
from the same communion. A thousand other analogies must suggest
themselves now in consequence. In a word, if you go through the circle of
natural _religion_ and artificial _science_,--if you analyse the
vocabulary of conventional _taste_ and of modish etiquette, you will find
the _constituent particles_ of all the leading outlines resolve themselves
into the _physical_ symbolisation of the radical Budh.

What inference, I ask my reader, would he draw from the above facts?
Unquestionably that at the outset of social life, mankind at large had
used but one lingual conversation; and as the _Irish_ is the only language
in which are traced the germs of all the diverging _radii_,--nay, as it is
the _focus_ in which all amicably meet,--it follows inevitably that it
must have been the universal language of the first human cultivators--the
nursery of letters, and the cradle of revelation.

  “How charming is divine Philosophy!
  Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,
  But musical as is Apollo’s lute,
  And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets
  Where no crude surfeit reigns.”




CHAPTER XIX.


The _Tuath-de-danaans_, or Mahabadeans, being thus far proved as the first
occupiers of Iran, it may be asked, How happens it that no Persian
historians, anterior to Mohsan Fani, have noticed their existence? In the
first place, I answer that _they all_ have mentioned them, however
_unconsciously_ by themselves, or _inadvertently_ by others. And even had
this not been the fact--had not a single syllable been recorded, bearing
reference to their name, the remote era, in itself, of their detachment
from that country, would be the best possible apology for the omission.

The professed writers upon Persia belong all to a recent period; and the
magazines which they consulted, for the scanty information which they
furnish, were either Arabs or Greeks--the former a body of predatory
warriors, whose only insight into letters arose from the opportunities
which their rapines had supplied them; and the latter, a community who,
insensible to the beauties of moral truth, took delight in distorting even
the most commonplace occurrences into the most unnatural incredibilities
and misshapen incongruities.

But independently of these causes, another more powerful one had before
long co-operated. A rival dynasty, starting up from amongst themselves,
succeeded, by the issue of a religious revolution, to effect their
expulsion; and that once ascertained--the doors of admission ever after
closed against their return--the victors were not satisfied with the
monopoly of civil power, but they must wreak their vengeance still more,
by the erasure of every vestige of the former sway.

In this devastating course, the Round Towers, as the temples of their
figurative veneration, were particularly obnoxious; and, accordingly, we
may be assured, that it was owing to the durability of those edifices, and
not to the clemency of the assailants, that any one of them has been able
to survive the hurricane.

Who, you will ask, were those destroyers? They were the _Pish-de-danaans_.
And so energetically did they prosecute their extinguishing plan, aided,
besides, by the antiquity of its remote occurrence, that all writers upon
that country, before the compilers of the _Dabistan_, have set them down
as its first dynasty, making the Kaianians, the Askanians, and the
Sassanians, their successors.

Here I am obliged, in compliance with the justice of my subject, to expose
an error of a gentleman, whom I would rather have overlooked.

“The _Tuatha-dadan_ of the Irish,” says Vallancey, “are the _Pish-dadan_
of the Persians”; which he pretends to prove as follows:--“First, then,”
says he, “_Tuath_ and _Pish_ are synonymous in the Chaldee, and both
signify mystery, sorcery, prophets, etc.; they are both of the same
signification in the Irish; therefore by _Pish-dadan_ and _Tuatha-dadan_,
I understand the Dadanites, descended of Dedan, who had studied the
necromantic art, which sprang from the Chesdim, or Chaldeans.”

Of a piece with this was his assertion that _Nuagha Airgiodlamh_ of the
Irish, was _Zerdust_ of the Persians! And wherefore, think you, reader?
Because, forsooth, _Airgiodlamh_ signifies _silver_-hand, and Zerdust,
_gold_-hand! Yes, but he made out another analogy, and it is worth while
to hear it, viz. that Nuagha had his _hand cut off_ by a Fir-Bolg
_general_; while Zerdust’s _life was taken away_ by a Turanian
_chieftain_!!!

This is but an _item_ in that great ocean of incertitude in which that
enterprising etymologist had, unfortunately, been swallowed up. Having
perceived by the perusal of the manuscripts of our country, that there
must have been a time when it basked in the _sunshine_ of literary
superiority; yet unable tangibly to grapple with it, having no _clue_ into
the _origin_ of its _sacred_ repute, or the collateral particulars of its
_date_, _nature_, or _promoters_, he was tossed about by the ferment of a
_parturient_ imagination, without the saving ballast of a _discriminating_
faculty.

The General’s work, accordingly, is one which must be read with great
reserve; not because that it does not offer many valuable hints, but
because that its plan is so _crude_, and its matter so
_ill-digested_,--the same thing being _contradicted_ in one place, which
was _affirmed_ in another, or else _repeated_ interminably, without regard
to _method_ or to _style_,--that when you have waded through the whole,
you feel you have derived from it no other benefit than that of whetting
your avidity for a _correct_ insight into those subjects, of which the
author, you imagine, must have had some _idea_, but which also, it is
evident, however indefatigable he was in the attempt, he had not, himself,
the power to penetrate.

The great praise, therefore, which I would award to this writer, is that,
with one leg almost in the grave, he sat down, in the enthusiasm of a
youthful aspirant, to master the difficulties of the Irish tongue, which,
_mutilated_ though it be, and _begrimed_ by disuse, he knew was,
notwithstanding, the only sure inlet to the _genius_ of the people, as
well as to the _arcana_ of their antiquities, the most precious, as they
are, and fruitful, of any country on the surface of the globe.

But though his perseverance had rendered him the best _Irishian_ of his
age, and of many ages before him, yet has he committed _innumerable
blunders_, even in the exposition of the most simple words; and the
question now in point will verify this declaration, with as much
exactitude as any other that could be adduced.

_Tuath_, then, and _pish_ are by no means _synonymous_; neither do they
signify _mystery_ or _prophets_, except in a secondary light. In their
original acceptation, they are the _antipodes_ of each other, as much as
_male_ is to _female_, and as _relative_ is to _correlative_.[268]

They are the distinctive denominations for the _genital organs_ of both
sexes, respectively--_Tuath_ signifying _Lingam_; and _Pish_, _Yoni_.

I have already explained that _Tuath_ is but a modification of the word
_Budh_--the final _dh_ of the latter having been changed into the final
_th_ of the former, only for euphony; because that prefixed to _de-danaan_
the collision of the two _d’s_--as _Bud_-de-danaan--would not sound well;
it was, therefore, made _Buth_-de-danaan; and--the initials _b_ and _t_
being always convertible,--hence became _Tuath_-de-danaan.

The case was exactly _opposite_ with respect to _pish_: I mean so far as
the alteration of two of its letters is concerned. _Pith_ is the _usual_
method of pronouncing that term: nor is it, except when followed by a _d_,
that it assumes the other garb. But as _dh_, in the former instance, was
commuted into _th_, so _th_, in this latter, is still further into _sh_;
therefore, instead of _Pith_-de-danaan, we make it _Pish_-de-danaan.

To screen those two ligaments of _sexual_ familiarity from the peril of
profane and irreverent acceptations, all the investiture of _magic_ was
shrouded upon them. The vocabulary of _love_ and of _religion_ became one
and the same: _mystery_ and _enchantment_ were identified, and the
_negotiations_ of the earth, and the _revolutions_ of the heavens, were
blended with the _witchery_ of _amative sway_.

In this universality of domain, no one of those dear _helpmates_ had a
greater portion of honour assigned to it than the other. They were equal
in power, and alike in attributes. And to set this _equality_ beyond the
contingencies of doubt, it was withal arranged, that while _each,
primarily_, retained its _distinct sexual_ interpretation, they should
_both, secondarily_, harmonise under another _mutual_ exposition; and what
more appropriate one could be devised than that of the _influence_ which
they exercised? and of the _veil_ with which they were guarded?

_Magic_, therefore, and _mystery_, were the two _secondary_ imports, in
which both were _united_; and the _ambiguity_ thus occasioned was what
cast Vallancey upon that shoal, which proved similarly fatal to many a
preceding speculator.

To exemplify--_Budh_, or _Tuath_, in its literal and substantive
acceptation, implies the _Lingam_; collaterally, _magic_; and by
convention, _mystery_, _prophets_, _legislators_, etc. _Pish_, in like
manner, or _Pith_, denotes, literally, the _Yoni_; collaterally, _magic_;
and by convention, _mystery_, _prophets_, _legislators_, etc. And the
offshoots of either, in an inferior and deteriorated view, such as
_Budh-og_ from the former, and _Pish-og_ from the latter, intimate,
indiscriminately, _witchcraft_, _wizard_, or _witch_.

Now the words _De-danaans_, having been already illustrated as meaning
_God-Almoners_, if we prefix to them, severally, _Tuath_ and _Pish_, they
will become _Tuath_-de-danaans, and _Pish_-de-danaans; the former
expressing, literally, _Lingam_-God-Almoners; and the latter, literally,
_Yoni_-God-Almoners; and both equally, by convention,
_Magic_-God-Almoners.

As we have had exhibited numerous representations of the homage paid to
the _paternal_ member of this theocracy, perhaps I may be permitted to
adduce a single quotation demonstrative of the honours shown to his
_maternal_ colleague.

“The Chinese,” says the author of _Rites and Ceremonies_, “worship a
goddess, whom they call _Puzza_, and of whom their priests give the
following account:--They say that three nymphs came down from heaven to
wash themselves in a river, but scarce had they got into the water before
the herb _Lotos_[269] appeared on one of their garments, with its coral
fruit upon it. They were surprised to think whence it could proceed; and
the nymph upon whose garment it was could not resist _the temptation of
indulging herself in tasting it_. But by thus eating some of it, she
became _pregnant_, and was delivered of a boy, whom she brought up, and
then returned to heaven. He afterwards became a great man, a conqueror and
legislator, and the nymph was afterwards worshipped under the name of
_Puzza_.”[270]

And thus we see that _Budh_ and _Pish_ were the actual regulators of the
solar universe.

Time, however, dissolved the chain which linked together those _mysterious
absolutes_: or, rather, the _zealots_ of each contrived to sever an
attachment, which was intended by nature to be reciprocal and mutual.[271]
War, devastating, desecrating war, spread abroad over the plain! Human
energies were evoked into an unknown activity! Men’s passions, always
inflammable by the jealousy of partisanship, were here furthermore
stimulated by the rancour of religion! And hearts were lacerated, and
countries were depopulated in sustainment of the consequences of a
physiological disquisition!!!

But what do you conceive to have been the topic at issue? Verily, it was
whether the _male or the female contributed more largely to the act of
generation_!--those who voted for the _female_ side ranging themselves
under the banners of _Pish_, and those for the _male_ under the standard
of _Budh_, while both equally appealed to heaven for adjudication of
their suit, by arrogating to themselves the adjunct of _De-danaans_, or
God-Almoners.

  “Not but the human fabric from its birth
  Imbibes a flavour of its parent earth,
  As various tracts enforce a various toil,
  The manners speak the idiom of the soil.”

Whether or not, however, the result is to be considered as decisive of the
matter in dispute, one thing at least is certain, namely, that the
_Pish_-God-Almoners obtained the victory; and the _Budh_-God-Almoners were
thrown upon the ocean; over whose bosom, wafted to our genial shores, they
did not only import with them all the culture of the East, with its
accompanying refinement and polished civilisation; but they raised the
isle to that pinnacle of literary and religious beatitude which made it
appear to the fancies of distant and enraptured hearers more the day-dream
of romance than the sober outline of an actual locality.

I shall now illustrate a part of those truths by the Indian history of the
circumstances, as copied from their Puranas, by one who had no
anticipation of my differently-drawn conclusions, and one, in fact, who
did not know either the _scene_ or the _substance_ of the occurrence which
he thus transcribes.

“Yoni, the _female nature_, is also,” says Wilford, “derived from the same
root (_yu_, to mix). Many Pundits insist the Yavanas were so named from
their obstinate assertion of a superior influence in the _female_ over the
_linga_ or _male nature_, in producing a perfect offspring. It may seem
strange that a question of mere physiology should have occasioned not only
a vehement religious contest, but even a bloody war; yet the fact appears
to be historically true, though the Hindu writers have dressed it up, as
usual, in a veil of historical allegories and mysteries, which we should
call obscene, but which they consider as awfully sacred.

“There is a legend in the Servarasa, of which the figurative meaning is
more obvious. When Sati, after the close of her existence as the daughter
of Dascha, sprang again to life in the character of Parvati, or Mountain
Spring, she was reunited in marriage to Mahadeva. This divine pair had
once a dispute on the comparative influence of the sexes in producing
animated beings, and each resolved, by mutual agreement, to create apart a
new race of men.[272] The race produced by Mahadeva were very numerous,
and devoted themselves exclusively to the worship of the _male deity_; but
their intellects were dull, their bodies feeble, their limbs distorted,
and their complexions of many different hues. Parvati had, at the same
time, created a multitude of human beings, who adored the _female power_
only, and were all well shaped, with sweet aspects and fine complexions. A
furious contest ensued between the two races, and the _Lingajas_ were
defeated in battle; but Mahadeva, enraged against the _Yonijas_, would
have destroyed them with the _fire of his eye_, if Parvati had not
interposed and spared them;[273] but he would spare them only on
condition that they should instantly leave the country, with a promise to
see it no more; and from the _Yoni_, which they adored as the sole cause
of their existence, they were named Yavanas.”

It is evident that a mistake has been committed in the above narrative,
making the _victors_ the persons who were obliged to quit! and we know
from testimony, adduced upon a different occasion, that instances of such
confusion were neither unfrequent nor uncommon.[274] But even admitting it
to be accurate, the apparent contradiction is easily reconciled; as it is
probable that the contest was protracted for a _long period of time_,
before it was ultimately decided in favour of one party; and, in the
alternations of success, one side being up to-day, and another uppermost
to-morrow, what could be more natural than that a colony of the _Yavanas_,
or _Pish-de-danaans_,--which is the same,--should have fled for shelter to
India, before that the auspices of their arms, propelled by the _fair
cause_ which they vindicated, had, at length, accomplished the overthrow
of their adversaries.

This object, however, once obtained,--full masters of their wishes, and
sole arbiters of Iran,--they were not satisfied with the mere extinction
of all the symbols of their predecessors,--save and except the _Towers_
which stood proof to their attacks,--but they established there instead a
code, as well political as moral, more consonant with their own
prejudices: and the wonder would be great, indeed, if, after this
triumphant assertion of _female_ power, gratitude and religion should not
both combine in making the _type_ of that influence--the sacred
_crescent_, or _yoni_--the personification of their doctrines; and _woman
herself_, all-lovely and all-attractive, the concentrated temple of their
divinity upon earth!

Such was the commencement of the Pish-de-danaan dynasty in Persia; and its
influence still operating, after a long interval of time, is what the
historian unconsciously describes in the following terms, viz.:--

“If we give any credit to Ferdosi, most of the laws of modern honour
appear to have been understood and practised with an exception in favour
of the ancient Persians, whose duels, or combats (which were frequent),
were generally with the most distinguished among the enemies of their
country or the human race. The great respect in which the female sex was
held was, no doubt, the principal cause of the progress they had made in
civilisation. These were at once the cause of generous enterprise and its
reward. It would appear that in former days the women of Persia had an
assigned and honourable place in society; and we must conclude that an
equal rank with the male creation, which is secured to them by the
ordinances of Zoroaster, existed long before the time of that reformer,
who paid too great attention to the habits and prejudices of his
countrymen, to have made any serious alterations in so important a usage.
We are told by Quintus Curtius, that Alexander would not sit in the
presence of Sisy-gambis till told to do so by that matron, because it was
not the custom in Persia for sons to sit in presence of their mothers.
There can be no stronger proof than this anecdote affords, of the great
respect in which the female sex were held in that country at the period of
his invasion.”[275]

  “Without thee, what were unenlightened man?
  A savage roaming through the woods and wilds
  In quest of prey; and with the unfashioned fur
  Rough clad; devoid of every finer art,
  And elegance of life. Nor happiness
  Domestic, mixed of tenderness and care,
  Nor moral excellence, nor social bliss,
  Nor grace, nor love, were his.”[276]




CHAPTER XX.


But you will say that I have ventured nothing like proof, of the
paradoxical affirmation propounded a short while ago, as to the
_Tuath-de-danaans_ having been mentioned, by all Eastern writers, in
connection with Persia; and yet unnoticed, the while, by themselves, not
less than unheeded by their readers?

True: I but awaited the opportunity which has just arrived.

Are you not aware, then, how that all Oriental writers, when referring to
Budha, who was born at Maghada, in South Bahar, state that he was the son
of _Suad-dha-dana_? And have I not already shown you that _Suadh_ and
_Tuath_ were but disguises of each other, and both resolvable into Budh?

Those first components, therefore, in each being the same, look at the
entire compound words, _Tuath-de-danaan_, and _Suad-dha-dana_, and are not
the rest, also, infallibly identical?

Admitting this, you reply, how could they, in that early age, make their
way to Ireland? which, from its extreme position, must have been the very
last place they would have thought of!

If the question refers to the route pursued, I decline its solution, as
not necessary for my design. “A piece of sugar, or a morsel of pepper, in
a neglected corner of a village inn, would be a certain proof,” says
Heeren, “of the trade with either Indies, even if we possessed no other
evidences of the commerce of the Dutch and English with those countries.”
And when I have already made the coincidences between the two Irans and
their inhabitants, their forms of worship, their language and mode of
life, to be historical axioms, I surely cannot be expected to waste labour
upon such a trifle, which sinks into nothing against _evidences_ of the
actual fact.[277]

But if the length of the voyage be the obstacle insinuated, then would I
find some difficulty to--do what?--keep my muscles grave: as if, forsooth,
the adventurous sons of man could only, slowly and imperceptibly, and like
so many ants pushing a load before them, introduce themselves, inch by
inch, and in measured succession, into the diversified terraqueous globe
spread abroad for their enjoyment!--when we have direct demonstration that
such was far from having been the case in the instance of a colony which,
starting from Tyre, and leaving behind on all sides the most inviting and
delicious countries, planted itself down, perhaps from the mere spirit of
romance, in the circumscribed little island of Cadiz, long before Carthage
or Utica had existence even in name!

No, sir; we must not be so fond of derogating from the ancients all
participation in those embellishments which promote society. Asia was the
cradle of the whole human race; and thence, as its population overflowed,
migratory herds in different states of civilisation, and with different
forms of religious culture, poured in their successive colonies with
multitudinous inundation into the other continental lands; but with more
zeal, and with stronger preference, into those compact little nests which
have been significantly denominated the “Isles of the Gentiles.”

Vessels rode over the briny surges with as proud a canvas as now receives
the gale.[278] The model of the ark would be lesson sufficient to instruct
an enterprising generation in the science of naval architecture: and we
may well suppose that, of all pursuits cultivated by human art, this would
have occupied the very foremost regard by a people just rescued, through
its salutary instrumentality, from the desolating scourge of an
all-swallowing abyss.

“Well, then, at all events,”--I fancy I hear you exclaim,--“you admit the
story of the _deluge_?”

Certainly; and that of _Noah_, and the _ark_, and the _dove_, and the
_raven_. But did I not, also, concede the story of the _giants_, and of
the _serpent_? of the _sons of God_, and of the _tree of knowledge_? Nay,
_have I not put the truth of those particulars beyond the possibility of
scepticism_, much more of _denial_? But, believe me, that the _liquid_
which composed this “deluge” was more of the colour of _claret_ than it
was of _water_;--that there was no more of _wood_ or _timber_ in the
construction of this “ark” than there was in that of the “tree of
knowledge”--that those two latter were congenial and correspondent to each
other,--in their configuration and intention,--and that _flesh_ and
_blood_ were the elements of which they were both composed.

  “For all that meets the bodily sense, I deem
  Symbolical, one mighty alphabet
  For infant minds------”

Could the coincidence of measure[279] between the great Egyptian _pyramid_
at its base, and that of the Noachic _ark_, in ancient cubits,[280] have
been accidental, do you imagine? And if not, what community of purpose, do
you think, had been subserved by such numerical analogy?

The _triangle_, in the old world, was a sacred form. It represented the
properties--capacity and dilatation--of the _female_ symbol. Lucian, in
his _Auction_, states the following dialogue as having occurred between
Pythagoras and a purchaser, viz.:--

PYTH. How do you reckon?

PUR. One, two, three, four.

PYTH. Do you see? What you conceive _four_, these are _ten_; and a perfect
_triangle_, and our _oath_.

Now, Pythagoras, though a Samian, was educated in Egypt; and the religious
mysteries, with which he had been there imbued, are what is so profanely
ridiculed by this infidel scoffer.

It is not my province to justify the ceremonial of the Egyptians, any
further than as indicative of gratitude to the Godhead; but the reflection
must suggest itself to every observant mind, that they are never called
_idolaters_ in any part of the Pentateuch; and Plutarch, in addition,
_positively asserts_ that “they had inserted nothing into their worship
without a reason,--nothing merely fabulous,--nothing superstitious; but
their institutions have reference either to morals or something useful in
life, and bear a beautiful resemblance, many of them, to some _facts_ in
_history_, or some _appearance_ in _nature_.”

If we investigate the secret of this Pythagorean asseveration, we shall
find that the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, thrice joined, and touching each other,
as it were, in three angles, in this manner--

[Illustration]

constitute an equilateral _triangle_, and amount also, in calculation, to
_ten_. While the _inward_ mystery, couched under its figure, embraced _all
that was solemn in religion and in thought_, being, in fact, the index of
_male_ and _female_ united--the unit, in the centre, standing for the
Lingam.

Look now at the form of the great Egyptian pyramid; and is it not
precisely that of the above triangle? Is there not, also, an _aperture_
into it, about the middle as here?[281] And when to all, we add the
notion of _wells_ of water withinside, is not the demonstration complete,
that the goddess of the _Lotos_, the soft promoter of _desire_, the
arbitress of _man_, and the compeer of the _angels_, was the honoured
object of its symbolical erection?[282]

In 1 Pet. iii. 20, it is asserted that only “eight persons” were preserved
in the ark. Let us suppose them to have been Noah and _his_ wife, with his
three sons and _their_ wives. At a comparatively short interval after the
date assigned to this event,--at most but 352 years,--on Abraham’s arrival
in the land of Egypt, we find a flourishing kingdom, an organised police,
a systematic legislature, and comprehensive institutions, diffused over
its surface. All the other parts of the world, we must be ready to
presume, if not equally enlightened, were, at least, as populous; and I
put it to your good sense to decide, whether _eight_ individuals could,
within that period, not only procreate so plentifully as to replenish the
whole earth, but enlighten it, additionally, with such a coruscation of
science, as no subsequent era has been since able to eclipse?

Indeed, the Scriptures themselves give us, elsewhere, to understand that
St. Peter did not correctly interpret this history. “Come thou,” says Gen.
vii. 1, “and _all thy house_, into the ark!” This gracious invitation, at
so critical a juncture, would have been too welcome a proffer to be lost
sight of by anyone who could make it available; and must not we suppose
that the _domestics_ to whom the extension was addressed, with their
several dependants and collateral offspring, would have been glad and
happy to grasp at it with delight?

But the name of the type itself is worth a hundred deductions from
equivocal premises. The _coffer_ of the law, the _coffin_ of Joseph, the
_money chest_ of the temple, are all severally translated _ark_, and
recorded in Hebrew by the word ןרוא _aron_: but the “_ark_ of Noah”[283]
and Moses’s “ark of bulrushes”[284] are peculiarly designated, תבת
_Thebit_, or תבה _tebah_.[285]

What is the meaning of these mysterious terms?

  “Quo spectanda modo, quo sensu credis, et ore?”

As the _Tau_ of the Hebrews is, indifferently, in power, _T_ and _Th_,
_Thebit_ has as good a right to be spelled with, as without, an _h_ at the
end of it,--and, indeed, a better right, considering the elements whereof
it is compounded. _Thebith_, then, is the proper and true sound, and the
mystery of its import I thus unravel.

Its first syllable, _The_, signifies _sacred_ or consecrated;[286] and
since the letters _b_ and _p_ are commutable--_bith_ is the same as
_pith_, that is, _Cteis_ or _Yoni_. The words _The-bith_, then, together,
in all the attraction of truth, intimate the _consecrated Cteis_; or the
_sacred Yoni_![287]

But _Pith_, itself, is only a _conversion of Fidh_, the initial letters
_P_ and _F_ being always interchangeable, and not more so than the
penultimates _t_ and _d_. And _Fidh_, in its abstract and original
position, such as we have early seen it, is _masculine_, the plural of
_Budh_, conveying variously the significations of _Lingams_, _trees_, and
_bulrushes_. Here, however, where it is _feminine_, its sex _reversed_,
and the _anatomy_ of _nature_ pourtrayed by the _physics_ of _language_,
the idea of the _bulrushes_ alone presents itself; and the _basket_ in
which Moses was _saved_ from the waters, and which was made of such reeds,
was appropriately denominated by this mysterious symbol, as a type of the
_virginity_ in which the Messiah was to be incarnated, not less than of
the _redemption_ which was to accrue from His sufferings.

Another stage has been thus advanced; and lo! the beautiful union which
subsists, _as to design_, between the results of our discoveries, and the
consoling assurances of pure Christianity!

Let us now proceed a little farther in this course--

  “Sanctos ausi recludere fontes,”[288]

and connect these truths with the _Tuath_-de-danaans and the
_Pish_-de-danaans.

“Noah was a just man,” observes the scriptural historian, “and _perfect in
his generations_; and Noah walked with God.”[289]

The name of this patriarch implies literally a _boat_: the character
assigned him is not so well understood.

To succeed in the investigation we must have recourse to the context: and
here the first thing that strikes us is the observation “that the earth
was _corrupt_ before God, and filled with _violence_; for all _flesh_ had
corrupted his way upon the earth.”[290]

A passage in the New Testament will be the best comment upon this subject,
where the patience of God with the iniquities of mankind being at length
exhausted, it is said, that He “gave them over to a _reprobate mind_,” “to
dishonour their own bodies between themselves.”[291]

But Noah did not participate in those unhallowed abominations, and he
accordingly “found grace in the eyes of the Lord.”[292]

We now, therefore, see the propriety of the name assigned to his
_ark_;[293]--and the intimation of approval conveyed by the divine command
of “Come thou and all thy house into it,” was but another form of the
injunction elsewhere conveyed, to the same effect, in the words, “Be ye
fruitful and multiply.”[294]

_Noah_, then, and _Kaiomurs_[295] were one and the same person, the
reformer of the human species, and the first monarch of the
Pish-de-danaan dynasty. _Yavana_ was another name appropriated to him, and
equivalent with _Noah_, excepting only that the former is literal, and the
latter figurative. An advantage, however, arises from this difference, for
when we know that _Yavana_ means the _yoni_, and _Noah_ a _boat_, and that
both were equally characteristic of the same individual character, we
conclude that the latter denomination was but the symbol of the
former--that, in fact, it was the _lunar boat_,[296] or the _crescent_,
the _concha Veneris_, and the type of _comfort_[297] that was veiled under
the mystery of this ambiguous device.

[Illustration]

This fact once explained, you have the immediate solution of those
“semicircular implements” so universal throughout this island, and which
Ledwich acknowledges “have created more trouble to the antiquarians to
determine their use, than all the other antiquities put together.”

These are all made of the finest gold, and, as emblems of the _yoni_,
which was the Raman _palladium_, used to have been worn as _breast_-plates
by the priests and sovereigns. They would sometimes, also, exhibit them as
ornaments to the _head_-dress: and when so designed the two terminating
angles used to have been furnished with circular cups, whereby they would
better adhere to the part: of such, likewise, we have the following
specimen.[298]

[Illustration]

_Yun_ is the usual mode of pronouncing _Yavana_; and as the veneration of
posterity for the virtues of this legislator, at a moment when vice had
threatened a general decay,[299] led them to consider him a god, he hence
obtained the prefix of _Deo_ or _Deu_, which along with that of _Cali_,
whose champion he showed himself, make up the romantic, emblematic and
nominal representation of _Deucaliyun_.[300]

  “Safe o’er the main of life the _vessel_ rides,
  When _passion_ furls her sails, and _reason_ guides;
  Whilst she who has that surest rudder lost,
  Midst rocks and quicksands by the waves is tost;
  No certain road she keeps, nor port can find,
  Toss’d up and down by every wanton wind.”[301]

The struggles for ascendency between contending parties are not the growth
of a day; still less are they unstained by the effusion of blood. _Deluge_
was no very extravagant hyperbole to apply to such a carnage; for
independently of our knowing that _every_ visitation, whether by _fire_,
_water_, or _sword_, was so denominated by the Easterns, we have the
Scriptures themselves illustrating this use of the term in applying it to
the description at a far later period of an equally severe and no less
distressing catastrophe.

“Now, therefore, the Lord bringeth upon him the waters of the river,
strong and many, even the King of Assyria and all his glory; and he shall
come up over all his channels, and go over all his banks. And he shall
pass through Judah; he shall overflow and go over, he shall reach even to
the neck; and the stretching out of his wings shall fill the breadth of
Thy land, O Immanuel.”[302]

But how, you ask, account for the marine strata, and other remains, found
within the earth’s recesses?

I answer they were there embedded and inanimate, before ever man was
placed above them as a denizen.

“It is clearly ascertained,” says Cuvier “that the oviparous quadrupeds
are found considerably earlier, or in more ancient strata than those of
the viviparous class. Thus the crocodiles of Harfleur and of England are
found immediately beneath the chalk. The great alligators and the
tortoises of Maestricht are found in the chalk formation, but these are
both marine animals. This earliest appearance of fossil bones seems to
indicate that dry lands and fresh waters must have existed before the
formation of the chalk strata; yet neither of that early epoch, nor during
the formation of the chalk strata, nor even for a long period afterwards,
do we find any fossil remains of _mammiferous land_ quadrupeds. We begin
to find the bones of the mammiferous sea animals, namely, of the lamantin
and of seals, in the course of shell limestone which immediately covers
the chalk strata in the neighbourhood of Paris. But no bones of the
mammiferous land quadrupeds are to be found in that formation; and
notwithstanding the most careful investigations I have never been able to
discover the slightest trace of this class excepting in the formations
which lie over the coarse limestone strata: but on reaching these more
recent formations, the bones of land quadrupeds are discovered in great
abundance.

“As it is reasonable to believe that shells and fish did not exist at the
period of the formation of the primitive rocks, we are also led to
conclude that the oviparous quadrupeds began to exist along with the
fishes, while the land quadrupeds did not begin to appear till long
afterwards, and until the coarse shell limestone had been already
deposited, which contains the greater part of our genera of shells,
although of quite different species from those that are now found in a
natural state. There is also a determinate order observable in the
disposition of those bones with regard to each other, which indicates a
very remarkable succession in the appearance of the different species.

“All the genera which are now unknown, as the Palæotheria, Anapalæotheria,
and with the localities of which we are thoroughly acquainted, are found
in the most ancient of the formations of which we are now treating, or
those which are placed directly over the coarse limestone strata. It is
chiefly they which occupy the regular strata which have been deposited
from fresh waters, or certain alluvial beds of very ancient formation,
generally composed of sand and rounded pebbles.

“The most celebrated of the unknown species belonging to known genera, or
to genera nearly allied to those which are known, as the fossil elephant,
rhinoceros, hippopotamos, and mastodon, are never found with the more
ancient genera, but are only contained in alluvial formations. Lastly, the
bones of species which are apparently the same with those that still
exist alive, are never found except in light and alluvial dispositions.”

From all which, this philosopher draws the following just conclusion,
namely:--“Thus we have a collection of facts, a series of epochs anterior
to the present time, and of which the successive steps may be ascertained
with perfect certainty, though the periods which intervened cannot be
determined with any degree of precision. These epochs form so many fixed
points, answering as rules for directing our inquiries respecting this
ancient chronology of the earth.”

To return--“God said unto Noah, the end of all flesh is come before Me;
for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will
destroy them with the earth.”[303]

Now, we see that the earth has _not_ been destroyed, and _this single
circumstance, in itself_, ought to have been enough to show us that the
whole register was but figurative. The _raven_ and the _dove_ were
indispensable auxiliaries to the structure of the allegory: the former
typifies the _massacre_ that prevailed during the period of the contest;
and the latter, in its meek and its tender constancy, the invariable
attendant, besides, of _Venus_ and the _boat_, characteristically
pourtrays the overtures made for an accommodation, until, after a second
embassy, the _olive-branch_ of peace was saluted, and the cessation of
hostilities was the consequence.[304]

Behold, then, the folly of those dreamers who would make _Thebith_ so
called, as if the _ark_ had rested upon it! Why, sir, in the entire
catalogue of _local_ names, there is no one half so common as that of
_Thebith_ and _Thebæ_! And surely you will not claim for your _ideal_
man-of-war, in addition to other properties, that of _ubiquity_ also, by
making it perch upon all those places, at one and the same time!

No, these scenes have been all denominated from the form of religion which
they recognised, and of which the _Pith_, _Yoni_, or _sacred Boat_, was
the conventional sign: as the countries of _Phut_, that is, _But_, and
_Buotan_, were so designated likewise, from their adopting the _opposite_
symbol, namely, the _Budh_, _Phallus_, or _sacred Lingam_!

Perplexed in this entanglement, and tossed about in “a sea of
speculation,” Mr. Jacob Bryant, in some respects a clever man, after a
fatiguing cruise of somewhat more than half a century, fell at last a
victim in the general shipwreck.

  “Your wise men don’t know much of navigation.”

The _Gentiles_, says he, worshipped Noah’s _ark_! Yes they did; but _not
in the sense in which he understood it_.[305]

Another _axiom_ of his is, that the _Deluge_ must have really happened,
because that the _tradition_ of it is _universal_! To this, also, I chime
in my affirmative response, and proclaim, yea. But the _tradition_ of the
_tree of knowledge_ is equally _universal_. And though the _ground work_
of _both occurred_, and was _substantively true_, yet was the
_description_ of _neither_ more than a graceful _allegory_; while the
salutary _alarm_ imparted under this guise, and the monitory _lesson_
suggested by its horrors, in _amusing_ the fancy, _edified_ it, at the
same moment, by keeping before it a _picture_ of that _spiritual
desolation_, which _sin_ leaves in the _citadel_ of the _soul_.[306]

“Moses,” says the apostle, “was learned in all the wisdom of the
Egyptians, and was mighty in words and in deeds.”[307]

Now Strabo assures us that the Egyptians of his day were as ignorant as he
was himself of the origin of their religion, of the import of their
symbols, and of their national history. They pretended to retain some
_evanescent_ traces thereof in the time of Diodorus; but so scrupulously
exact were they in the concealment of their tenour, that to pry into them,
profanely, was morally impossible.

Herodotus himself, who neglected no channel of information, found it no
easy matter to glean a few _initiatory_ scraps from them. And even these
were accompanied with such solemn denunciations, that his embarrassment is
betrayed when but alluding to their tendency.

If, during Moses’s residence at Pharaoh’s Court, his opportunities of
insight were greater, it is still self-evident that the accomplishments
which he obtained were more of a secular character than of a religious
cast--that the _courtier_ was the first object of the young princess’s
directions, and the qualifications of the _statesman_ her next ambition
for her charge. The _mysteries_ of the priests were too awful, and too
sanctified, to be debased to the routine of a schoolboy’s rehearsal; and
even when ripening age did bespeak a more chastened mind, the
communication of their contents was obscured by the interposition of an
almost impenetrable umbrage.

Thus palliated by types, Moses did, however, imbibe from the Egyptians all
the knowledge which they then possessed of the nature of their ceremonies;
and the record of the _Fall_, the _Deluge_, and the _Creation_ are the
direct transcripts of the instruction so conveyed. But though it is
undeniable, from their _symbols_, that the Egyptians must have been well
apprised of the _constitution_ of those rites, yet am I as satisfied as I
am of my physical motion, that the foldings of that _web_, in which they
were so mystically _doubled_, was lost to their grasp in the labyrinths of
antiquity.

Moses, therefore, could not have _learned_ from the Egyptians more than
the Egyptians themselves had _known_. He related the allegory as he had
_received_ it from them: and it is, doubtless, to his ignorance of its
_ambiguous_ interpretation, _accessible only through that language in
which it was originally involved_, that we are indebted for a
transmission, _so essentially Irish_.

The _Pish_-de-danaan dynasty which rose upon the ruins of the
_Tuath_-de-danaans, in _Iran_, was itself, in after ages, ejected from
that country. _Egypt_ was the retreat of their shattered fortunes; and
there, during their abode, under the name of the _Shepherd-kings_, they
erected the _Pyramids_, in honour of _Pith_, or _Padma_-devi, but at an
age long anterior to what may be presumed from Manetho.[308]

Previously, however, to their arrival in Egypt, Shinaar in Mesopotamia
afforded them an asylum. Here it was that Nimrod broke in:[309] and as I
have before but _transiently glanced_ at that circumstance, I shall now
revert to it with more precision.

Between the tenets of the _Pish_-de-danaans and those of their
_Tuath_-de-danaan predecessors, there was but a single point of
dissentient belief. The language, the customs, the manners and modes of
life of both were the same. To all intents and purposes they were one
identical people.

But as the former had imagined that the _Yoni_ alone was the author of
_procreation_, while the others claimed that honour for their own symbol,
the _Lingam_, an animosity ensued, which was not allayed even by the
consciousness, that _each_, secretly, worshipped the type of the _other’s_
creed.

The _goddess_, however, prevailed in the struggle, and her glories in Iran
were great and far spread. Monarchs bowed at the nod of her omnipotence,
and the earth swelled with the gestations of her praise.[310] “_Sed
ultima dies semper homini est expectanda._” A rude and a lawless swarm of
stragglers, headed by an adventurer of commanding abilities and determined
heroism, _deluged_, in turn, the _Boatmen_, or the _Noachidæ_,[311] and
swamped them in a _flood_, as _sanguinary_ and as _disastrous_ as that
which they had, themselves, before, brought upon the adversaries of their
zeal.

But it was not the _bloodshed_ of the scene that affected them half so
much as the _insult_ offered by the erection of the _Tower_![312] And as
no clue can be so adequate for the analysis of this _enigma_ as that which
they themselves have bequeathed,--for it was from the _Yavanas_ or
_Pish_-de-danaans that Moses had been taught the fact,--I shall place such
before your eyes, in all the eloquence of a self-interpreting dissyllable.

מנרל is the name by which the scriptural record perpetuates this
structure.[313] If you put this into English letters, and read them
regularly, from left to right, it will be _Lidgam_. But the Hebrews read
in the opposite direction, from right to left; and that is the very cause
of the appearance of the _d_ in the word; for as _Magnil_--reading
backwards--would produce a _cacophony_, the _n_ of the original was left
out, and _d_ substituted, making _Magdil_: reinstate, therefore, the _n_,
and enunciate the Hebrew word, as you would the Irish or the Sanscrit, and
it will not only unmask the _secret_ of this long-disputed edifice, but
_be_, _sound_, and _personate_, in all the nicety of accentuation,
_Lingam_, and thus prevent all further controversy about the character of
the _Tower_ of Babel.

  “The waies through which my weary steps I guide,
    In this researche of old antiquitie,
  Are so exceeding riche, and long, and wyde,
    And sprinkled with such sweet varietie,
  Of all that pleasant is to eare and eye,
    That I, nigh ravisht with rare thought’s delight,
  My tedious travel quite forgot thereby;
    And when I gin to feel decay of might,
  It strength to me supplies and cheers my dulled spright.”[314]




CHAPTER XXI.


I have stated that it was from the _Pish_-de-danaans or Yavana
philosophers of Egypt that Moses had learned the allegories of the Deluge
and of the Fall. I now add, _that it was by them also he had been
instructed in that consolatory assurance which told him_ that the “Seed of
the woman should bruise the serpent’s head.”[315]

In truth, it was this very promise made to the ancestors of those people
in _Paradise_, which is but another name for _Iran_,[316] that gave rise
to the _schism_ between them and the _Tuath_-de-danaans.

“Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy
_conception_; in sorrow thou shalt _bring forth children_: and thy
_desire_ shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.”[317]

The _nature_ of the _crime_ is here clearly denoted by the _suitableness_
of the _punishment_.[318] But the same over-ruling Judge, who, in
conformity with His justice, could not but chastise the violation of His
injunctions, yet, in mercy to man’s weakness, and seeing that “he also is
flesh,” condescended to promise that the _instrument_ of his _seduction_
should be also the _vehicle_ of his _redeeming triumph_.

“I will put enmity between thee (the serpent) and the woman, and between
thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his
heel.”[319]

Pinning their faith upon the literal fulfilment of these terms, which told
them that the _female, as such_, would be the unaided author of a _being_,
whose healing effects would restore them to the inheritance so heedlessly
forfeited, their veneration for that _symbol_ of divine interposition
became correspondingly unbounded; and their enthusiasm for the principle
of its strict verification was what engendered the thought that in the
general procreating scheme the _yoni_ was the _vivifier_.

The _Tuath_-de-danaans or Lingajas, on the other hand, were not less
satisfied in their security; but looking upon the terms with a more
_spiritual_ interpretation, and led by the operation of ordinary _physics_
to consider the question as a _deviation_ from the _general rule_, they
erected the symbol of _male_ capability as the standard of their doctrine.
And thus, while the zeal of both parties shook the very framework of
society, yet did they _concur_ in all the _essentials_ of their respective
religions; and even the particulars of that _prospect_ by which they were
both sustained, instead of operating as an exception to the universality
of this truth, only confirm its import.

The Jews, who were but _newly_ brought forward upon the stage, and who, in
the inscrutable councils of heaven, were selected as the objects of God’s
immediate superintendence, being informed of the tenour of the
paradisaical hope, abused it more wantonly than ever did the
_Pish_-de-danaans or the _Tuath_-de-danaans.

Unable to comprehend, from their narrow mental calibre, any _agency_ in
the form of a divine _emanation_, and yet fancying, each of them, that she
would herself be the mother of the expected Redeemer, their women indulged
in all the lusts of _desire_, and, where no opportunity offered for
licensed gratification, revelled in the arms of incest.

This alone can apologise for that intensity of passion, exceeding even the
dictates of natural thirst, and unrestrained by the consideration of
decency or consanguinity, whereof we read in the Old Testament, respecting
the Israelitish daughters;[320] while it also demonstrates that the
_carnality_ of their souls did not allow them thoroughly to understand the
precise nature of the _favour_ designed.

Far otherwise the case with the _intellectual_ races, which they were now
appointed to supersede.

“In order to reclaim the vicious, to punish the incorrigible, to protect
the oppressed, to destroy the oppressor, to encourage and reward the good,
and to show all spirits the path to their ultimate happiness, God has been
pleased to manifest Himself, say the Brahmins, in a variety of ways, from
age to age, in all parts of the habitable globe. When He acts immediately,
without assuming a shape, or sending forth a new emanation, when a divine
sound is heard from the sky, that manifestation of Himself is called
_acasavani_, or an ethereal voice: when the voice proceeds from a meteor
or a flame, it is said to be _agnarupi_, or _formed of fire_; but an
_avatara_ is a descent of the Deity in the shape of a mortal; and an
_avantara_ is a similar incarnation of an inferior kind, intended to
answer some purpose of less moment. The Supreme Being, and the celestial
emanations from Him, are _niracara_, or bodiless, in which state they must
be invisible to mortals; but when they are _pratya-sha_, or obvious to
sight, they become _sacara_, or embodied, either in shapes different from
that of any mortal, and expressive of the divine attributes, as Chrishna
revealed himself to Arjun, or in a human form, _which Chrishna usually
bore, and in that mode of appearing the deities are generally supposed to
be born of women without any carnal intercourse_.”[321]

Is this repugnant to the spirit of Christianity? No; it is its
counterpart. “I know,” says Job, in the moment of inspiration, “that my
Redeemer liveth.”[322] Prophetically, you reply; and you back the opinion
by our Saviour’s own appeal that “Abraham saw his day, and was glad.”[323]

Abraham certainly believed by anticipation, but Job by retrospection. And
if you will not think my assertion decisive of the matter, I will produce
an authority to which you will more readily subscribe.

“And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship Him, whose names are not
written in the book of life of _the Lamb slain from the foundation of the
world_.”[324]

It will be in vain for you to attempt to parry the evidence of this
startling text. No visionary _foresight_ will accomplish its defeat: no
ideal _substitutions_ will shake its validity.

“How it came to pass,” says Skelton, “that the Egyptians, Arabians, and
Indians, before Christ came among us, and the inhabitants of the extreme
northern parts of the world, ere they had so much as heard of Him, _paid a
remarkable veneration to the sign of the cross_, is to me unknown, but
_the fact itself_ is known. In some places this sign was given to men
accused of a crime, but acquitted: and _in Egypt it stood for the
signification of eternal life_.”[325]

“V. W.” has asserted something similar;[326] but neither one nor the other
has attempted to fathom its origin.

“The Druids,” adds Schedius, “seek studiously for an oak tree, large and
handsome, growing up with _two principal arms, in form of a cross_, beside
the main stem upright. If the two _horizontal arms_ are not sufficiently
adapted to the figure, they fasten a _cross_-beam to it. This tree they
consecrate in this manner. Upon the right branch, they cut in the back, in
fair characters, the word _Hesus_: upon the middle or upright stem, the
word _Taramis_: upon the left branch, _Belenus_: over this, above the
going off of the arms, they cut the name of God, _Thau_: under all, the
same repeated _Thau_.”[327]

“The form of the great temple,” observes Dr. Macculloch, “at Loch Bernera,
in the Isle of Lewis the chief isle of the Hebrides, is that of a _cross_,
containing, at the intersection, a circle with a central stone; an
additional line being superadded on one side of the longest arms, and
nearly parallel to it. Were this line absent, its proportion would be
nearly that of the Roman cross, or common crucifix.”

And then, in reply to the supposition of its having been converted by the
_Christians_ into this form, he avers that “the whole is too consistent,
and too much of one age, to admit of such; while at the same time, it
could not, under any circumstances, have been applicable to a Christian
worship. Its essential part, the circular area, and the number of similar
structures found in the vicinity, equally bespeak its ancient origin. It
must, therefore, be concluded, that the cruciform shape was given by the
original contrivers of the fabric; and it will afford an object of
speculation to antiquaries, who, if they are sometimes accused of _heaping
additional obscurity on the records of antiquity_, must also be allowed
the frequent merit of eliciting light from darkness. _To them I willingly
consign all further speculations concerning it._”[328]... “Yet it seems
_unquestionable_ that the figure of a cross was known to the Gothic
nations, and also used by them _before they were_ converted to
Christianity.”[329]

I do not know whether or not would the Doctor deem _me_ an “antiquary,” or
if he did, in _which class_ would he assign me a place. I will undertake,
notwithstanding, to solve this difficulty with as much precision as I have
the others before it.

The _existence_ of the “cross,” and its _worship_, anterior to the
Christian era, being no longer liable to dispute, it remains only that we
investigate the _cause_ which it commemorates.[330]

Our first aid in this research will be the notice of its accompaniments;
and when we find that it goes ever in the train of a particular divinity,
are we not compelled to connect that divinity with the idea of a
crucifixion?

_Taut_, amongst the Egyptians, is emblemised by _three_ crosses.[331] The
Scandinavians represent their _Teutates_ by a cross. And a cross is the
device by which the Irish _Tuath_ is perpetuated.

But these are all one and the same name, varied by the genius of the
different countries. The _centre_ from which they _diverge_, as well as
the _focus_ to which they _return_, I have shown to be _Budh_: and as this
_symbol_ of his worship is universally recognised, does not the
_crucifixion_ thus implied identify his fate with that of the “Lamb slain
from the beginning of the world”?[332]

The Pythonic _allegory_ which the Greeks have so obscured, in reality
originated in this religious transaction. For what is their fable? Is it
not that _Apollo_ slew with his _arrow_ the serpent _Python_? And as
Apollo means _son of the Sun_, is not the _substance_ of the whole, that
the _offspring of a virgin’s womb_--that is, an _emanation of the Sun_, or
_Budh_--overcame by his own _death_--typified by an _arrow_--sin and
_sensuality_, of which the _serpent_, _i.e._ _pith_, is the symbol?

We are now prepared for the reception of that chronicle, transmitted
through the Puranas, and noticed already at p. 221, viz. that a “giant,
named Sancha-mucha-naga, in the shape of a _snake_, with a _mouth_ like a
_shell_, and whose abode was in a _shell_, having _two countenances_, was
killed by Christnah.”

The _very name_ of this allegoric “giant” indicates the _mysterious
snake_--his being in the _form_ of a _snake_ is but the _personification_
of _sensuality_; his having a _mouth_ like a _shell_ alludes to the
_concha Veneris_, or the _Pith_; his having his _abode_ in that _shell_
denotes its being the _seat_ of _temptation_; his having _two
countenances_ implies the _disguise_ which _sin_ assumes; and his being
_slain_ by _Christnah_ denotes that the _Son of God_, by _mortification
and self-denial, and the most rigid abstinence from all worldly
pleasures_, verified in _His own person the promise made in Paradise_, and
for the _minor disquietudes_ which _guilt_ entails--expressed by the
“_heel_” being “_bruised_” by the “_serpent_,”--inflicted a _blow_, which
laid low his empire, and stamped the signal of _victory_ over his
“head.”[333]

“Ye search the Scriptures,” says our Saviour “for in them ye think ye have
eternal life: and they are they which _testify_ of Me.”[334]

_Testification_ can be made only in the case of a past occurrence. It is
never used in the way of prophecy. And in conformity with its true import,
you will find, from Genesis to Revelation, the concurrent tenor of the
Sacred Volume giving proof to the fact of Christ’s former appearance upon
the earth as man!

But suppose me for a moment to descend from this position, and view those
previous manifestations as ordinary subjects of history, then hear an
outline of what is transmitted to us respecting one of them.

Chanakya, Zacha, or, as our registers have it, Macha,[335] one of the
personifications of Budh, the general appellative of those heaven-sent
devotees, was so startling a paragon of human impeccability, as to inspire
his followers with the conviction of his being an incarnation of the
Godhead.

He is stated to have been the son of one of the most powerful of eastern
kings; but, according to their preconceived notions of the future
Redeemer, born of his mother without any knowledge of the other sex.

The circumstances attendant upon his infantine education, and the
precocity of his parts, favoured an inauguration upon which their fancies
had been long riveted. After a laborious ordeal of pious austerity, not
without miraculous proofs and other intimations of Divine approval, he was
duly admitted to the honour of canonisation, and entered, accordingly,
upon his task of consigned Saviour of the world.

The encounters with which he had to contend, in this uphill work, against
flesh and blood, were those which were, afterwards, again combated by the
_admitted_ Saviour whom he had personated. The same faults he reprehended;
the same weakness he deplored; the same hypocrisy he rebuked; and the same
virtues he inculcated. The purification of the inner spirit was the object
which both professed, and the improvement of human morals in social
intercourse and relation, the evidence in practice, upon which both
equally insisted.

If Christ promised a _heaven_ to the votaries of His truths, Budha did a
_nirwana_ to his disciples and imitators: and though the former place, to
our imagination, sounds _replete with all delights_, while the latter is
merely figured as exempt from all _painfulness_, yet _both_ agree in one
particular, not a little soothing to wounded hope, in being essentially
such, as where “the wicked cease from troubling, and where the weary are
at rest.”

But great as was the resemblance which the personal example and the
doctrinal lessons of Macha and Christ bore to one another, it was as
nothing compared to the almost incredible similitude of their respective
departures. They both died the inglorious death of the _cross_ to
reconcile man to his offended Creator; and in confident dependence upon
the best authenticated assurance, exulted on the occasion, however galling
the process, of expiating, by their own sufferings, the accumulated sins
of humanity.

Is it to be wondered at, therefore, that the traces which they have left
behind them, in their different ages, should bear an analogy to one
another? Or would not the wonder rather be that they did not, in all
respects, harmonise?

“Let not the piety of the Catholic Christian,” says the Rev. Mr. Maurice,
“be offended at the preceding assertion, that the _cross_ was one of the
most usual symbols among the hieroglyphics of Egypt and India. Equally
honoured in the Gentile and the Christian world, this emblem of universal
nature, of that world to whose quarters its diverging radii pointed,
decorated the hands of most of the sculptured images in the former
country, and in the latter stamped its form upon the most majestic of the
shrines of their deities.”[336]

The _fact_ alone is here attested to: not a syllable is said as to the
_reason why_: and though I cannot but recognise the _scruples_ of the
_writer_, nor withhold my admiration from the _rotundity_ in which the
diction has been cast, yet the reader must have seen that, as to _actual
illustration_, it is--like the Rev. Mr. Deane’s _flourish_ about the
worship of the serpent--“_Vox et præterea nihil_!”[337]

“You do err, not knowing the Scriptures,”[338] said a Master, _without
pride_, and _who could not err_. If the remark applied in _His_ day, it is
not the less urgent in ours. So astounding did the correspondence between
the Christian and the Budhist doctrines appear to the early missionaries
to Thibet and the adjacent countries--a correspondence not limited to mere
points of _faith_ and preceptorial maxims, but exhibiting its operation in
all the outward details of _form_, the inhabitants going even so far as to
wear _crosses_ around their necks--that Thevenot, Renaudot, Lacroze, and
Andrada, have supposed in their ignorance of the cause of such affinity,
that Budhism must have been a vitiation of _Christianity_ before planted;
whereas _Budhism_ flourished thousands of years before it, or Brahminism
either; and _this cross was the symbol of Budha crucified_.

“Our second illustration,” says the _Dublin Penny Journal_, referring to
what I have here introduced, “belongs to a later period, and will give a
good idea of the usual mode of representing the _Saviour_, whether on
stone crosses, or on bronze, which prevailed from the sixth to the twelfth
century. Such remains however, are valuable, not only as memorials of the
arts, but as preserving the Celtic costume of a portion of the inhabitants
of our island in those remote ages. It will be seen that in _this_, as in
one of the shrine-figures before given, the kilt, or philibeg, is
distinctly marked, and _controverts the erroneous assertion_ of
Pinkerton, formerly noticed, that “it was always quite unknown amongst the
Welsh and Irish.”[339]

[Illustration]

How others may receive it I do not know; but for myself, I confess, I find
it no easy matter to maintain the composure of my countenance at this
affected _pomposity_ of censorial _magniloquence_. The _self-complacency_
of the _censor_ one could tolerate with ease, if the _assumption_ of the
_historian_ had aught to support it. But alas! every position in the
extract is the direct opposite of truth, with the exception of that which
asserts another person’s error; and even this is beclouded with such
egregious observations as to show, that leaving _Pinkerton_ to P----[340]
would be consigning the blind to a blinder conductor.

For, in the first place, the _philibeg_ was not a _Celtic_ costume at all,
but belonged to the De-danaan, or Iranian colony,[341] who, on their
overthrow here, took it with them to what is now called Scotland. The
Firbolgs, who were Celts, and occupied this island before the Iranians,
wore another style of dress altogether, which, on the reconquest of the
country by the Scythian swarms, B.C. 1000, became again the national
uniform. For the Firbolgs, having assisted the Scythians in dislodging the
Iranians from the throne of the kingdom, and agreeing with them
furthermore in point of worship and of garb, they did not only make _their
own habits_, as well of _religion_ as of _dress_, universal throughout the
realm, but obliterated every vestige of the _obnoxious_ costume, and
cancelled every symptom of its characteristic ceremonial, except alone
those Round Temples of adamantine strength, which defied the assailment of
all violence and batteries.

There was no remnant, therefore, of the kilt to be met with in Ireland,
either in the _sixth_ century, or in the _twelfth_, or indeed for many
centuries before the Christian era at all. This effigy,[342] therefore,
_could not have been intended for our Saviour_, wanting, besides, the I.
N. R. I.,[343] and wearing the _Iranian regal crown_ instead of the
_Jewish crown of thorns_. Therefore are we justified in ascribing it to
its owner, _Budha_, whom again we find imprinted in the same _crucified
form_, but with more _irresistibility of identification_, over the
monuments of his name--over the doors and lintels of the temples of his
worship.

[Illustration]

Mr. Gough, describing this edifice, tells us that “On the west front of
the tower (Brechin) are two arches, one within the other, in relief. On
the point of the outermost is a _crucifix_, and between both, towards the
middle, are figures of the Virgin Mary and St. John, the latter holding a
cup with a lamb. The outer arch is adorned with knobs, and within both is
a slit or loop. At bottom of the outer arch are _two beasts_ couchant. _If
one of them, by his proboscis_, was not evidently _an elephant_, I should
suppose them the supporters of the Scotch arms. Parallel with the crucifix
are two plain stones, which do not appear to have had anything upon
them.”[344]

Captain Mackenzie, in his _Antiquities of the West and South Coast of
Ceylon_, which still professes adherence to Budhism, tells us that “_at
each side of the doorway_ (of the temple at Calane), _inclosed in recesses
cut in the wall, are two large figures, the janitors of the god_
(Budh).... A large elephant’s tooth and a small _elephant of brass form
the ornament_ of a lampstead.... A female figure of the natural size,
decently and not ungracefully arrayed in the same garb, was represented
standing in another quarter, holding a lamp in the extended hand. The
gallery was entirely covered with paintings, containing an history of the
life of Boodhoo--one of these seemed to represent the birth of the divine
child. A _large white elephant_ made a conspicuous figure in most of these
assemblies.”[345]

Scotch arms, indeed! Why, Sir, those animals were recumbent there, in
deified transfiguration, before ever _Pict_ or _Scot_ had planted a
profane foot within their neighbourhood. What connection, let me ask,
could this _elephant_ and this _bull_ have with Christianity, to entitle
them to the honour of being grouped with our Saviour? Or, if any, how
happens it that we never see them enter into similar combinations, in
_churches_ or _chapels_, or _convents_ or _cathedrals_?[345]

But if they belong not to the Christian ceremonial, they do to something
else. They are the _grand, distinctive_, and _indispensable adjuncts of
Budhism_; being the _two animals_ into which, _according to its doctrine
of metempsychosis, the soul of Budha had entered after his death_.

This was the origin of the Egyptian _Apis_: and who is not familiar with
the honours lavished upon the sacred _bull_? To this day the _elephant_ is
worshipped in the Burman empire,[346] where the genius of _Budhism_ still
lingeringly tarries; and “_Lord of the White Elephant_” is the proudest
ensign of power claimed by the successors to the throne of Pegu.

The _human_ figures, then, _of course_, cannot be intended for “_St. John_
or the _Virgin Mary_.” They represent _Budha’s Virgin Mother_, along with
his _favourite disciple, Rama_. And thus does the testimony of
Artemidorus, who _flourished 104 years before Christ_, a native himself of
Ephesus, and _who did not himself understand_ the _mystery_ of that
_Virgin_ whom he historically records, receive _illustration_ from _my
proof_, while it gives _it confirmation_ in return.

His words are--“Adjacent to Britain there stands an island, where _sacred
rites_ are performed to Ceres and the _Virgin_, similar to those in
Samothrace.”

Initiation in the principles of this Samothracian ceremonial was thought
so necessary an accomplishment for every hero and every prince, that no
aspirant to those distinctions ever ventured upon his destination, without
first paying a visit to that religious rendezvous. The solemnity,
attaching to the ritual there performed, was not greater than the
veneration paid to the place itself. All fugitives found shelter within
its privileged precincts, and the name of _sacred_ was assigned it, as the
ordinary characteristic of such sanctuaries.[347]

“There are,” says the Scholiast upon Aristophanes, “two orders of
mysteries celebrated in the course of the year, in honour of Ceres and
_the Virgin_--the lesser and the greater; the former being but a sort of
purification and holy preparation for the latter.”[348]

Who the Virgin was, however, none but the _initiated_ ever presumed to
investigate, the practice observed in respect to her, being the same as
that which influenced the other ordinances of antiquity: and which made
Strabo himself declare, that “_all that can be said concerning the gods
must be by the exposition of old opinions and fables; it being the custom
of the ancients to wrap up in enigma and allegory their thoughts and
discourses concerning nature, which are, therefore, not easily
explained_.”[349]

Proclus also says: “In all initiations and mysteries, the gods exhibit
themselves under many forms, and with a frequent change of shape;
sometimes as light defined to no particular figure; sometimes in a human
form; and sometimes in that of some other creature.”[350]

With the clue, however, already afforded, we need not be deterred from
approaching her fane. The allegorical name, under which they disguised
her, was that of _Proserpine_: whom they represent “so beautiful that _the
father of the gods himself became enamoured of her, and deceived her by
changing himself into a serpent, and folding her in his wreaths_.”[351]

This was the _Greek perversion_ of the narrative. They had received it
from the Pelasgi, under the garb of a _conception_, by _serpentine
insinuation, in a virgin womb_: and, the grossness of their intellects not
allowing them to comprehend the possibility of an _emanation_, yet giving
unqualified credence to the record, they degraded altogether the
_religiousness_ of the thought, and supposed that the Almighty, to
effectuate his design, had actually assumed the _cobra di capello_ form!

So austere was the rule, by which those mysteries were protected, that
Æschylus but _barely escaped discerption within the theatre_, for an
imagined disrespect to their tendency. Nor was it but on the plea of
ignorance and _un_-initiation, that he did ultimately obtain pardon.[352]

This insuperable barrier to the curiosity of the profane, engendered in
their conduct a corresponding reaction, and, as the _fox_ did to the
_grapes_, what they could not themselves compass, they strove all they
could to vituperate!

“Virtue, however, is its own reward,” and, as the authority of Cicero,
having been himself a priest, ought to have some weight in the discussion,
it is no small impetus to the cause of truth, to hear this pre-eminent man
assign to the efficacy of the precepts, inculcated in those
mysteries,--“the knowledge of the God of nature; the first, the supreme,
the intellectual; by which men had been reclaimed from rudeness and
barbarism, to elegance and refinement; and been taught, not only to live
with more comfort, but to die with better hopes.”[353]

  “Slave to no sect, who takes no private road,
  But looks through Nature up to Nature’s God;
  Pursues that chain which links the immense design,
  Joins heaven and earth, and mortal and divine,
  Sees that no being any bliss can know,
  But touches some above, and some below;
  Learns from this union of the rising whole,
  The first, last purpose of the human soul;
  And knows where faith, law, morals, all began,
  All end in love of God and love of man.”[354]




CHAPTER XXII.


I would have my reader pause upon the substance of the terms with which
the last section concluded--“Not only to live with more comfort, but to
die with better hopes!”

Have you read them? Have you digested them? And are you not ashamed of
your illiberality?

From what pulpit in Christendom will you hear better or more orthodox
truths? Where will you find the Gospel more energetically enunciated? And,
with this _testimony_ staring you in the face--in defiance of inner
light--and imperiously subjugating the allegiance of rationality--will you
still persist in limiting the benevolence of your “Father?” and in
withholding every symptom of paternal regard from his own handiwork, until
the beginning of the last two thousand years? that is, as it were, till
yesterday?

“I tell you, that if these should hold their peace, the _stones_ would
immediately cry out.”[355]

“On a bank near the shore,” says Cordiner, in his _Antiquities of
Scotland_, “opposite to the ruins of a castellated house, called Sandwick
(in Ross-shire), and about three miles east from Ferns, a very splendid
obelisk is erected, surrounded at the base with large, well-cut flag
stones, formed like steps. Both sides of this column are elaborately
covered with various enrichments, in well-finished carved work. The one
face presents a sumptuous cross, with a figure of St. Andrew on each hand,
and some uncouth animals and flowerings underneath. The central division,
on the reverse, renders it a piece of antiquity well worthy of
preservation; there is exhibited on that such a variety of figures, birds,
and animals, as seemed what might prove a curious subject of
investigation; I have, therefore, given a distinct delineation of them at
the foot of the column, on a larger scale, that their shapes might be
distinctly ascertained, and the more probable conjectures formed of their
allusion.”

[Illustration]

What, on earth, business would St. Andrew have in company with “uncouth
animals?” What have “birds,” “figures,” and “flowerings” to do with
Christianity? If this “obelisk” had not been erected here, in
commemorative deification, centuries upon centuries before the era of his
Saintship’s birth, why should the “cross,” which “one face presents,” be
decorated with “enrichments” brought all the way from Egypt?

Look at these hieroglyphics: and where will you find anything congenial to
them within the empire of the Romans? Here is the _Bulbul of Iran_,[356]
the _boar_ of Vishnu, the elk, the fox, the lamb, and the dancers. All the
other configurations, without going through them in detail, are not only,
in their nature and import, essentially eastern, but are actually the
_symbols of the various animal-forms under which they contemplated the
properties of the Godhead_. As the _cross_, however, is that to which we
are more immediately directed, I shall confine myself, for the present, to
the establishment of its antiquity.

No one will question but that _Venus_ was antecedent to the days of _St.
Andrew_; and _she_ is represented with a _cross_ and a circle![357]
_Jupiter_ also, it will be admitted, was anterior to his time; and we find
him delineated with a _cross_ and a horn! _Saturn_ is said to have been
sire to the last-mentioned god, and, by the laws of primogeniture, must
have been senior to him; yet we find _him_ also pictured with a _cross_
and horn! The monogram of Osiris is a _cross_! On a medal of one of the
Ptolemies is to be seen an eagle conveying a thunderbolt with the _cross_!
In short, all through the ancient world this symbol was to be encountered,
and wherever it presented itself, it was always the harbinger of sanctity
and of peace.

Can we glean from their writings any confirmation to my development as to
the _origin_ of the rite? Plato asserts, that the form of the letter X was
imprinted upon the universe.[358] I know how this has been interpreted as
a reference to the Son of God, and the second power of the Divinity. I
will not make use of it in any such light, preferring to avoid everything
that may seem _equivocal_, yet am I well convinced that, under the
philosopher’s ratiocination, may be seen the twinkling trace of a previous
incarnation of the λογος, and a crucifixion, likewise, as an atonement for
the sins of humanity.

“Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows: yet we did
esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

“But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our
iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His
stripes we are healed.”[359]

This is all in the past tense; bearing reference, irrefutably, to a
_former_ occurrence, but including also, in the sequel, the idea of a
_future_ reappearance. And if you look back at the effigy, page 296, will
it not sensitively prove him to have been “a man of sorrows and acquainted
with grief?”[360]

“The deity Harì,” says an inscription at _Budda-gaya_, in India, “the lord
and possessor of all, appeared in this ocean of natural beings at the
close of the Devapara and beginning of the Cali Yug. He who is omnipresent
and everlastingly to be contemplated, the Supreme Being, the Eternal One,
the Divinity worthy of mankind, appeared here, with a portion of His
divine nature.”[361]

There is no term so vernacular in the Irish language as that of
_Budh-gaye_. It is familiar to the _ears_ of every smatterer in _letters_;
and is in the _mouth_ of every _cowherd_, from Cape Clear to the Giants’
Causeway. Neither class has, however, had so much as a _glimpse_ of what
it means: nor did they busy themselves much in the pursuit, but acquiesced
in that example of _commendable_ resignation once practised by
Strabo--when he failed to ascertain anything about the _Cabiri_--by
declaring that “the name was mysterious!”

A great personage, however, who was not only in his habits _wise_, but was
in himself _wisdom_, has affirmed, that “there is nothing covered that
shall not be revealed; nor hid that shall not be known.”[362] And as every
sentence recorded as emanating from _His_ lips has with me a value more
than what could serve to illustrate a momentary topic, I flatter myself
that the result of the confidence, thus humbly inspired, will be
additionally verified in the instance before us.

_Budh-gaye_, then of the Irish, or _Budha-gaya_ of the Hindoos, means
_Phallus[363] telluris_, _i.e._ the _generativeness of the earth_, or _the
earth’s prolific principle_. This I have before demonstrated to have been
the object of adoration to the ancients; and have furthermore shown, that
one of the individuals, in whom this idea was personified, had suffered
crucifixion as a mediator for sin.

A new disclosure suggests itself from this. _Budh_ and _Phallus_ being
synonymous, if you add _Gaye_ to each, then _Budh-gaye_ and _Gaye-phallus_
will be identical. But as the character who embodied the _abstract virtue_
of the former had been crucified, his name came to stand, not only for
that _abstract virtue_, but also for a cross,[364] or a _crucified man_;
and of course, _Gaye-phallus_, its equivalent, represented the same ideas.

Now, as well the _primary_ as _secondary_ meaning of those two words was
liable to misconstruction; and they were sure to obtain such from
ignorance and from depravity. The _pure_ and the _sublime emotions_, which
the religiousness of the _prolific principle_ had comprehended, were
perverted by malice into _sensuality_ and _debauchery_; while the idea of
a _man crucified_, however innocent of charge, could not be separated, by
grovelling and servile dispositions, from the ordinary accompaniments of
_contempt_ and of _crime_.

Hence _Budh-gaye_ and _Gaye-phallus_, after a succession of ages, when
their _proper_ acceptation was forgotten, were remembered only in their
_perverted_ sense. And accordingly we observe, that, when a Roman Emperor
who had been brought up a priest in the East, assumed, on his being
appointed to the Roman sceptre, the title of _Helio-ga-balus_, and thereby
invested himself in all the attributes of _Gaye-phallus_, or _Budh-gaye_,
that is, in other words, as the _Vicegerent of the Sun_, the
licentiousness of his life, and the profligacy of his demeanour, having
rendered him obnoxious to his subjects, they amputated the _prefix_ of his
_Solar_ majesty, and branded him with the _scorn_ of _Ga-balus_.

The _disdain_ intended in this latter abbreviation is now, therefore,
already solved. _Gaye-phallus_, for sound sake, having been made
_Ga-phallus_, this latter was still further--by reason of the
commutability of the letters _ph_ and _b_--reduced into _Ga-balus_.

When the temple of Serapis, at Alexandria, was destroyed, we are told by
Sozomen, that the monogram of Christ was discovered beneath the
foundation. And, though neither party knew how to account for the sign,
yet was it pleaded alike by the Gentiles as by the Christians, in support
of the heavenliness of their respective religions.

The early Roman _fathers_, very pious but very illiterate men, unable to
close their eyes against the proofs of the priority of the cross to the
era of the advent, did not scruple to assign it to the malicious
foreknowledge of the prince of the lower world.[365]

But if this gentleman had been the author of the early cross, is it likely
that God would have embraced it as the signal of His protection when
dealing destruction to the objects of His divine vengeance?

“And the Lord said unto him, Go through the midst of the city, through the
midst of Jerusalem, and put a _mark_ upon the foreheads of the men that
sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst
thereof:

“And to the others he said in my hearing, Go ye after him through the
city, and smite: let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity.

“Slay utterly old and young, both maids and little children, and women;
but _come not near any man upon whom is the mark_; and begin at My
sanctuary.”[366]

Now this “mark,” in the ancient Hebrew original, was the _cross_ X. St.
Jerome, the most learned by far of those “_fathers_,” has admitted the
circumstance. And if this had been the device of the enemy of man, would
the Author of all goodness so sanction _his_ imposture, as to adopt it as
the index of His saving love?

“Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?”[367]

But this was not the only _invention_ which they attributed to the devil.
Tertullian gravely assures us that he was the author of _buskins_ also!
And why, good reader, would you suppose?--in sooth, for no other reason
than because that our Saviour said, in His sermon upon the mountain,
“Which of you, by taking thought, can _add one cubit unto his
stature_?”[368]

In him, also, did they find an adequate excuse for those _apertures_,
which I shall by and by notice, as excavated in rocks and mounds of clay,
calling them, with some compliment it must be admitted to his _gallantry_,
by the monopolising appellation of the Devil’s _Yonies_.[369]

But of all the _puerilities_ which sully their zeal, there is no one half
so calculated to injure _vital religion_, as the _low quibbles_ and
_dishonest quotations_ which Justin Martyr had recourse to, as _apologies_
for the _cross_!

Why, Sir, the greatest persecutor with which the Christians had ever been
cursed, namely, the Emperor Decius, had imprinted the _cross_ upon some of
his coins!

[Illustration]

Here, again, it is upon a medal found in the ruins of Citium, and proved
by Dr. Clarke in his _Travels_ to have been Phœnician! It exhibits the
_lamb_, the _cross_, and the rosary![370]

When John the Baptist first saw Jesus beyond the Jordan, in Bethabara, he
exclaimed, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the
world.”[371]

This he did not apply as a _novel_ designation; but as the familiar
epithet, and the recognised denomination of the Son of God, whose
prescribed office it was, in _all the changes of past worlds_, as it was
now in this present, to redress the broken-hearted by taking away sin.

He adds: “This is He of whom I said, after me cometh a man which is
preferred before me; _for He was before me_,”[372] not only in eternity,
but on this earth.

“And I knew Him not; but that _He should be made manifest to
Israel_,”[373] as He was before to other nations,--an event which was but
the fulfilment of a prophecy ushered in many years before in these
remarkable words--

“Behold, the former things are come to pass”:[374] not that the
_predictions_ formerly delivered had taken place, but the _things_, the
_events_, the _occurrences_, which had been _enacted_ before, were now
_re_-enacted! that a _renovation_ of the world was at hand, which the
mouthpiece of the Lord commences by saying--“New things do I declare;
before they spring forth I tell you of them.”

On turning the leaf you will see another of those pillars which grace a
land of heroes, “where stones were raised on high to speak to future
times, with their grey heads of moss”;[375] and whose story, though “lost
in the mist of years,” may yet be deciphered from off themselves.

[Illustration]

This costly relic of religion, erected solely in honour of the cross, is
to be seen at Forres, in Scotland, and is thus described by Cordiner:--

“On the first division, under the Gothic ornaments at the top, are nine
horses with their riders, marching in order; in the next division is a
line of warriors on foot, brandishing their weapons, and appear to be
shouting for the battle. The import of the attitudes in the third division
very dubious, their expression indefinite.

“The figures which form a square in the middle of the column are pretty
complex, but distinct; four serjeants, with their halberts, guard a
canopy, under which are placed several human heads, which have belonged to
the dead bodies piled up at the left of the division: one appears in the
character of executioner, severing the head from another body; behind him
are three trumpeters sounding their trumpets; and before him two pair of
combatants fighting with sword and target.

“A troop of horse next appears, put to flight by infantry, whose first
line have bows and arrows; the three following, swords and targets. In the
lowermost division now visible, the horses seem to be seized by the
victorious party, their riders beheaded, and the head of their chief hung
in chains, or placed in a frame: the others being thrown together beside
the dead bodies, under an arched cover.”

With this compare the description given by Captain Head, of the devices
sculptured upon one of the Egyptian antiquities.

“It would,” says he, “far exceed the limits of this work, to attempt a
description of the ornaments of sculpture in this temple. The most
interesting are on the north wall, where there are battle-scenes, with
innumerable figures of military combatants, using their arms, consisting
of bows and arrows, spears and bucklers--of prostrate enemies, of
war-chariots and horses. The fiery action and elegant shape of the steeds
are remarkable. It would require a first-rate living genius to rival the
variety of position, the power of effect, and fidelity of execution, in
which men and horses are exhibited in the dismay of the flight, the agony
of the death-struggle, and the exultation of the triumph.”

Let us take a view, now, of the other side of this obelisk. “The greatest
part of it,” says Cordiner, “is occupied by a _sumptuous_ cross, and
covered over with an uniform figure, elaborately raised, and interwoven
with great mathematical exactness; of this, on account of its singularity,
there is given a representation at the foot of the column. Under the cross
are two august personages with some attendants, much obliterated, but
evidently in an attitude of reconciliation; and if the monument was
erected in memory of the peace concluded between _Malcolm_ and _Canute_,
upon the final retreat of the _Danes_, these larger figures may represent
the reconciled monarchs.

“On the edge, below the fretwork, are some rows of figures, joined
hand-in-hand, which may also imply the new degree of confidence and
security which took place, after the feuds were composed, which are
characterised on the front of the pillar. But to whatever particular
transaction it may allude, it can hardly be imagined, _that in so early an
age of the arts in Scotland as it must have been raised, so elaborate a
performance would have been undertaken but in consequence of an event of
the most general importance_: it is, therefore, surprising, that no
distincter traditions of it arrived at the era when letters were known.”

[Illustration]

As to “the era when letters were known,” I shall bestow upon that a
sentence or two by and by. For the present I confine myself to the
“surprise that no distincter traditions” of this _monolith_ temple[376]
has been handed down to us.

It was erected by the _Tuath-de-danaans_ on their expulsion from Ireland.
The inscriptions upon it are the irresistible evidence of their emblematic
religion. After an interval of some centuries, the Picts poured in upon
their quietude; and the barbarous habits of those marauders, being averse
as much to the _ritual_ as to the _avocations_ of the Tuath-de-danaans,
they effaced every vestige of the dominion of that people, and made them
fly for shelter to the Highlands.

In the days of _Malcolm_, therefore, and of _Canute_, the history of this
pyramid was as difficult of solution as it was in those of _Pennant_ and
of _Cordiner_. And there is no question but that the two _monarchs_
looked, with as much wonder, upon the hieroglyphics along its sides, as
did the two _antiquarians_, who would fain associate them with them.

It is to me marvellous, how persons, in the possession of common reason
could, _contrary to all the evidence of observation and history_, look
upon the Danish invasion as the epoch of all enlightenment! and the Danes,
themselves, as the heaven-sent importers of its blessings! Yet, whatever
may have been the case with _some hopeful_ scions of this order, Mr.
Cordiner, at all events, appears to have been honest, and if he missed the
direction of historical verity, it was less his fault than his misfortune.

Who can say so much for Ledwich?

The following extract will justify the tribute here paid to the
_sincerity_ of Mr. Cordiner’s investigations “These monuments,” says he,
“are all said to have been erected in memory of defeats of the Danes, but
there _does not appear any reference that the hieroglyphics on them can
have to such events_. That they have been raised on interesting occasions
there can be little doubt, perhaps in memory of the most renowned
chieftains and their exploits who first embraced Christianity.”

They who first “embraced Christianity” were no “chieftains”; or such as
were, had no “exploits” to record. But it was not so with the professors
of the _primeval_ “_cross_,” in the revelation of Budhism, the
transmigrations of which were but typically pourtrayed on this enduring
column. And in confirmation hereof, Mr. Gordon affirms that he has
“distinguished upon it several figures of a _monstrous form_, resembling
_four-footed beasts_ with human heads!”

Carnac, in Upper Egypt, retains a _monolith_ of the same symbolic
character. It is eighty feet high, composed of a single block of black
granite, presenting a beautifully polished surface on each of its four
sides. The hieroglyphics upon it represent the lifetime of _Thot_, or
_Budda_, until you at last see him enthroned in heaven, at the top.

[Illustration]

“He seems, indeed,” says Hamilton, “to have been considered either by
himself, his subjects, or his successors, as a peculiar favourite of
heaven. He is frequently on his knees, receiving from Isis and Osiris,
together with their blessing, the insignia of royalty, and even of
divinity. The hawk is always flying about him. Two priests are performing
upon him the mysterious ceremony of pouring the _cruces ansatas_, or
_crosses with rings_, over his head; at which time he wears a common dress
and close cap. Hermes and Osiris are pointing out to him a particular line
in a graduated scale, allusive it may be to the periodical inundation of
the Nile, or the administration of strict justice: or (combined with the
preceding scene) to the ceremony of ‘initiation into the religious
mysteries.’”[377]

The number of feet in the pillar corresponds too, if I mistake not, with
that of the years of his recorded pilgrimage.

Captain Head describes, in his splendid work, the avenue which leads to
the temple to which this belongs, in the following terms:--“Fragments of
sphinxes line the sides of the road at intervals of ten or twelve feet,
and usher the visitor to the magnificent granite propylon, or gateway,
whose grandeur for a time monopolises the attention, and makes him who
gazes on it at a loss to decide whether he shall remain adoring its fine
proportions, or advance and examine the carvings which embellish its
front. Is this ‘the land made waste by the hand of strangers, who destroy
the walls, and cause the images to cease?’ The fragments of desolation
that lie scattered around are identified with the predictions of the
inspired historians, by whom we are enabled to estimate the ‘palmy state’
of this once mighty kingdom, whose gigantic monuments fully verify all
that has been said or sung of its pristine splendour.”

After what has been said above, then, along with what may be added by and
by, may I not safely proclaim that M’Pherson’s prediction, that “the
history of Caledonia, before the Roman eagles were displayed beyond the
friths, must ever remain in impenetrable darkness,”[378] has now been
falsified?

    “What are _ages_ and the lapse of time,
  Matched against _truths_ as lasting as sublime?
  Can length of years on God Himself exact?
  Or make that _fiction_ which was once a _fact_?
  No--marble and recording brass decay,
  And like the graver’s _memory_ pass away:
  The works of man inherit, as is just,
  Their author’s frailty, and return to dust;
  _But truth divine for ever stands secure,
  Its head is guarded, as its base is sure;
  Fixed in the rolling flood of endless years,
  The pillar of the eternal plan appears,
  The raving storm and dashing wave defies,
  Built by that Architect who built the skies_.”[379]




CHAPTER XXIII.


A very industrious contributor to the _Asiatic Researches_ has afforded
scope for some jests at his expense, because of the attempt which he has
made to identify the British islands with certain Western localities
commemorated in the writings of the Hindoos. Had he but known, however,
the coincidence of _our monuments_ with those _mysteries_ which the
Puranas record, how they mutually support and dovetail into each other, he
could not only have laughed to scorn the traducers of his services, but
fixed his fame upon a pinnacle of literary pride which no _undergrowl_ of
envy could have subverted.

But as it is, unacquainted with the history of the places which he left
behind him, and wading, therefore, through an ocean in which he had no
compass for his guide, he has, in his puerile endeavours to wrest the text
of the Puranas to external prejudices, effected more himself towards the
disparagement of his reputation, than what the combined influence of
interest and of scepticism could otherwise accomplish.

“There are,” say the Puranas, “many manifestations and forms of Bhagavan,
O Muni, but the form which resides in the _White Island_ is the primitive
one. Vishnu,” says the author, “recalling all his emanations into the
_White Island_, went into the womb, in the house of Vasu-devi; and on
this grand occasion he recalled all his emanations. Bama and Nrisinha are
complete forms, O Muni; but Crishna, the most powerful king of the _White
Island_, is the most perfect and complete of all Vishnu’s forms. For this
purpose Vishnu, from Potola, rejoins the body of Radhiceswara, the lord of
Radha, he who dwells in the _White Island_ with the famous _snake_, a
portion of his essence. The gods sent there portions of their own essences
to be consolidated into the person of Crishna, who was going to be
incarnated at Gocula.”[380]

The gist of the foregoing, Mr. Wilford would neutralise by this following
extract, which he gives as the substance of another notice in the same
documents, and which he considers himself as incredible:--

“_Bali_, an antediluvian, and in the fifth generation from the creation,
is introduced, requesting the god of gods, or Vishnu, to allow him to die
by his hand, that he might go into his paradise in the _White Island_.
Vishnu told him it was a favour not easily obtained; that he would however
grant his request. But, says Vishnu, you cannot come into my paradise now;
but you must wait till I become incarnate in the shape of a _boar_, in
order to make the world undergo a total renovation, to establish and
secure it upon a most firm and permanent footing: and you must wait a
whole yuga till this takes place, and then you will accompany me into my
paradise.”

“Ganesa, who is identified with Vishnu, and has also an inferior paradise
in the _White Island_, and another in the Euxine, or Jeshu sea, thus says
to a king of Casi, or Benares, an antediluvian, and who, like Bali, wished
much to be admitted into his elysium, “you cannot now enter my paradise in
the _White Island_; you must wait 5000 years; but in the mean time you may
reside in my other paradise, in the Euxine Sea.”

Now, all these monstrosities, as they presented themselves to Mr. Wilford,
gauging them with the comparisons of dry rule and line on the application
of the true touchstone, vanish into ether.

The most _mysterious_ and _religiously-occult_ name given to _Ireland_ in
the days of its pristine glory was _Muc-Inis_.

This word has three interpretations--firstly, the _Boar Island_; secondly,
the _White Island_; and, thirdly, the _Sacred_, or rather the _Divine_,
and _Consecrated Island of God_.[381]

Is it necessary that I should say one syllable more to authenticate the
Puranas, and identify this _hallowed_ spot with the _paradise_ of their
encomiums? No: I shall not affront your understanding by so supposing. The
explanation of this _single term_ has, more effectually than could a
_ship-load of folios_, set to flight the hobgoblins of ignorance and of
scepticism, and reared the castle of truth on the ruins of prostrated
error.

I would by no means, however, be understood as intending an ungenerous
trophy over Mr. Wilford’s mistakes. I respect the zeal with which he
embarked in his undertaking; and, to speak over-board, the lapses which he
has committed were to _him_ ethically unavoidable.

The sting, therefore, of the above, if any it convey, must be directed
exclusively to the _romancers_ of my own country: a specimen of whom I
shall give you in the Rev. Dr. Keating, who, venturing to unveil the
mystery of the name _Muc-Inis_, and account for its origin, tells us, with
a serious face, that “when the Danaans found the Milesians attempted to
land, by their magical enchantments they threw a cloud on the island, by
which it appeared no bigger than a _hog’s_ back!!!”

But Ireland, thank God, is rescued from the drivelling of such dotards. It
will hold its place now amongst the nations of the earth; and the result
is inevitable, however tardy your compliance, but that the truth will be
_revived_ from one pole of the universe to the other, that, in the
primeval world, all sanctity and all happiness had here fixed their abode,
that heaven was here personified, and that the irradiating focus of all
moral enlightenment was here alone to be found.[382]

Look, Sir, what do you see before you? The solution of that all-healing
_arrow_ which Abaris was said to have brought with him from the island of
the Hyperboreans, on his visit of religion to Greece!

Should you ever chance to travel as far as the county of Galway, inquire
for the deserted village of Knockmoy. Though now dreary, inconsiderable,
and forgotten, it was once the theatre of soul-stirring impressions!

[Illustration]

There in the remnant of an ancient Tuath-de-danaan Temple, vaulted with
stone, and transformed, in after ages, to a Christian Abbey, you will
find, after a succession of, at least, three thousand revolving years,
this pathetic representation of the _youth Apollo slaying with his arrow
the serpent Python_[383]--in other words, _overthrowing, by
self-endurance, the dominion of sin! and, finally, by immolation upon a
tree_, to which you perceive him pinioned, _establishing ascendency over
the serpent and his wiles_, and pointing out the road to eternity beyond
the grave!

[Illustration]

In an upper range, on the same compartment, you can trace this other line,
consisting of three kings with their eastern _crowns_, their eastern
_costume_, and the _dove_ of amity entwining all of them as they
superintend the spectacle, while the solemnity of the whole is enhanced by
the composure with which a Brehon sits by, in his turban of state, after
reading from the _Bana_, or the Budhist gospel, the sentence of
condemnation and of mysterious expiation, in one and the same breath.

“He was oppressed and He was afflicted; yet He opened not His mouth: He is
brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before His shearers is
dumb, so He openeth not His mouth.”[384]

But this is not the only incident which this treasure of antiquity
pourtrays. Beside the three monarchs are skeleton delineations of the
_three_ other divinities, who, before this _fourth_, assumed the form of
humanity, and went through the same ordeal of atoning passion to reclaim
our species, through ages back in the distance![385]

It will readily be believed, that descriptions so mysterious, relating to
events so momentous, must have attracted the observation of subsequent
years. Generation after generation gazed upon them with wonder! Generation
after generation spoke their ignorance in wonder! Mr. Ledwich, of course,
must have a snap at them: and it would make a _cat_ laugh, or Plutarch’s
_boar_ dance a hornpipe, to hear the contortions of history, the
violations of nature, the perversions of fact, of date, and of
philosophy, which this _blot_ upon letters has strung together into a
melange, as if an exposition of the above hieroglyphics!

And yet, this is he who boasts of his having been “_not sparing of
ridicule_” in those moments which he tells us, “he could steal from
_clerical_ and domestic avocations,”--to tell lies of his country!

The speculation took, however, and he was fostered in his malice--riches
and honours were showered upon him!

Well, he died--a monitory pause accompanies the sound--but the party must
have a successor!

They “have found him” amongst themselves!--the author of the _Fine Arts in
Ireland_!

This _fine_ gentleman has really exhibited some degree of _tact_, which
shows him not unworthy of his appointment. He begins by denouncing, hoof
and horn, every position of his predecessor! Calls him, as a salvo, “a
learned man!” but insists upon his being a “most unskilful antiquary”; and
though “dogmatic,” “altogether a visionary.”

These, you would suppose, were great liberties to take with the
foster-child of patronage. They were so, in _appearance_, not _in
reality_, for

  “Mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur”--

he is a _modern_,[386] and though of a different _school_, it suits their
purpose as well.

But let us see how he would decipher “the writing upon the wall.”

“If we might venture a _conjecture_,” he says, “it would be that the
living figures represent the most distinguished native princes, who warred
with the adventurers in defence of their country; and that those of the
deceased kings were the patriot monarchs of earlier times!”

Pray, _what_ adventurers? _what_?--But the farce is too absurd to bestow
discussion upon it.

Come, however, to the _crucifixion scene_, what would “P----” make of
this?

“This _appears_,” he says, “to represent the death of the young son of
Dermod MacMurrough, who was delivered up to Roderick O’Connor, as a
hostage for his father’s fidelity, and who, according to Cambrensis, and,
we _believe_, to our own annalists, was abandoned by that inhuman and
ambitious parent to his fate!”

After the flourish of trumpets, with which Mr. P---- had proclaimed
_independence_ of Dr. Ledwich, one would have expected a _new_ ascription,
or, at least, a _different_ one, from him. This, however, is but a
_servile transcript from his predecessor’s work_, and that, too, without
having the candour to quote him as his authority!

  “But let us view those things with closer eyes.”

Had MacMurrough’s son been put to death by O’Connor, in that awful manner
above delineated, with such external parade, and such mysterious pomp,
think you that Cambrensis, who never omitted _even the most trivial
feature_ of a narrative, would have been blind to a particular, which must
have interested all his readers? Yet, as to the reality of this--Mr.
P----’s insinuation notwithstanding--Cambrensis is silent and mute as the
grave!

A fact which was thought worthy to be commemorated in _fresco_ must have
been equally eligible as a phenomenon in _writing_. The O’Connors,
therefore, whom Mr. P---- would install as the authors of this device,
must have retained some _documentary_ register thereof: and, though it is
well known, that there is not a family in the kingdom, who have preserved
the records of their house with such industry or minuteness as _they_
have, yet is there not so much as the _semblance_ of an allusion to be
traced amongst them, to this _mysterious representation_!

Nay, if O’Connor had put to death MacMurrough’s son, with such
circumstances of torture and savage insensibility, is it probable that he
would himself be the person to immortalise his disgrace, by depicting it
upon such a chronicle? And if the virtue of the nation were not previously
outraged by the _hellishness_ of the crime itself, would it not now blaze
forth in holy indignation at the infatuated _vanity_ of the monster, who,
not satisfied with the murder of his innocent _victim_, must deluge his
_country_ also in gore, by associating it, to forthcoming ages, with this
outline of his barbarity?

Yes, sir, if they were _silent_ as to the _crime_, they would be
_eloquent_ as to the _painting_! And it is not only that they would
_demolish_ the _structure_ within which it was _inscribed_, but every
_quill_ within the realm would become a _pen_, every _liquid_ be converted
into _ink_, and every _hand_ be made that of a _writer_ to rescue the
_island’s_ fame from identity with the traitor’s _cause_; and confine to
his own and his loathed head the withering execrations of posterity!

Instead of which, however, not a syllable is uttered, on paper or on
parchment, allusive to the tragedy! Not a _presage_ is imparted by
mournful _banshee_! nor _elegy_ sung by familiar _mna-caointha_! No
_historian_ records the heart-rending _tale_! nor does _gipsy_ retail it
in itinerant _ditty_! But the _mystery_ of sorrow, and the _sanctity_ of
_truth_, that _hallowed the scene which this temple commemorates_, has,
still further, exerted its protecting instrumentality, and besides the
_moving evidences imprinted_ upon its _interior_, has added those also of
_exclusion from without_, and prevented the iniquity of _profane_
appropriation, by the occurrence of any equivocal record!

The devices upon places of worship are always of a religious kind. Would
the perpetration of a _faithless infanticide_ be considered an act of
religion? And, if not, why emblazon it within the tabernacle of prayer,
with all the circumstances of grace and of grandeur around it?--solemnised
by kings! superintended by gods! and executed by judges!

Oh! sir, a dire plague of astringent benightment has lain brooding over
history! and spread, like the _upas_, its baleful emaciation over
everything of culture that fell within its shadow! But _truth_ is
_immortal_: and, however _momentarily suppressed_, will _ultimately_
recover.

“It is a pleasure,” says Bacon, “to stand on the shore, and to see ships
tossed upon the sea; a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to
see a battle, and the adventurers thereof below; _but no pleasure is
comparable to the standing on the vantage-ground of truth_ (a hill not to
be commanded, and where the air is always clear and serene), _and to see
the errors, and wanderings and mists and tempests, in the vale below; so
always that this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling or pride_.
Certainly it is heaven upon earth to have a man’s mind move in charity,
rest in Providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.”

The very dresses, which adorn these venerable delineations, are enough to
redeem them from the turpitude which Mr. P---- would impute to them.
O’Connor and MacMurrough were, neither of them, on this earth, for at
least _two thousand years after_ these were in vogue! neither are they by
any means the habits which P---- would persuade us that “laws were
subsequently enacted to abolish as barbarous!”

Behold! I show you a mystery![387]

[Illustration]

What do you see here?[388] What do you make of this Mr. P----. Or do you
think that O’Connor went over into Nubia, and got the impress of his
enormity canonised there also, in the form of a cross, within the temples
and sanctuaries of the adoring Egyptians?

I copy this image from a work of great value, lately published in Paris by
Monsieur Rifaud; which he designates by the title of _Voyage en Egypte et
en Nubie, et lieux circonvoisins_. The plate under notice is but part of a
larger one, which he describes as “Façade du petit temple de Kalabche (en
Nubie) et ses détails intérieurs,” and of which I shall, by and by, treat
you to two more compartments, as the exact correspondents of the six
crowned figures at Knockmoy.

Meanwhile, I beg leave to introduce to you on the next page, some of the
sculptures on the Tuath-de-danaan _cross_, at old Kilcullen, in the county
of Kildare, Ireland. Here you distinguish nine _Budhist_ priests in the
_Eastern_ uniform, with _bonnet_, _tunic_, and _trouser_--nay, with their
very _beards_ dressed after the Egyptian fashion.

Other figures I shall leave to your own research to unfold. But let me
particularly _fasten_ upon your faculty of comparing, the _head-gear_ of
the standing figure, in the _second_ division, and that of the crucifixion
upon the Nubian temple. Are they not _critically_, _accurately_, and
_identically_ the same?

Look next at the brute _animals_ that take part in this group! Mind the
_grotesqueness_ of their positions, and the _combination_ of their
character with that of _man_! then lay your hand upon your breast, and,
with the light now streaming in upon you, can you conscientiously believe
that the _cross_ which exhibits itself at the other side, was ever the
work of Christianity?[389]

[Illustration]

But as you cannot imagine that O’Connor had gone over to Nubia, in the
twelfth century of the Christian era, to get his murdered hostage
_deified_ in a pagan temple, built, perhaps, at the very lowest, three
thousand years before his time, so neither can you impose upon us, that
the Budhists stole a march upon our Christian _supineness_, and, while our
different sects were fighting for _who should have most_, and proclaiming
“I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas, and I of Christ,”[390]
imprinted their complexity upon our boasted simplicity, and then suddenly
again vanished without having been once seen, felt, heard, discovered, or
understood!!!

What entanglements will not people plunge themselves into when supporting
a bad cause! And how easy is the road which rectitude follows!

The Hindoo Puranas corroborate, to an iota, this our Knockmoy
crucifixion.[391] _Sulivahana_ is the name which they give to the deity
there represented. The meaning of the word is _tree-born_, or, who
suffered death upon a tree. He was otherwise called _Dhanandhara_, that
is, the _sacred almoner_. And his fame, say the Puranas, reached even to
the _Sacred Island_, in the sea of _milk_, that is, of _Doghda_, which
signifies milk, and which was the title of the tutelar goddess of
Ireland.[392]

Avaunt, then, evermore, to the humbug of _back-reckoning_, and the charge
of _imposture_ upon the Brahmins! I flatter myself, I have laid an
_extinguisher_, for ever, upon that pretext.

As I have before presumed to offer a suggestion to the translators of
oriental _manuscripts_, I shall take the additional liberty of intimating,
which I do with profound submission and respect, to the decipherers of all
_hieroglyphics_, whether in Ireland or in the East, that those
_arrow-headed_ characters, to be met with at Persepolis, and resembling in
their formation our Irish Oghams, _bear reference, both of them, to this
mysterious crucifixion_! And that if Mr. Champollion, and other gentlemen
interested in the prosecution of those useful points, will attend to this
my advice, they will find it a more _certain key to the attainment of
their desired object, than all the labour and outlay of centuries
heretofore_!

  “Knowing that Nature never did betray
  The heart that loved her; ’tis her privilege,
  Through all the years of this our life, to lead
  From joy to joy: for _she can so inform
  The heart that is within us, so impress
  With quietness and beauty, and so feed
  With lofty thoughts_, that neither evil tongues,
  Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
  Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
  The dreary intercourse of daily life,
  Shall e’er prevail against us, or disturb
  Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
  Is full of blessings.”--WORDSWORTH.




CHAPTER XXIV.


The regal figures, which I promised, as belonging to the _Nubian_ temple,
and corresponding to the _Knockmoy_ frescoes, are the following:--

[Illustration]

You will, furthermore, observe how that they all wear the _philibeg_, like
our crucified effigy at p. 296, and our war-god, Phearagh, at p. 138.
Each of them, also, is adorned with the _cross_, as the passport of their
redemption: while the three _divinities_, delineated in the Irish scenes,
have these as their counterparts in the temple of Nubia.

[Illustration]

Abbe Pluché states, that “the figures of those gods brought from Egypt
into Phœnicia, wore on their heads leaves and branches, wings and globes,
which,” he adds, “appeared ridiculous to those who did not comprehend the
signification of these symbols, as happened to Cambyses, King of Persia,
but these represented Isis, Osiris, and Horus.”

“In the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for November, 1742, is an account,” says
Vallancey, “of two silver images, found under the _ruins of an old tower_,
which had raised various conjectures and speculations amongst the
antiquaries; they were about three inches in height, representing men in
armour, with _very high helmets on their heads, ruffs round their necks_,
and standing on a pedestal of silver, holding a small golden spear in
their hands. The account is taken from the Dublin papers. The writer
refers to Merrick’s translation of Tryphiodorus, an Egyptian, that
composed a Greek poem on the destruction of Troy, a sequel to Homer’s
_Iliad_, to show that it was customary with the ancients, at the
foundation of a fort or city, to consecrate such images to some titular
guardians, and deposit them in a secret part of the building; where he
also inserts a judicious exposition of a difficult text of Scripture on
that subject.”

The above extract was indited long before the publication of those Nubian
antiquities; and, consequently, when neither the contributor to the
magazine, nor the quoter from its columns, had any knowledge of their
existence. Its production, therefore, must be valuable here, as showing
not only the connection of the _idols_ with the _Round Tower ceremonial_,
but also that the helmets of the _Nubian_ gods had been adopted in the
effigies of some of those amongst us.

I terminate my proofs of the primeval _crucifixion_, by the _united_
testimonies of the _Budhists_ and the _Free-Masons_.

“Though the punishment of the cross,” says the _Asiatic Researches_, “be
unknown to the Hindus, yet the followers of Buddha have some knowledge of
it, when they represent Deva _Thot_ (that is, the god _Thot_) crucified
upon an instrument resembling a cross, according to the accounts of some
travellers to Siam.”

“Christianity,” says Oliver, “or the system of salvation through the
atonement of a crucified Mediator, was the main pillar of Freemasonry ever
since the fall.”

Let me point your notice now to some _consequences_ of that mysterious
fact. I begin by asking--

How happened it, that, of all places in the world, Ireland was that which
gave the readiest countenance, and the most cheering support, to the
Gospel of Christ, on its first promulgation?

This question you will consider of no trivial tendency. It is, in itself,
worth a thousand other arguments. To solve it, I must premise that,
besides the many ancient appellatives, already given you, for this
country, there was one, which characterised it, as anticipating that
event?

_Crioch-na-Fuineadhach_[393] was this name. Its meaning is, _the asylum of
the expectants_: or, _the retreat of those looking forward_.

To what, you ask?--To the consummation, I reply, of that prophecy, which
was imparted to Israel through another source, saying, “The sceptre shall
not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until
_Shiloh_ come.”[394]

Numerous intimations have, from time to time, been conveyed to man as
harbingers of an event which was to crown their species with universal
blessings. In the Puranas, it was prophesied, that “after three thousand
and one hundred years of the Caliyuga are elapsed, will appear King
_Saca_, to remove wretchedness from the world.”[395]

I have given an abstract of the history of this remarkable personage at
pp. 293 and 294, and shortly after, at p. 296, I presented you with the
effigy of his crucifixion. As to the era of his appearance, as deducible
from the Yugas, I shall confine myself to the opinion advanced by Mr.
Davis, in the _Asiatic Researches_, vol. ix. p. 243, where he states: “It
may further with confidence be inferred, that _Mons. Anquetil du Perron’s
conclusion, with respect to the late introduction of Yugas_, which are the
component parts of the Calpa, into the Hindu astronomy, _is unfounded; and
that the invention of those periods, and the application of them to
computations by the Hindus, must be referred to an antiquity which has not
yet been ascertained_.”

In another age was promised another Redeemer; and of him I copy what Mr.
Wilford transmits, as follows, viz.:--

“A thousand years before that event, the goddess Cali had foretold him
that he would reign, or rather his _posterity_, according to several
learned commentators in the Dokhin, as mentioned by Major Mackenzie, till
a _divine child_, born of a virgin, should put an end both to his life and
kingdom, or to his dynasty, nearly in the words of Jacob, in Genesis,
chap. xlix. ver. 10. The Hindu traditions concerning this wonderful child
are collected in a treatise called the _Vicrama Chastra; or, History of
Vicrama Ditya_. This I have not been able to procure, though many learned
pundits have repeated to me by heart whole pages from them. Yet I was
unwilling to make use of their traditions till I found them in the large
extracts made by the ingenious and indefatigable Major C. Mackenzie of the
Madras establishment, and by him communicated to the Asiatic Society.”

In truth, it was to the _certainty_ of this _manifestation_ that the first
couplet of an Arabic elegy, preserved by Mons. d’Herbelot in his account
of Ibnuzaidun, a celebrated Andalusian poet, refers. In Roman letters, the
lines run thus--

  “Jekad heïn tenagikom dharmairna
  Jacdha alaïna alassa laula tassina.”

That is, “The time will soon come when you will deliver us from all our
cares; the remedy is assured, provided we have a little patience.”

The learned President of the Society of Bengal, unaware of the _drift_ of
this beautiful stanza, and without ever having so much as _seen_ the
original whence it was quoted, offers to alter its import to the
following, viz.: “When our bosoms impart their secrets to you, anguish
would almost fix our doom, if we were not mutually to console ourselves!”
And the only reason he assigns for this novel interpretation is, that
_two_ individuals, _neither of whom, he himself admits, knew anything
about its meaning_, happened, or rather pretended, to put it for him
_differently_ into Arabic words!

On the pillar at Buddal, this emanation of the godhead is thus
characterised: “He did not exult over the ignorant and ill-favoured: but
spent his riches among the needy: in short, he was the wonder of all good
men.”[396] Isaiah’s prophecy of the _future_ Messiah would appear a
_verbatim_, though more _poetical_ transcript of this inscription, viz.:
“He shall not cry, nor lift up; nor cause His voice to be heard in the
street; a bruised reed shall He not break, and the smoking flax shall He
not quench: He shall bring forth judgment unto truth.”[397]

At p. 110 of this volume, I have promised to explain the origin of the
word _Eleusinian_, as applied to the celebration of certain religious
rites. I have very little doubt but that, when reading the declaration,
the reader looked upon its offer as, to say the least,
gratuitous--satisfied that the term could have no possible other meaning,
than as an adjective formed from the substantive _Eleusis_!

Well, the rashness of that judgment I very freely forgive; and repay it
now by the verification of my contract.

_Eleusis_, the _place_, and _Eleusinian_, as descriptive of the
_mysteries_ therein solemnised, were both denominated in honour of that
_Advent_, which all nations awaited; and the fulfilment of which, in the
person of one of the _Budhas_, made him to be recognised on one occasion
as the “source of the _faith_ of the three epochs of the world.”[398]

I have already redeemed the character of those ceremonies from the
sinister imputations which attached to their _secrecy_. An apprehension
that their publication would subvert the popular belief, or a supposed
indelicacy in their tenour, were the _mildest_ constructions which the
_uninitiated_ would afford them. Though secure in the sufficiency of my
former proofs, I cannot avoid taking support from an article in a very
talented publication of our day, in which the writer, _wholly
uninstructed, while he evidently is, as to the nature_ of those
celebrations, yet confirms the fact of their worth and their purity.

“From the whole concurrent testimony of ancient history,” says he, “we
must believe that the Eleusinian mysteries were used for good purposes,
for there is not an instance on record that the honour of an initiation
was ever obtained by a very bad man. The hierophants--the higher priests
of the order--were always exemplary in their morals, and became sanctified
in the eyes of the people. The high-priesthood of this order in Greece was
continued in one family, the Eumolpidæ, for ages. In this they resembled
both the Egyptians and the Jews.

“The Eleusinian mysteries in Rome took another form, and were called the
rites of Bona Dea; but she was the same Ceres that was worshipped in
Greece. All the distinguished Roman authors speak of these rites and in
terms of profound respect. Horace denounces the wretch who should attempt
to reveal the secrets of these rites; Virgil mentions these mysteries with
great respect; and Cicero alludes to them with a greater reverence than
either of the poets we have named. Both the Greeks and Romans punished any
insult offered to these mysteries with the most persevering
vindictiveness. Alcibiades was charged with insulting these religious
rites; and although the proof of his offence was quite doubtful, yet he
suffered for it for years in exile and misery; and it must be allowed that
he was the most popular man of his age.”[399]

Analogous to these were the solemnities at Carthage, designated by the
name of _Phiditia_; and the import of which, as well in term as in
substance, has been no less a riddle to antiquarians, than was the
sanctified commemoration which it disguises. During the interval of their
celebration, the youths received lessons from their elders of the state,
as to the regulation of their conduct in after life; and the lustre of
truth, and the comeliness of virtue, as they shone forth in _Budha_
(_which solves the mystery of the name_), were the invariable _ethics_
they propounded.

Public feasts were the scene for the delivery of those discourses. They
found their way also to Rome, but the _spirituality of Redemption_ not
going hand-in-hand with its _doctrine_, or not duly comprehended, if
accompanying, the _joyousness_ of _hope_, was there sunk into the
_licentiousness_ of _enjoyment_, and the innocence of mirth and of moral
hilarity was superseded by the uproar of riot and of vice! _Such were the
Saturnalia._

How different was their celebration in our “Sacred Ireland!” The very
letters of the epithet, by which our forefathers had solemnised them, show
the spirituality of purpose which actuated their zeal. _Nullog_ was that
epithet--it is compounded of _nua_, _new_; and _log_ (for bullog), a
_belly_, meaning _regeneration_, or the putting aside of the old leaven of
sin, and the assumption of the new investiture of righteousness, by
justification.

As everything, however, in their religious procedure was transacted by
symbols, so, in this instance, they did not content themselves with the
_inner consciousness_ of a _new birth_,[400] but the most go through the
outer form of it by typification; and for this end it was that they
excavated those _apertures_ in the bodies of rocks, which I have noticed
in page 314, as calling forth, from ignorance, the animadversion of the
_devil’s yonies_, in order that, by _passing themselves through them, they
might represent the condition of one issuing, through the womb, to a new
scope of life_.[401]

A nobler method of symbolisation, and confined solely to the _initiated_,
was that which characterised the construction of their subterranean
temples. Here the sublimity of their worship breaks out in all the
grandeur and the majesty of awe.[402] The narrowness of the entrance,
never larger than the girth of the ordinary human body, pourtrayed, as
well the _circular passage_ in their regenerating _type_,[403] as the
_circumvention_ of temptation by which the faithful are ever beset;[404]
while _the model_ of the _cross, which regulates their architecture
withinside, attests the mystery and the form of their master’s death_.

The Mithratic temple, at New Grange, is exactly so constructed. After
squeezing yourself, with much labour, through a long _emblematic_ gallery,
you arrive at a _circular room_, or rather an _irregular polygon or
octagon_;[405] whence, at measured intervals, three other apartments
diverge, forming, with the inleading gut, a perfect _cross_; and
presenting, altogether, to a susceptible mind, _the most solemn
combination of symbolical mysteries_![406]

I wonder why do not our _moderns_ confer these _subterraneous cruciform_
edifices upon the industry of the early Christians, as they have striven
to claim for them the _corresponding_ structures _above ground_! and
without half the probability of success! For if it may be stated, that the
_crucifixions_ upon the _towers_ were an _interpolation_, with a view to
_Christianise_ what before was devoted to _Paganism_, _no one_, at all
events, would maintain that the _monks_ had gone down into the bowels of
the earth, and after ejecting the inmates of old _Alma Mater_, converted
their tabernacles into a magical cross!

Nay, a greater difficulty would still attach to this adventure. The
_Pagodas_[407] of Benares and Mathura, the two principal ones in all
India, are _cruciformly_ built! and, in order to make both worlds
harmonise, the _advocates_ for the monks, or rather their _beliers_, would
have to transport their mechanics to those regions also, and turn upside
down, and sideways, and every way, whatever was the shape of the original
structures, until they moulded them at last into this mysterious cross!

Some blame, however, would seem attachable to the _superintendents_ of
this vision: and it is that, while imprinting this _mark_ over the head of
the principal figure in the cave, or Mithratic temple, at Elephanta,[408]
they neglected to demolish the _Lingam_, appertaining to the previous
worship; and which actually presents itself but a little from it in the
front!

To be grave. There was nothing more _natural_ than that those different
symbols should be thus united. I have shown that in the various copies of
our annals, the _Round Towers_, or overground temples, are designated by
the name of _Fidh-nemead_, the meaning of which I have elucidated to be,
the _consecrated Lingams_: the _Mithratic caves_, or underground temples,
their _correspondents_, it was to be expected, should be known by a
_suitable_ denomination; and, accordingly, you will find this very one at
New Grange mentioned in the _Chronicon Scotorum_ by the title of _Fiodh
Aongusa_; that is, the _Mysterious Cavern_ of _Buddh_; while the
_crucifixions_ upon the _former_, and the _cruciform shape_ of the
_latter_, are the reverential memorials of his atoning dissolution.

The mysteries celebrated within the recesses of those caverns were
precisely of that character which are called _Freemasonic_, or _Cabiric_.
The signification of this latter epithet is, as to written letters, a
desideratum. Selden has missed it; so has Origen and Sophocles. Strabo,
too, and Montfaucon, have been equally astray. Hyde was the only one who
had any _idea_ of its _composition_, when he declared “it was a _Persian
word_ somewhat altered from _Gabri_, or _Guebri_, and signifying
fire-worshippers.”

It is true that _Gabri_ now stands for _fire-worshippers_, but that is
only because that they assumed to themselves this title, which belonged to
another order of their ancestors. The word is derived from _gabh_, “a
smith,” and _ir_, “sacred,” meaning the _sacred smiths_; and _Cabiri_
being only a perversion of it is, of course, in substance, of the very
same import.

Mount _Caucasus_,[409] also, which still, in our language, retains its
original pronunciation, of _Gaba-casan_, or the Smith’s Path, was named
from the same root; nor is the tradition of the _reason_ altogether
obliterated from those who dwell beside it, if we may judge from a
ceremony described by a recent traveller, as performed by them, as
follows:--

“The original founders of the Tartarian Mongolian Scythians, called Cajan
and Docos, got embarrassed amongst those mountains, then uninhabited.
After a sojourn there of 450 years, having become so numerous as to
require other settlements, they were at a loss to find a passage through
the mountains, when a _smith_, pointing out to them a place very rich in
iron ore, advised them to make great fires there, by which means the ore
melted, and a broad passage was opened for them. In commemoration of which
famous march, the Mongols to this day celebrate an annual feast, and
observe the ceremony of heating a piece of iron red hot, on which the
Ceann (that is, the chief) strikes one blow with a hammer, and all the
persons of quality do the same after him.”

I shall close this chapter by the description given of the destruction of
Cambyses’s army in the Nubian desert, _after the insults offered by him to
the Cabiri priests_.

  “Gnomes, o’er the waste, you led your myriad powers,
  Climb’d on the whirls, and aim’d the flinty showers;
  Onward resistless rolls the infuriate surge,
  Clouds follow clouds, and mountains mountains urge;
  Wave over wave the driving desert swims,
  Burst o’er their heads, inhumes their struggling limbs;
  Man mounts on man, on camels camels rush,
  Hosts march o’er hosts, and nations nations crush:
  Wheeling in air, the winged islands fall--
  And one great sandy ocean covers all.”[410]




CHAPTER XXV.


On the east side of the river Shannon, about ten miles distant from
Athlone, in the barony of Garrycastle, and King’s County, is situated the
_Sanctuary_ of Clonmacnoise. Within the narrow limits of two Irish acres,
are here condensed more _religious_ ruins, of antiquarian value, than are
to be found, perhaps, in a similar space in any other quarter of the
habitable world.

Nine churches, built respectively by the individuals whose names they
bear, namely: (1) that of Macarthy More; (2) that of Melaghlin; (3) that
of MacDermott; (4) that of Hiorphan; (5) that of Kieran; (6) that of
Gawney; (7) that of O’Kelly; and (8) that of O’Connor;--independently of
the _cathedral_,--here moulder, in kindred mortality, with the ashes of
nobles, of princes, and of kings, entombed beneath their walls; and who,
at feud, mayhap, in life, are now content to sleep beside each other,
“their warfare o’er,” in the levelling indistinction of death.

Your curiosity is, no doubt, excited to know how so circumscribed a little
spot could have been chosen as the nucleus of such ecclesiastical
ambition? The answer is found in the circumstance of this having been one
of the strongholds of _Budhism_, in the days of its corruscations, which
made it now be singled out, in common with other places memorable for that
creed, as the appropriate locality for Christian superincumbency.

Two Round Towers, _the chief object of emulation_, are, as you may have
supposed, here to be encountered: and _these are the very ones, which the
reader may recollect have been alluded to at_ p. 38, as ridiculously
claimed by Montmorency for _Christian_--because, forsooth, in the
vagueness of popular titles, they are _recently_ distinguished by the
names of _MacCarthy_ and _O’Rourke_!

The _Eastern columns_, denominated after _Pompey_[411] and
_Cleopatra_,[412] have been equally productive of historical mistakes;
until, at last, it has appeared that those celebrated lovers have had no
more to do with such erections, than have had the _O’Rourkes_ or
_MacCarthys_ with our _Round Towers_!

Here also are _three crosses_ belonging to the same religion, to _one_ of
which only shall I now direct your observation. It is fifteen feet high,
composed of a single stone, and sculptured with imagery of the most
elegant execution.

The devices upon this sculpture are such as you would have expected from
the _authors of the Allegory of the Paradisiacal Fall_: and here,
accordingly, it presents itself, just as in _language_ they had clothed
it, in all the mysteriousness of the figurative _tree_.

[Illustration]

Immediately over the equestrian and chariot sports, which decorate the
pedestal, you see Adam and Eve conversing at each side of this _symbol_ of
their dearly-bought _knowledge_! Farther up are other emblems of
mythological allusion: while, in the centre above, you observe a _Cabir_
priest, alias, a _Freemason_, holding the implements of his craft--a high
honour--in his hand;[413] and encompassed by a retinue of several more
persons, all in the glow of joy!

The other sides, though less complex, are not less graceful, nor less
significant, than the two which I have introduced. In them, also,
everything bears reference to the _Budhist_ ceremonial. Nor are the
_mouldings_ and the _flowerings_, the _networks_, and other ornaments
which figure upon them, the _least essential_ constituent of that fruitful
code,[414]--while the personation of a _dog_,--an invariable
accompaniment, as it is also amongst the sculptures at Persepolis, and
other places in the East,--_would, in itself be sufficient to fix the
appropriation of those crosses_, as that animal can have no possible
relation to Christianity, whereas, by the Tuath-de-danaans, it was
accounted _sacred_, and its maintenance enjoined by the ordinances of the
state, as it is still in the Zend books, which remain after Zoroaster.

To Clondalkin Tower, represented at p. 101, there belongs also a stone
cross, and bearing its own history upon its _Tuath-de-danaan_ countenance.
In Armagh is another. I cannot afford time to point out any more, but that
at _Finglas_ is too remarkable to be quite neglected.

Every body is acquainted with the legendary tale of _St. Patrick having
banished all venomous reptiles from this_ island. Now, I am very willing,
as has been shown, to give this apostle all the credit which he deserves;
but I am a chronicler of _truth_, and from me he shall have no romances.
Solinus, who flourished A.D. 190, that is, above two centuries before St.
Patrick was born, has noticed the phenomenon of there being no vipers
here. Isidore has repeated it in the seventh century; as has Bede in the
eighth; and, in the ninth, Donatus, the famous bishop of Fesula. This
exemption, therefore, cannot be attributable to St. Patrick, whose honour
would be better consulted by his religious admirers in confining
themselves to _facts_, which are numerous enough, than in shocking
credibility by their _pious frauds_.

As to the _local_ phenomenon, to which you perceive _he_ can have no
pretensions, I cannot resist bestowing upon it a passing observation.
Bede, I think, has gone so far as to say that not only are there no snakes
to be found in Ireland, but that they would not live, if imported: nay,
that, when brought within sight of the shore, they expire! I should like
to see this ascertained; if the fact be such, then the question is solved,
the air or the soil is the cause.

But if the case be otherwise, then must we ascribe it to some _human_
instrumentality; and, as there occur various texts in Scripture, allusive,
it would seem, to a very prevailing opinion in the _East_, as to the
manageableness of that species, by the power of charms,--such as, “I will
send serpents, cockatrices, among you, which will not be charmed” (Jer.
viii. 17); and “the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear, which will not
hearken to the voice of charmers, charming never so wisely” (Ps. lvii. 4,
5);--and as our Tuath-de-danaans, who were an Eastern people, are
recorded by all our early ecclesiastical writers, and with no view to
encomium, as so eminent for incantations, that the island seemed, during
their sway, to have been one continuation of enchantment, it is past
doubt, that, if practicable by man’s efficacy at all, the merit of
extinction belongs solely to them. And it is well worth notice, that the
island of Crete, where a colony of them also had settled, is said to be
gifted with a similar exemption. “The professed snake-catchers in India,”
says Johnson, “are a low caste of Hindoos, wonderfully clever in catching
snakes, as well as in practising the art of legerdemain; they pretend to
draw them from their holes by a song, _and by an instrument resembling an
Irish bagpipe, on which they play a plaintive tune_.”[415]

Every _legend_, however, is founded upon _reality_, and I will unfold to
you from what has Joceline concocted _this about St. Patrick_. All the
_crosses_ of the Tuath-de-danaans had _snakes_ engraved upon them. Look
back at that at Killcullen,[416] and you will see them there still, and
more plainly, by and by, upon that at Kells. These to the Irish were
objects of reverence, because of the _passions_ which they symbolised; and
accordingly the Saint, in order to obviate the recurrence of such
contemplations, effaced them, when practicable, from off the stones.[417]

The same precisely was the course, but with a less hallowed intention,
which the Moslems had pursued in the dissemination of their creed.
“Whenever,” says Archer, “these figures were introduced, the fanatic
Moslem had hammered away all those within his reach; and when this process
was too slow for the work of demolition, another mode of obliteration was
requisite. Whole compartments of sculpture were plastered over to hide the
profane imagery! In clearing away the rubbish, to bring these beautiful
remains to light, the engineer stumbled on a long frieze, part of which
had had the destroying mallet passed over it; but this method of despatch
was not active enough, and that portion which had escaped violence, had
been plastered over with a composition of the colour of the stone.”[418]

We read also in the Puranas, as an historical circumstance, that the whole
_serpent_ race had been destroyed by Janamijaya, the son of Parieshit,
which, in truth, only implies, as the talented professor of Sanscrit in
Oxford University has already remarked, “the subversion of the local and
original superstition, and the erection of the system of the Vedas upon
its ruins.”

St. Patrick, in like manner, having established Christianity _here_, in
supercedence of a religion, the most prominent symbols of which were
_snakes_, _cockatrices_, and _serpents_, may be truly said to have
_extirpated_ their race from the country, but, as you see, in an
acceptation heretofore unexplained.

The _statement_ given by Major Archer of the _symbolic representations_
upon one of the Indian temples, as well as the particulars of its _fate_,
are so perfectly in unison with what I have been describing, that I must
be excused if I give it a place here.

“Reached Burwah-Saugor,” says he. “Immediately on the right is a Hindoo
temple, which I think one of the rarest sights, on the score of
architecture and sculpture, which have gratified our curiosity. The work
of the chisel would have immortalised the artist had he lived in the
present day. I have never seen its execution rivalled, although tolerably
conversant with similar objects of art. The elegance of design--the
arrangement of the figures, which were too numerous to be computed--the
position of them--the sharp and bold relief--and the elaborate ornaments
of _foliage_ and _animals_, render it one of the _most remarkable
monuments_ of art it is possible to conceive. There are compartments on
the lintels of the doors and the entablature, four deep; _figures of the
subordinate deities in the voluminous code of Brahma_, _symbols of their
attributes_, _sacred utensils_, and _animals_. Two vases are on the
threshold, which, for shape and execution, would compete the palm of
excellence with Grecian art. _Wreaths of snakes_, and groups of _men_ and
_women_, are on the _columns_, which also have _their_ ornaments, and are
well proportioned.

“I could not resist a second visit to this edifice, which, at the risk of
appearing opinionative, I can seriously aver, I never saw equalled for
richness and taste; but the hand of intolerant bigotry has marred the work
of fair proportion. The fanatical Moslems, who overran the country in the
time of Acbar, broke and defaced every image they saw; and, with few
exceptions, the head of every figure, of any size or importance, has been
demolished; and nothing remains but relics, which attest the advance of
the arts at the time the structure was reared.”

The effects of fanaticism are the same in all ages. It desecrates alike
human and divine laws. St. Patrick was no fanatic; and accordingly, in
_his_ course, what he could not himself comprehend, he was resolved, at
all events, to have respected. Those crosses, therefore, which had
previously been looked upon with an eye of veneration, _though the cause
had long ceased to be transmitted_, he literally _Christianised_, by
removing the sculpture; and thus were they made, in the ritual of the new
religion, as hallowedly expressive as they were ever before.

Precisely similar was the system pursued by the missionaries in India.

“The island of Salsette,” says Captain Head, “abounds in mythological
antiquities and pagan temples--two gigantic figures of Buddha, near twenty
feet high, of complete preservation, which they owe to the zeal of the
Portuguese, who painted them red, and converted the place they ornamented
to a Catholic chapel.”

The Pantheon at Rome was new modelled in the same manner. In a word, as
Grotius has before affirmed, “infinite appropriations have been made.”

But, independently of this conversion, the conformity itself between the
Christian and the Budhist religion was so great that the Christians, who
rounded the Cape of Good Hope with Vasco de Gama, performed their
devotions in an Indian temple, on the shores of Hindustan! Nay, “in many
parts of the peninsula,” say the _Asiatic Researches_, “Christians are
called, and considered as followers of Buddha, and their divine
legislator, whom they confound with the apostle of India, is declared to
be a form of Buddha, both by the followers of Brahma and those of Siva;
and the information I had received on that subject is confirmed by F.
Paulino.”

It was not so with those who made religion a trade, and only the auxiliary
password to their selfish aggrandisement! When the “abomination of
desolation”[419] swept over this country, and strewed the verdure of its
surface with the indiscriminate fragments of cathedrals, of castles, and
of towers, the crosses but as little escaped the scourge!

Having had occasion to pass through Finglas, on their march to the siege
of Drogheda, and fancying the cross which stood there to have been
_necessarily_ the erection of obnoxious _Romanism_, they gave it an
_iconoclast_ blow, which broke its shaft into two! Thus decapitated, it
fell. But the citizens, wishing to avoid further profanation, soon as ever
the army evacuated the town, took the disjointed relic and buried it very
decorously within the confines of the churchyard!

Here it remained, in consecrated interment, until the beginning of the
year 1816, when an old man of the parish, recounting anecdotes of bygone
times, mentioned amongst others, the particulars of this tradition, and
excited some curiosity by the narrative.

[Illustration]

The Rev. Robert Walsh was then curate of Finglas, and this mysterious
history having reached his ears, he determined forthwith to ascertain its
evidences. His first step was to see the chronicler himself.--This
personage’s name was Jack White. Jack, who was himself well stricken in
years, told him that he had learned, a long while ago, from his father,
who was then himself rather elderly, that he had been shown by his still
older grandfather the identical spot where the cross had been concealed,
and could point it out now to anyone with certainty and preciseness.

The proposal was accepted; workmen were employed; and, after considerable
perseverance, the cross was _exhumed_, its parts _reunited_ by iron
cramps, and _re-erected_, as opposite, within a short distance of the
scene of its subterranean slumbers, as if in renascent triumph over the
destroyer!

  “Let such approach this consecrated land
  And pass in peace along the magic waste:
  But spare its relics--let no busy hand
  Deface the scene, already how defaced!
  Not for such purpose were those altars placed:
  Revere the remnants nations once revered;
  So may our country’s name be undisgraced,
  So may’st thou prosper where thy youth was reared,
  By every honest joy of love and life endeared.”[420]




CHAPTER XXVI.


It will be borne in mind that everything hitherto advanced on the various
topics which we have been discussing, was the sheer result of internal
reasoning and of personal circumspection--that, wherever extrinsic aid was
brought forward in support of this unbeaten track, it was uniformly in the
shape of _conclusions_ deduced from the premises of reluctant witnesses. I
rejoice, with delight unspeakable, that I have it at last in my power to
range myself side by side with an author whose testimony in this matter
must be considered decisive, but which, however, by some strange
aberration of intellect, has never before been understood!

Cormac,[421] the celebrated bishop of Cashel, and one of the first
scholars who ever flourished in any country, when defining the Round
Towers in his _Glossary of the Irish Language_, under the name of
_Gaill_[422] says, that they were “_Cartha cloacha is aire bearor gall
desucder Fo bith ro ceata suighedseat en Eire_,”--that is, stone-built
monuments within which noble judges used to enclose vases containing the
relics of Fo (_i.e._ Buddh), and of which they had erected hundreds
throughout Ireland!

Knowing that the Ceylonese _Dagobs_, a name which literally signifies
_houses of relics_, were appurtenances of Budhism, I intreated of a very
intelligent native of that island, who attended the Vihara, at Exeter
Hall, some time ago, that he would favour me with a written outline of his
views of those structures. After a few days, he very civilly obliged me
with the following:--

“Travellers to the Eastern countries often have their notice attracted by
numerous buildings of a singular form and enormous sizes, both in ruins
and in preserved states, about the origin and objects of which many
inquiries have been made, and various conclusions drawn. These are
monuments raised in ancient times to the memory of deified persons, and
called _Chaityas_, to which places devotees used to resort for meditation,
especially those who had any particular veneration for the deceased, whose
relics are supposed to be deposited within, and on whose virtues they
quietly reflect, availing themselves of the solitude of such places; and
if in their own imaginations the personages are deified, they make
offerings of lamplight, etc.

“In exploring the ruins of these pyramids, the inside of the globes are
found to contain loose earth, merely filled up after the arches had been
raised; in such loose earth are found ancient coins of various metals,
supposed to be thrown in, in token of respect or veneration, whilst
building; but in the very centre of the globe is always found a square
well, paved with bricks, and the mouths covered by hewn granite, borne on
granite supporters, standing in the four corners of the square (sometimes
triangular). In this well, if the monument of a king (and if not robbed
by ancient invaders), will be found the urn containing the relics of the
deceased, and treasure to a considerable worth. Sometimes there may be
discovered a piece of beaten gold, or other metal, with engravings,
mentioning the name and other circumstances of the deceased. If a Buddhist
king, idols of Buddha might be found in it--but in others, sometimes
earthen or metallic lamps, and heads of _cobra de capellas_.

“In similar monuments, erected for the relics of Buddha, are three
different compartments or depositories; one in the bottom of the
foundation, one in the heart of the globe, and one at the top of the globe
within the column. This column always has its basis upon the granite
covering of the well. In monuments of this description are supposed to be
much buried treasure, especially in the foundations. The Paly book,
_Toopahwanse_, gives account of the distribution of the Buddha’s relics to
the different parts of the world, and the erection of such monuments over
them.

“Monuments of eminent Buddhist high priests are sometimes erected very
high, but no treasure is to be expected in them, excepting sometimes books
engraved on metal; but the tomb of the poorest prince is never without (at
least in models) a golden crown, a sword of the same metal, a pair of
metallic shoes, and a similar parasol.

“Besides having learnt from tradition and ancient documents, the writer
has seen the discovery of the tomb of a prince, in which these articles
were found, with a plate of gold, stating the name of the prince, his age,
death, etc., which he had the pleasure to transcribe; the characters were
in a different form from those now used in the same language, and hardly
intelligible.

“The writer had also the pleasure of exploring the ruins of a very lofty
Dagob that stood opposite to the establishment of the Church Missionaries
in Ceylon. It was found to have been the tomb of a monarch, and had the
appearance of having been robbed of the wealth it very likely contained,
upwards of a century ago, as the trees that were growing on it indicated.
A large quantity of ancient coins, and metal of different kinds, melted
into various shapes (perhaps with burning of the corpse), were, however,
collected.

“Ceylon contains many ancient pyramids of the kind in a preserved state,
and protected by the people, which are supposed to contain much wealth,
but the superstitious do not dare to explore, and others fear the laws,
which will permit violence to no man’s feelings.”[423]

Having before shown how that the religion of the ancients was interwoven
with their funeral observances, this ocular testimony was alone requisite
to gain credence for my proofs. I can still further adduce the authority
of Dr. Hurd,[424] to show that the Gaurs of India, to this day, make use
of the _Round Towers_[425] in their neighbourhood as places of burial,
lifting up the dead bodies to the elevated door by means of ladders and
pulleys. None of those three writers have attempted anything more than a
statement of the actualities, therefore will I be excused if, in addition
to what has been already detailed, I observe that, sublime and philosophic
as was the intent of the _phallic_ configuration of those edifices,
applied to _religion_, it was incomparably more so, considered in
reference to _sepulture_; for while, in the former, it merely typified the
progress of _generation_ and _vitality_, in the latter it suggested the
more ennobling hope of a future _renascence_ and a _resurrection_.

That the reader, now aware of the “_secret_” which directed the form and
elevation of our Sabian Towers, should not be surprised at the affinity
which I have before pointed out between them and the two “pillars” which
stood at the door of Solomon’s temple,[426] I shall tell him that the
whole internal construction of this latter edifice, as well as those outer
and partial ornaments, bore direct relation to the anatomical organism of
man himself.

To instance only the most prominent of those analogies, you will find the
“holy” and the “most holy” bear the same relation to each other, as the
cerebrum and cerebellum of the human mechanism. Nor need this at all be
wondered at, seeing that, from the very faintest reflection, it must
suggest itself to the most indolent that the divine ingenuity most
prominently shines forth in the human anatomy; and that, therefore, from
the exalted sentiments which this is calculated to inspire of the Godhead,
“the noblest study of mankind is man.”[427]

Viewing it in this light, and coupling it with that piety which is known
to have animated the bosom of David’s anointed son, I cannot pass on
without participating in that sublime exclamation, which bespoke at once
his gratitude and his humility, after the consummation of his mighty task.
“But will God,” said he, “indeed dwell on earth! Behold! the heaven and
the heaven of heavens cannot contain Thee, how much less this house that I
have builded!”[428]

Now to the _era_ for the erection of our Round Towers. “As they have
neither dates nor inscriptions,” say Sir John Ware, “and as history is
silent on that head, it cannot be expected that I should point out the
time when they were erected in this country.”[429] A very cheap way,
certainly, of getting over a difficulty! The same was the mode adopted by
him, and with equal candour, a few pages earlier, as to the development of
their _destination_, when he says: “I confess it is much easier to combat
and _overthrow_ everything that has been hitherto advanced by writers in
favour of the _Danish claim_ to these monuments of antiquity and the
_uses_ of them, than to _substitute anything solid and satisfactory in
their room_.”[430] But inasmuch as the latter problem has been solved, one
is led to conclude that the obstacles to the former are but imaginary
also.

To begin then. Camden, speaking of them, in the thirteenth century, says
he believes them to have been erected in the seventh, but does not know by
whom! But I put it to any rational thinker to say whether, if they had
been a creation of the seventh century, it would be possible for a writer
of the thirteenth to have been ignorant of their origin, and that too at a
time when _tradition_ was universal? and every father made it a point to
instil into his son the events and circumstances that happened in his own
day? This writer’s testimony is sufficient, at all events, to show that
they existed in the seventh century.

Bishop Cormac, we have seen before, has recorded them as objects of
antiquity in his own time; and this being, at the latest, within the ninth
century, they must have had existence before the seventh; else they could
not well be deemed _ancient_ two centuries after.

The Ulster annals record the destruction of fifty-seven of them by an
earthquake, A.D. 448; they must, therefore, have existed before that
century also. But the Royal Irish Academy say _no_; because that tradition
connects a person called the _Goban Saer_, and “the historical notices
relative to whom have been collected into Mr. Petrie’s essay ... with the
erection of this (the Antrim Tower), as well as others in the north of
Ireland!”[431] As every notice, therefore, respecting so important a
character must be eagerly sought after, I shall take leave to transcribe
what the same high authority tells us of him, in the following words,
namely:--

“_I have not learned the particular period at which he flourished_, but
tradition says that he was superior to all his contemporaries in the art
of building; even in that dark age when so little communication existed
between countries not so remotely situated, his fame extended to distant
lands. A British prince, whose possessions were very extensive, and who
felt ambitious of erecting a splendid palace to be his regal residence,
hearing of the high attainments of the Goban Saer in his sublime science,
invited him to court, and by princely gifts and magnificent promises
induced him to build a structure, the splendour of which excelled that of
all the palaces in the world. But the consummate skill of the artist had
nearly cost him his life, for the prince, struck with the matchless beauty
of the palace, was determined that it should stand unrivalled on the
earth, by putting the architect to death, who alone was capable of
constructing such another, after the moment the building received the
finishing touches of his skilful hand.

“This celebrated individual had a son, who was grown up to man’s estate;
and anxious that this only child should possess, in marriage, a young
woman of sound sense and ready wit, he cared little for the factitious
distinctions of birth or fortune, if he found her rich in the gifts of
heaven. Having killed a sheep, he sent the young man to sell the skin at
the next market town, with this singular injunction, that he should bring
home _the skin and its price_ at his return. The lad was always accustomed
to bow to his father’s superior wisdom, and on this occasion did not stop
to question the good sense of his commands, but bent his way to town. In
these primitive times it was not unusual to see persons of the highest
rank engaged in menial employments, so the townsfolk were less surprised
to see the young Goban expose a sheep-skin for sale, than at the absurdity
of the term, ‘_the skin and the price of it_.’ He could find no chapman,
or rather chapwoman (to coin a term), for it was women engaged in domestic
business that usually purchased such skins for the wool. A young woman at
last accosted him, and upon hearing the terms of sale, after pondering a
moment agreed to the bargain. She took him to her house, and having
stripped off all the wool, returned him the bare skin, and the price for
which the young man stipulated. Upon reaching home, he returned _the skin
and its value_ to his father, who learning that a young woman became the
purchaser, entertained so high an opinion of her talents, that in a few
days she became the wife of his son, and sole mistress of Rath Goban.

“Some time after this marriage, and towards the period to which we before
referred, when the Goban Saer and his son were setting off, at the
invitation of the British prince, to erect his superb palace, this young
woman exhibited considerable abilities, and the keenness of her
expressions, and the brilliancy of her wit, far outdid, on many occasions,
the acumen of the Goban Saer himself; she now cautioned him, when his old
father, who did not, like modern architects, Bianconi it along macadamised
roads, got tired from the length of the journey, _to shorten the road_;
and, secondly, not to sleep a third night in any house without securing
the interest of _a domestic female friend_. The travellers pursued their
way, and after some weary walking over flinty roads, and through intricate
passages, the strength of the elder Goban yielded to the fatigue of the
journey. The dutiful son would gladly _shorten the road_ for the wayworn
senior, but felt himself unequal to the task. On acquainting his father
with the conjugal precept, the old man unravelled the mystery by bidding
him commence some strange legend of romance, whose delightful periods
would beguile fatigue and pain into charmed attention. Irishmen, I
believe, are the cleverest in Europe at ‘_throwing it over_’ females in
foreign places, and it is pretty likely that the younger Goban did not
disobey the second precept of his beloved wife. On the second night of
their arrival at the king’s court, he found in the person of a female of
very high rank (some say she was the king’s daughter), a friend who gave
her confiding heart to all the dear delights that love and this Irish
experimentalist could bestow. As the building proceeded under the skilful
superintendence of the elder Goban, the son acquaints him with the
progress of his love, and the ardent attachment of the lady. The cautious
old man bade him beware of one capable of such violent passion, and take
care lest her jealousy or caprice might not be equally ungovernable, and
display more fearful effects. To discover her temper, the father ordered
him to sprinkle her face with water as he washed himself in the
morning--that if she received the aspersion with a smile, her love was
disinterested, and her temper mild; but if she frowned darkly, her love
was lust, and her anger formidable. The young man playfully sprinkled the
crystal drops on the face of his lover--she smiled gently--and the young
Goban rested calmly on that tender bosom, where true love and pitying
mildness bore equal sway.

“The wisdom of the Goban Saer and his sapient daughter-in-law was soon
manifested; for, as the building approached its completion, his lady-love
communicated to the young man the fearful intelligence that the king was
resolved, by putting them to death when the work was concluded, that they
should erect no other such building, and, by that means, to enjoy the
unrivalled fame of possessing the most splendid palace in the world. These
tidings fell heavily on the ear of the Goban Saer, who saw the strong
necessity of circumventing this base treachery with all his skill. In an
interview with his majesty, he acquaints him that the building was being
completed; and that its beauty exceeded everything of the kind he had done
before, but that it could not be finished without a certain instrument
which he unfortunately left at home, and he requested his royal permission
to return for it. The king would by no means consent to the Goban Saer’s
departure; but anxious to have the edifice completed, he was willing to
send a trusty messenger into Ireland for that instrument upon which the
finishing of the royal edifice depended. The other assured his majesty
that it was of so much importance that he would not entrust it into the
hands of the greatest of his majesty’s subjects. It was finally arranged
that the king’s eldest son should proceed to Rath Goban, and, upon
producing his credentials to the lady of the castle, receive the
instrument of which she had the keeping, and which the Goban Saer named
‘_Cur-an-aigh-an-cuim_.’ Upon his arrival in Ireland, the young prince
proceeded to fulfil his errand; but the knowing mistress of Rath Goban,
judging from the tenor of the message, and the ambiguous expressions
couched under the name of the pretended instrument, that her husband and
father-in-law were the victims of some deep treachery, she bad him
welcome, inquired closely after her absent friends, and told him he should
have the object of his mission when he had refreshed himself after the
fatigues of his long journey. Beguiled by the suavity of her manners and
the wisdom of her words, the prince complied with her invitation to remain
all night at Rath Goban. But in the midst of his security, the domestics,
faithful to the call of their mistress, had him bound in chains, and led
to the dungeon of the castle. Thus the wisdom of the Goban Saer and the
discrimination of his daughter completely baffled the wicked designs of
the king, who received intimation that his son’s life would surely atone
for the blood of the architects. He dismissed them to their native country
laden with splendid presents; and, on their safe arrival at Rath Goban,
the prince was restored to liberty.”[432]

Gentlemen of England, where is your knowledge of history? which of your
famed monarchs was it that was going to play this scurvy trick upon our
_Goban_, and earn for himself the infamous notoriety of a second
_Laomedon_, by defrauding this _architect_, who no doubt was a _Hercules_,
of his stipulated salary? Ye shades of Alfred and of Ethelbert, I pause
for a reply?

But this indignity, if offered to _Goban_, would be even greater than that
offered by Laomedon to Hercules; for in the latter case the crime was only
that of _dishonesty_--which is not uncommon in any age--superadded to a
spice of _impiety_, in cheating a god; but in the former case, over and
above all these, would weigh a consideration which our people would never
forget, namely, a violation of the laws of _gallantry_, this same Goban
“having been believed in this part of this country to have been a
_woman_!”[433] And yet the same vehicle that puts forth this trash has
told us, in the preceding extract, that he was a _father_ and a _husband_!
(I do not believe in hermaphrodites), and, to crown the climax of
absurdity, gives us the following specimen of the _heroism_ of his _wife_,
namely:--

“The Goban Saer having been barbarously murdered, together with his
journeymen, by twelve highwaymen, the murderers proceeded to his house,
and told the Goban’s wife, with an air of triumph, that they had killed
her husband. She appearing nowise concerned, asked them to assist her in
drawing open the trunk of a tree, which the Goban had been cutting up into
planks. They put in their hands for the purpose, when, drawing out a
wedge, she left them literally in a cleft stick, and taking up an axe, cut
off all their heads at a blow”![434]

But this is ludicrously trifling with the time of my readers. I am alive
to the fact, and I most submissively crave forgiveness, which I doubt not
I shall receive, when I state that my sole object was to expose the
_flimsiness_ of that subterfuge by which the Royal Irish Academy, or
rather their council! had hoped that they could blindfold the public as
well as they had succeeded in sequestrating my prize!

I do not deny indeed but that there may have been in Ireland at one time
such a person as the Goban Saer: but if ever he did belong thereto, it
must have been at least _sixteen hundred_ years before the epoch which the
Academy sanction--and so sanction, be it observed, because that a
weak-minded poor monk, when writing the biography of _St. Abhan_, and
torturing his invention, in all quarters, for the purpose of conjuring up
miracles to lay to his score, thought the similarity of sound between
_Abhan_ and _Gobhan_ so inviting, that he must contrive an interview
between the parties; and so, with “one fell swoop,” alias, _dash of the
pen_, cutting off the centuries of separation, he treats himself and his
pupils to the following burlesque:--

“_Quidam_ famossissimus in omni arte lignorum et lapidum _erat_ in
Hibernia nomine Gobbanus, cujus artis fama usque _in finem sæculi_ erit in
ea. Ipse jam postquam, aliis sanatis, in superflua artis suæ mercede lumen
oculorum amisit, et erat cæcus. Hic vocatus est ad S. Abbanum et dixit ei:
Volo ædificium in honorem Dei ædificare, et tu age illud. Et ille ait:
Quomodo possum agere cum sim cæcus? dixit ei sanctus, Quamdiu illud
operaberis lumen oculorum habebis, sed tibi postea non promitto. Et ita
factum est, nam ille artifex apud sanctum Dei in lumine suo operatus est,
et cum esset illud perfectum lumen oculorum amisit”[435]--that is, in the
true spirit of what my countrymen call a _sceal Feeneechtha_, or
_Phœnician story_, _i.e._ an _entertaining lie_ (a proof, by the way, that
they claim no kindred with the Phœnicians, else they would not thus
confirm the well-known epithet of _Punica fides_); however to put this
_sceal Feeneechtha_ into English, it runs thus: “_Once upon a time_ there
lived in Erin a man most celebrated for his universal mastery over wood
and stone; and whose fame, accordingly, will live therein as long as
_grass shall grow_ or _purling streams flow in its enchanting scenery_.
This good man’s name was _Gobhan_, who, wallowing in wealth from the
meritorious exertions of his abilities, yet incapacitated from enjoying it
by the deprivation of his sight, was summoned before _St. Abhan_, who had
already healed the rest of the world by his miraculous gifts, and who thus
addresses him: ‘I wish to build a house to the honour of God; and set you
about it.’ ‘How can I,’ says _Gobhan_, ‘_seeing_ that I am _blind_?’ ‘O
very well,’ says _Abhan_, ‘I will settle that; long as ever you are
engaged in the business, you shall have the use of your eyes; but I make
no promises afterwards!’ And verily it was so, for long as ever he did
work with the saint he had the use of his sight, but soon as ever the work
was done he relapsed into his former blindness!”

Well, you may laugh if you chose, in future, at the simplicity of the
_monks_; but here is one for you, who, in the very extravagance of his
simplicity, and that while bursting almost with risibility himself at the
speciousness of his conceit, has contrived to bamboozle a jury of
_umpires_ who pique themselves upon their contempt for everything
_monkish_, and who actually, in any other case, had they the _sworn_
evidence of a monk, would go counter thereto; but here, where an old
doting friar is drawing upon his ingenuity, every syllable that escapes
him is taken for gospel!

Now, _I_ as readily believe, as they would fain persuade me, that “long as
_Gobhan_ did work with _Abhan_ he had the use of his sight,” and that
“soon as ever the work was done he relapsed into his former blindness.”
And why? because the two men, living in different ages, never laid eyes
upon each other at all, and thus were they _both, morally and literally,
blind to each other_!

The Scythians, who were masters of this country at the Christian era, and
for many centuries preceding, had a sovereign contempt for everything like
architecture. “They have no towns,” says Herodotus, “no fortifications;
their habitations they always carry with them.”[436] The principle which
actuated them, in this indifference to _houses_, was precisely that which
governed the Britons in a similar taste--they were a race of _warriors_,
and dreaded the imputation of _cowardice_ more than they did the
inclemency of the _weather_. It is not without reason, therefore, that we
find Hollingshed, who wrote his Chronicles in Queen Elizabeth’s reign,
complaining that “three things were altered for the worse in England: the
multitude of chimneys lately erected, the great increase of lodgings, and
the exchange of treen platters into pewter, and wooden spoons into silver
and tin. Nothing but oak for building houses is now regarded: when houses
were built with willow, then had we oaken men; but now our houses are
come to be built of oak, our men are not only become willow, but a great
many altogether of straw.”[437]

St. Bernard, also, in reference to the Irish, having mentioned that
Malachy O’Morgan, archbishop of Armagh, was the first (of the Scythian
race) who had erected a stone house in the island, introduces a native
upbraiding him with it, in these terms: “What wonderful work is this? why
this innovation in our country? we are Scots, and not Gauls, what
necessity have we for such durable edifices?”

_St. Abhan_, therefore, who belonged to the sixth century, at which time
the Scythians had here absolute sway, never once dreamt of erecting a
stone edifice, or of evoking from the grave the manes of _Gobhan_, who, if
he ever existed, must have been a member of the former dynasty.

Those _pious_ fabrications which the biographers of early saints had
concocted, with a view to magnify the reverence due to their subjects,
remind me of one which was invented for the benefit (but in reality to the
detriment) of St. Patrick, and which, even at the risk of appearing
tedious, I must detail.

“Whereas,”--you perceive the record begins with all the formalities of
office,--“in the year of the world 1525, Noah began to admonish the people
of vengeance to come by a generall deluge for the wickednesse and
detestable sinne of man, and continued his admonition for 120 years,
building an arke for the safeguard of himself and his family; one Cæsarea
(say they), according unto others, Caisarea, a niece of Noah (when others
seemed to neglect this warning), rigging a navy, committed herself, with
her adherents, to the seas, to seeke adventures and leave the plagues that
were to befall. There arrived in Ireland with her three men, _Bithi_,
_Largria_, and _Fintan_, and fifty women. Within forty days after her
arrivall the universal flood came upon them, and those parts, as well as
upon the rest of the world, and drowned them all; in which perplexity of
mind and imminent danger, beholding the waves overflowing all things
before their eyes, _Fintan_ is said to have been _transformed into a
salmon_, and to have swoome all the time of the deluge about Ulster; and
after the fall of the water, recovering his former shape, to have lived
longer than _Adam_, and to have delivered strange things to posterity, so
that of him the common speech riseth, ‘If I had lived Fintan’s years I
could say much.’”

Well, “to make a long story short,” this same Fintan, who was converted
into a _salmon_, for the sole purpose of accounting for his appearance on
the same theatre with St. Patrick, is introduced to the saint, when, after
a very diverting episode upon his _submarine_ adventures, a miracle, of
course, is to be wrought; and, anon, we have the contemporary of _Noah_,
and of _Patrick_, at once a _salmon_, a _dolphin_, and a _man_, renouncing
his attachment to the _waters_ and to the _boat_, and devoutly embracing
Christianity!!!

The anachronism committed in the instance of the _Goban Saer_ was
precisely of the same character! and the very name assigned him, which is
that of a _class_, not of an individual, exposes the counterfeit!

_Gobhan Saer_ means the _Sacred Poet_, or the _Freemason Sage_, one of
the _Guabhres_, or _Cabiri_, such as you have seen him represented upon
the Tuath-de-danaan cross at Clonmacnoise. To this colony, therefore, must
he have belonged, and therefore the _Towers traditionally associated with
his erection_ must have been constructed anterior to the Scythian influx.

But we are not left to such inferences to determine the point. A more
substantial ally, the imperishable landmarks of history stand forward as
my vouchers.

To this hour the two localities,--whereon the Tuath-de-danaans had fought
their two decisive battles with the _Fir-Bolgs_, their immediate
predecessors in the occupation of this island,--one near Lough Mask, in
the county Galway, and the other near Lough Arran, in the county
Roscommon, are called by the name of _Moy-tura_, or more correctly, in
Irish, _Moye-tureadh_!

The meaning of this compound, beyond the possibility of disputation, is
_The field of the Towers_! And when in both those places are still traced
the ruins of such edifices, are we not inevitably forced to connect, as
well their _erection_ as the imposition of the _name_, with the fortunes
or with the feelings of some side of the above combatants?

You will say, then, that the _Fir-Bolgs_ were as likely to have originated
the name, and built those structures upon the site, in _reliance_ upon
_their_ divinities, as that the _Tuath-de-danaans_ should have been the
authors in _gratitude to theirs_?

Our only mode, therefore, is to consider the vestiges of their respective
religions: and when we perceive that in the isles of Aran, whither the
Fir-Bolgs betook themselves after their _first_ defeat, for the period
intervening between those two battles, commemorated by the above name,
there appears not a _vestige_ of architectural masonry approaching in
character to a _Columnar temple_, while, on the contrary, they abound in
specimens of _Druidical_ veneration, is it not evident that they, at all
events, have no claim thereto?

The worship, therefore, of the Fir-Bolgs differed altogether from that of
the Tuath-de-danaans, and so _they_ are excluded from those immortal
memorials. Indeed the avidity with which they hailed the approach of a new
conqueror, and tendered him their assistance for the reduction of the
island, arose not so much from any fondly-cherished hope of their being
themselves restored to the throne they had lost, or even allowed therein a
participation, as from an illiberal aversion to the emblematic ritual of
their temple-serving superiors, which their ignorant prejudices could not
allow them to appreciate!

We are warranted, then, I presume, in assigning solely to the
Tuath-de-danaans the affixing of the name _Moy-tureadh_ to those _two
scenes of their success_. And did there even a _doubt_ remain on the mind
of the most incredulous as to the accuracy of the inference, or the
correctness of that reasoning, which would identify this people with the
erections _in general_ of those rotundities, it will hide its diminished
head, and vanish with self-abasement, when I bring forward the testimony
of Amergin, brother to Heremon and, Heber,--the immediate victors of this
religious order--in the following graphic and pictorial treasure, as still
religiously preserved in the Book of Leccan, viz.:--

  “Aonoch righ Teambrach
  Teamor _Tur Tuatach_
  Tuath Mac Miledh
  Miledh Long Libearne.”

That is--

  Noble is the King of Teamor,
  Teamor the _Tuathan Tower_,
  Tuaths were the sons of Miledh,
  Miledh of the Libearn vessels.

Here, then,--_a circumstance which I cannot imagine how it could have
escaped all before me!_--we have this disputed question at length settled,
and incontrovertibly adjudicated by the very head of _that body_ which
Montmorency had assured us never alluded to those edifices as a subject of
national boast--I mean the _Bards_. For, whether we admit this Amergin to
have been the person above described,[438] the actual contemporary and
successor of the Tuatha-de-danaans, or as the other of that name who
belongs to the Christian age, and the time of St. Patrick, the supposition
is equally valid, to prove the existence of those structures anterior to
_their_ respective eras! and the ascription in either case remains
unshaken and irrefragable, which in the word _Tuathan Tower_ unites the
_Tower_ erectors with the colony of the _Tuatha_!

My opponents may now demolish, if they can, all my foregoing deductions,
as speedily as they please,--nay, did the destructiveness of fire, or
other untoward accident, deprive me of the deductions of my preceding
labours, to _this one stanza_ would I cling, as the palladium of my truth;
to this landmark would I adhere as my “ne plus ultra” against error, in
its encroachments upon history![439]

In the whole catalogue of Irish deposits, there exists not one of more
intrinsic value to the lover of antiquities, so far as the right
settlement of history is concerned, than what those four lines present.
For, in the first place, we learn that the celebrity of Teamor[440] arose
not from any gorgeous suit of palaces of a castellated outline. Its renown
consisted in being the central convention for religious celebration to all
the distant provincials once in every year; who, after attending the games
in the adjoining district of _Tailtine_, now Telltown, adjourned, for
legislative deliberations, to the Hill of Tarah, where they propounded
their plans, not within the confined enclosures of any measured dome, but
under the open canopy of the expanded firmament.

Teamor, then, was not a palace at all, but one of the Round Towers, or
Budhist Temples, belonging to the Tuath-de-danaans; and this is further
proved by the result of researches, made to explore the foundation of an
edifice, confirmatory of a regal mansion, having all ended in the most
confuting disappointment--no vestiges could be found save those of the
Round Tower!

The importance which attaches to the _Tailtine_ games above noticed, makes
it necessary that I should bestow upon them something more than a cursory
glance. Let me, therefore, first state what other writers have said
respecting them.

“We attribute,” says Abbé Mac Geoghegan, “to Lugha Lamh Fada, one of their
ancient kings, the institution of military exercises at Tailton in Meath;
those exercises consisted in wrestling, the combats of gladiators,
tournaments, races on foot and on horseback, as we have seen them
instituted at Rome a long time after by Romulus, in honour of Mars, which
were called ‘Equitia.’ These games at Tailton, which Gratianus Lucius and
O’Flaherty call ‘ludi Taltini,’ were celebrated every year, during thirty
days, that is, fifteen days before, and fifteen days after, the first of
our month of August. On that account, the first of August has been, and is
still called in Ireland, ‘Lah Lugh-Nasa,’ which signifies a day in memory
of Lugha. These olympiads always continued amongst the Milesians until the
arrival of the English. We discover to this day some vestiges of them,
without any other change than that of time and place. Wrestling, which we
call in France ‘le tour du Breton,’ the exercises of gladiators, and races
on foot, are still on festival days their common diversion in various
districts of Ireland, and the conquerors generally receive a prize.”

“_Tailtean_,” says Seward, “a place in the county of Meath, where the
Druids sacrificed in honour of the _sun_ and _moon_, and _heaven_ and
_earth_, on the first of August, being the fifth revolution of the moon
from the vernal equinox. At this time the states assembled, and young
people were given in marriage, according to the custom of the eastern
nations. Games were also instituted, resembling the Olympic games of the
Greeks, and held fifteen days before and fifteen days after the first of
August. This festival was frequently denominated Lughaid Naoislean, or the
Matrimonial Assembly.”

“This chapter,” says Vallancey, “might have been lengthened many pages,
with the description and etymology of the various ornaments of female
dress, but enough has been said to convince the reader that the ancient
Irish brought with them the Asiatic dress and ornaments of their
ancestors, for they could not have borrowed these names of Spaniards,
Britons, Danes, or Norwegians.

“Thus dressed and ornamented, the youthful females of Ireland appeared at
_Tailetan_, or the mysteries of the sun, on the first day of August in
each year, when the ceremony of the marriage of the sun and moon took
place, and the females were exposed to enamour the swains. The day still
retains the name of _Luc-nasa_, or the Anniversary of the Sun. And the
name of the month of August, in Sanscrit, is Lukie, whom they make the
wife of Veeshnu, the preserver and goddess of plenty. So the Irish poets
have made this festival, named Lucaid-lamh-fada, _i.e._ the Festival of
Love, the consecration of hands, to be the feast of Luigh-lamh-fada, or
Luigh-longumans, to whom they have given Tailte for wife, who, after his
death, was married to Duach.”

“The Taltenean sports,” says Sir James Ware, “have been much celebrated by
the Irish historians. They were a sort of warlike exercises, something
resembling the Olympic games, consisting of racing, tilts, tournaments,
or something like them, and other exercises. They were held every year at
Talten, a mountain in Meath, for fifteen days before and fifteen days
after the first of August. Their first institution is ascribed to
Lugaid-lam-fadhe, the twelfth King of Ireland, who began his reign A.M.
2764, in gratitude to the memory of Tailte, the daughter of Magh Mor, a
prince of some part of Spain, who, having been married to Eochaid, King of
Ireland, took this Lugaidh under her protection, and had the care of his
education in his minority. From this lady both the sports and the place
where they were celebrated took their names. From King Lugaidh the first
of August was called Lugnasa, or the memory of Lugaidh, nasa signifying
memory in Irish.”

The truth is, that those games were called _Tailtine_ (whence the English
_Tilts_), and the place _Tailton_, from _Tailte, which, in our language,
signifies a wife_; and the sports, there exhibited, made but a
representation of the victory which Budha gained over _Mara_, the great
tempter, who had attacked him on the day of his attaining to perfection,
with an innumerable host of demons. The conflict is said to have lasted
for fifteen days, at the end of which Budha reduced them to submission,
and to the acknowledgment of his pretensions as the Son of God.

The _battle-scenes_, therefore, with which the _Tuath_-de-danaan crosses
and obelisks are decorated, bear reference, all of them, to this religious
achievement: and to this hour you will find those identical games
celebrated in various parts of the east, and for the same number of days!
In Egypt, also, there was a place called Tailtal,[441] and named from the
same cause. Nay, the name of the Eleusinian mysteries was _Tailtine_! but
this the Greeks not comprehending, they bent it, as usual, to some
conformity to their own language, and made _Teletai_ of it! and then they
were at no loss in making a _reason_ for it in like manner, namely, that
no one could be _finished_ until _initiated_ therein!

But it is not alone as assigning those edifices to their real proprietors
that this “stanza” is of value; but as giving us an insight into that
mysterious personage whom our modern chroniclers would fain represent as
the father of Heber and Heremon. A greater error, whether voluntary or
accidental, was never incurred. Heber and Heremon were the sons of
Gallamh, and invaded this island at the head of a Scythian colony,[442]
distinct in all respects, save that of language,[443] from their Tuathan
predecessors.

These predecessors were headed by three brothers, Brien, Iuchordba, and
Iuchor, the sons of King Miledh, a Fo-morian, by a queen of the
Tuath-de-danaan race, agreeably to this record in the Book of Leccan,
viz.:--

“D’Hine fine _Fo-mora_ dosomh de shaorbh a athor, agus do _Tuathabh
Dadanann_ a mhathar”--that is, the father was of the race of the
Fo-morians, and the mother a Tuath-de-danaan.

Again, in the Seabright Collection, this genealogy is prosecuted further,
and from it, General Vallancey translates some lines, which are by no
means irrelevant, as follows, viz.: “Cuill, Ceacht, and Grian, were the
children of little Touraine--and their descendants, Uar, Jurca, Jurcatha;
and from Uar was descended _Brian_, who was named Touran; and many others
not here enumerated.”

But the history of those events having been destroyed by time, the
degenerate _Pheeleas_, wishing to flatter the vanity of the existing
powers, did not hesitate to ascribe to the _Scythian_, or _modern_ Irish,
followers of Heber and Heremon, those brilliant features of primeval
immortality which appertained exclusively to the Irish of another day--the
Hyperborean or Iranian Irish!

The Tuath-de-danaans having been proved the authors of the Round Towers,
my ambition in the investigation is already attained. But since we are
told, that this people had claimed possession of the island as inheritors
of an antecedent and preoccupying eastern colony, it may be worth while to
inquire whether we can discover any traces to connect those predecessors
with any of these edifices. Without bestowing upon it, however, more
consideration than what the exigency demands, I will briefly observe, that
we are likely to find such in the history of the _Fo-moraice_, who are
represented in our chronicles, _by the party who had ejected them_, under
the obnoxious character of _monsters_ and _giants_.[444]

It is high time to give up those abuses in the import of words.
_Fo-moraic_ means literally the mariners of _Fo_, that is, of _Budh_: and
their _religion_ being thus identified with that of the
_Tuath-de-danaans_, what could be more natural than that they should have
erected _temples_ of the same shape with theirs?

This deduction will appear the more credible from the unanimity of all our
historians, on the subject of this people having been perfect masters of
_masonry_, as well as from the universally credited report in the days of
Cambrensis, of some of the Towers being then visible beneath the
inundation of Lough Neagh.[445]

I confess I am one of those persons who give faith to this tradition; for
even my experience of the vicissitudes of all things earthly has enabled
me to say, in the words of the philosophic poet, that--

  “Where once was solid land seas have I seen,
  And solid land where once deep seas have been,
  Shells far from seas, like quarries in the ground,
  As anchors have in mountain tops been found.
  Torrents have made a valley of a plain,
  High hills by floods transported to the main,
  Deep standing lakes sucked dry by thirsty sand,
  And on late thirsty earth now lakes do stand.”




CHAPTER XXVII.


Having promised early in this volume to identify our island with the
Insula Hyperboreorum of antiquity, I shall, without further tarrying,
produce the extract referred to, from Diodorus; and, lest I may be
suspected of adapting it to my own peculiar views, it shall appear
minutely in Mr. Booth’s translation, viz.:--

“Amongst them that have written old stories much like fables, Hecatæus and
some others say, that there is an island in the ocean, over against Gaul,
as big as Sicily, under the arctic pole, where the Hyperboreans inhabit,
so called because they lie beyond the breezes of the north wind. That the
soil here is very rich and very fruitful, and the climate temperate,
insomuch as there are two crops in the year.

“They say that Latona was born here, and therefore that they worship
Apollo above all other gods; and because they are daily singing songs in
praise of this god, and ascribing to him the highest honours, they say
that these inhabitants demean themselves as if they were Apollo’s priests,
who has here a stately grove and renowned temple of round form, beautified
with many rich gifts. That there is a city likewise consecrated to this
god, whose citizens are most of them harpers, who, playing on the harp,
chant sacred hymns to Apollo in the temple, setting forth his glorious
acts. The Hyperboreans use their own natural language, but, of _long_ and
ancient time, have had a special kindness for the Grecians; and more
especially for the Athenians and them of Delos; and that some of the
Grecians passed over to the Hyperboreans, and left behind them divers
presents[446] inscribed with Greek characters; and that Abaris formerly
travelled thence into Greece, and renewed the ancient league of friendship
with the Delians.

“They say, moreover, that the moon in this island seems as if it were near
to the earth, and represents, on the face of it, excrescences like spots
on the earth; and that Apollo once in nineteen years comes into the
island; in which space of time the stars perform their courses and return
to the same point; and therefore the Greeks call the revolution of
nineteen years the Great Year. At this time of his appearance they say
that he plays upon the harp, and sings and dances all the night, from the
vernal equinox[447] to the rising of the Pleiades,[448] solacing himself
with the praises of his own successful adventures. The sovereignty of this
city and the care of the temple, they say, belong to the Boreades, the
posterity of Boreas, who hold the principality by descent in the direct
line from that ancestor.”

When copying this narrative from the writings of Hecatæus, it is evident
that Diodorus did not believe one single syllable it contained. He looked
upon it as a romance; and so far was he from identifying it with any
actual locality, that he threw over the whole an air of burlesque. We are,
therefore, not at all obliged for the services he has rendered--yet shall
we make his labours subservient to the elucidation of truth. Little did he
dream that Ireland, which he, by and by, expressly mentions by the name of
Irin, and which he calumniates as cannibal, was one and the same with that
isle of which he read such encomiums in the writings of former
antiquaries; and, most unquestionably, it did require no small portion of
research to reconcile the contradiction which the outline involves, and
which is now further enhanced by his scepticism.

Unable to solve this difficulty, Mr. Dalton--wishing to retain, by all
means, the _Hyperborean isle_, which, indeed, he could not well discard,
yet not bring it in collision with the _Iranian libel_--does not hesitate
to throw at once overboard into the depth of the Atlantic the island of
Irin (alias _Ireland_), and affirm that it never was the place which the
historian had specified. “It is not quite certain,” says he, “what place
Diodorus means by Iris;[449] from the turn of the expression it would
_rather appear to be a part of Britain_,--perhaps the Erne, for which Mr.
James M’Pherson contends in another place,--while the island which
Diodorus does mention in the remarkable pages cited above, and which so
completely agrees with Ireland, is never called Iris by him, nor does the
name occur again in all his work, nor is it by any other author applied to
Ireland.”[450]

Mind, now, reader, how easily I reconcile the conflicting fact of
Diodorus’s incredulity with his positive defamation.

At the period when he flourished as an accredited historian, the occupancy
of Ireland had passed into new hands. The Scythians were the persons then
possessed of the soil; and they being a warlike tribe, averse to letters,
to religion, and to refinement,[451]--but overwhelming in
numbers,--obliterated every vestige of that primeval renown in which the
island had once gloried, and which afforded theme and material to the
learned of all countries for eulogy and praise.

Hecatæus was one of those who depicted in glowing colours the primitive
splendour and the ethereal happiness of Ireland’s first inhabitants. He
belonged to an age which was well called antiquarian, even in the day in
which Diodorus wrote, viz. B.C. 44; and when, therefore, this latter,
looking over the pages of his venerable predecessor, saw them so replete
with incidents,--at variance with our condition in his own degenerate
day,--he did not only not dream of considering Ireland as the place
described, but looked upon the whole story as the fiction of a dotard.

Let us, however, despite of Diodorus, establish the veracity of the
antiquarian Hecatæus. Then behold the situation of this island, just
opposite to France,--in size as large as Sicily,--at once corresponding to
the locality and size of Ireland, and subversive of the claims of those
who would fain make England, Anglesea, or one of the Hebrides, the island
specified.

Considering further the prolificacy of its soil, and with that compare
what the old poet has affirmed,--and what we know to be true,--of our own
country, viz.:--

  “Illic bis niveum tondetur vellus in anno
  Bisque die referunt ubera tenta greges.”

Then bring its propinquity to the “arctic pole,” and the high northern
latitude which Strabo[452] and other ancients have assigned to Ireland,
into juxtaposition with “Hyperborean,” the name given to its inhabitants
from the very circumstance of their lying so far to the north, and the
identity of the isle with that in which each true Irishman exults is
infallibly complete when I quote from Marcianus Heracleotes--who wrote in
the third century, and who, as he himself avows, only drew up a compendium
from the voluminous works of Artemidorus, who flourished in the hundred
and sixty-ninth Olympiad, or 104 years before Christ--the following
description of this sacred island, viz. “Iuvernia, a British isle, is
bounded on the north (ad Boream) by the ocean called the Hyperborean; but
on the east by the ocean which is called the Hibernian; on the south by
the Virginian ocean. It has sixteen nations and eleven illustrious cities,
fifteen remarkable rivers, five remarkable promontories, and six
remarkable islands.”

Here the sea, encompassing Ireland on the north, is called the Hyperborean
Ocean;[453] and when we are told that the priests officiating at the round
temples of Apollo were called Boreades, we can readily understand the
origin of the name, as derived from _Boreas_, the deity who presided over
the north-east wind, to which they offered their vows,--just as we find
the Emperor Augustus erecting a temple at Rome, many centuries after, to
the wind called Circius.

To this deification of the energies of nature, which, as before affirmed,
was but part and parcel of that form of worship called Sabaism, the author
of the Book of Enoch has alluded in the following mysterious episode:--

“Then another angel, who proceeded with me, spoke to me; and showed me the
first and last secrets in heaven above, and in the depths of the earth: in
the extremities of heaven, and in the foundations of it, and in the
receptacle of the winds. _He showed me_ how their Spirits were divided;
how they were balanced; and how both the springs and the winds were
numbered according to the force of the Spirit. _He showed me_ the power of
the moon’s light, that its power is a just one; as well as the divisions
of the stars, according to their respective names; _that_ every division
is divided; that the lightning flashes; that _their Host_ immediately
obey; and that a cessation takes place during thunder, in the continuance
of its sound. Nor are the thunder and the lightning separated; neither do
both of them move with one Spirit; yet are they not separated. For when
the lightning lightens, the thunder sounds, and the Spirit, at a proper
period, pauses, making an equal division between them; for the receptacle
of their times is what sand is. Each of them at a proper season is
restrained with a bridle, and turned by the power of the Spirit; which
thus propels them according to the spacious extent of the earth.”

Yet beautiful as is the above, it is not much more so than an almost
inspired little poem, which appeared some time ago, in one of the public
prints, as emanating from the pen of an American lady, named Goold,
personifying this element, viz.:--

  “We come! we come! and ye feel our might,
  As we’re hastening on in our boundless flight;
  And over the mountains and over the deep,
  Our broad invisible pinions sweep.
  Like the Spirit of Liberty, wild and free!
  And ye look on our works, and own ’tis we;
  Ye call us the _winds_; but can ye tell
  Whither we go, or where we dwell?

  Ye mark as we vary our forms of power,
  And fell the forest or fan the flower,
  When the hare-bell moves, and the rush is bent,
  When the tower’s o’erthrown and the oak is rent,
  As we waft the bark o’er the slumbering wave,
  Or hurry its crew to a watery grave:
  And ye say it is we! but can ye trace
  The wandering _winds_ to their secret place?

  And whether our breath be loud and high,
  Or come in a soft and balmy sigh,
  Our threat’nings fill the soul with fear,
  As our gentle whisperings woo the ear
  With music aërial, still ’tis we,
  And ye list, and ye look; but what do ye see?
  Can ye hush one sound of our voice to peace,
  Or waken one note when our numbers cease?

  Our dwelling is in th’ Almighty’s hand,
  We come and we go at His command;
  Though joy or sorrow may mark our track,
  His will is our guide, and we look not back;
  And if, in our wrath, ye would turn us away,
  Or win us in gentlest air to play,
  Then lift up your hearts to Him who binds,
  Or frees, as He will, the obedient _winds_!”

And now, as to those “temples” themselves, “of round form,” sacred to
Apollo, where will Borlasse in his championship for England, or Rowland in
his claims for the island of Anglesea, or Toland and Carte for the little
Hebrides isles, find a single vestige of a _rotund edifice_ of antiquated
consecration, appertaining to the age which Hecatæus described?--whereas,
in Ireland, of the two hundred and upwards, with which its surface was, at
one time, adorned, we have not only _vestiges_ of each and all to this
day; but, out of the sixty that _survive_,--after an interval of more than
three thousand years standing,--about twenty still display their Grynean
devotion and their Hyperborean tranquillity, and are likely so to do for
three thousand years more, should this world, or our portion of it, but
last so long!

To give soul to the solemnisation of this religious pomp, the Irish have
ever cultivated the mysteries of music. The harp more particularly had
enlisted the energies of their devotional regard, and their eminence in
its management made Hecatæus well observe, that “the inhabitants were
almost exclusively harpers.” This was a very suitable accompaniment to
their worship of Apollo, who was himself the reputed inventor of this
instrument; and accordingly we find that, even in the twelfth century,
broken down and obliterated as every vestige of the _real Irish_ then was,
by the ungenial amalgamation of the Scythian and Danish intruders, the
_harp_ was still preserved as the last remnant of their glory; while the
elegance of their compositions and performance upon it extorted this
reluctant acknowledgment from the prejudiced Cambrensis:--

“The attention,” says he, “of this people to musical instruments, I find
worthy of commendation; their skill in which is, _beyond comparison,
superior_ to that of _any nation_ I have seen. For in these the modulation
is not slow and solemn, as in the instruments of Britain, to which we are
accustomed, but the sounds are rapid and precipitate, yet, at the same
time sweet and pleasing. It is wonderful how, in such precipitate rapidity
of the fingers, the musical proportions are observed, and, by their art,
faultless throughout.

“In the midst of their complicated modulations and most intricate
arrangement of notes, by a rapidity so sweet, a regularity so irregular, a
concord so discordant, the melody is rendered harmonious and perfect,
whether the cords of the diatesseron or diapente are struck together. Yet
they always begin in a soft mood, and end in the same, that all may be
perfected in the sweetness of delicious sounds. They enter on, and again
leave, their modulations with so much subtlety, and the tricklings of the
small notes sport with so much freedom under the deep note of the bass;
they delight with so much delicacy, and soothe so softly, that the
excellency of their art seems to be in concealing it.”[454]

Clarsech and Cruit were both names which the Irish gave their harp, from
the musical board and the warbling of the strings respectively. But the
favourite designation was that of Orphean, an evident derivation from
Orpheus, the divine musician of the ancients, who is said to have stayed
the course of rivers, and lulled the listening woods,--to have moved the
stones into prescribed positions, and tamed the savage propensities of
man--all by the instrumentality of his speaking lyre!

“As regards Orpheus himself,” says the learned Barker, “he is stated by
some ancient authorities to have abstained from eating of flesh, and to
have had an abhorrence of eggs, considered as food, from a persuasion that
the egg was the principle of all being. Many other accounts are given of
him, which would seem to assimilate his character to that of the ancient
priests of India, or Brachmani. The ancients, however, unable to discover
any mode by which he could have obtained his knowledge from any other
source, pretended that he had visited Egypt, and had there been initiated
in the mysteries of Isis and Osiris. This appears, however, to be a
supposition purely gratuitous on the part of the ancient writers, since a
careful examination of the subject leads directly to the belief that
Orpheus was of Indian origin; that he was a member of one of those
_Sacerdotal Colonies, which professed the religion of Buddha_; and who
being driven from their home, in the northern parts of India, and in the
plains of Tartary, by the power of the rival sect of Brahma, moved
gradually onwards to the west, dispensing, in their progress, the benefits
of civilisation and the _mysterious tenets of their peculiar faith_.”

We know little or nothing at this remote day of the ancient music of the
Bardic order; that it was eminent, however, and transcendently superior to
that of all other countries, is evident from the fact of its having
maintained its character when all our other attributes had notoriously
vanished. Caradoc admits that his countrymen, the Welsh, borrowed all
their instruments, tunes, airs, and measures, from our favoured island.
Carr additionally says, that “although the Welsh have been for ages
celebrated for the boldness and sweetness of their music, yet it appears
that they were much indebted to the superior musical talents of their
neighbours, the Irish.” Selden asserts “that the Welsh music, for the most
part, came out of Ireland with Gruffydh ap Tenan, Prince of North Wales,
who was cotemporary with King Stephen.” I know not whether our brethren of
Scotland will be so ready to acknowledge the loan. But if anyone will
compare the spirit of their music with that which pervades the melodies of
our country, the identity will be as obvious as the inference is
irresistible.

Fuller, in his account of the Crusade, conducted by Godfrey of Boulogne,
says, “Yea, we might well think that all the concerts of Christendom in
this war would have made no music if the _Irish harp_ had been wanting.”

And _this_ is the instrument which Ledwich asserts we borrowed from the
Ostmen! Insolent presumption! Neither Ostman nor Dane ever laid eyes upon
such, until they saw it in the _sunny_ valleys of the Emerald Island. And
had they the shadow of a claim either to it or to the Round Towers, to
which its services were consecrated, Cambrensis could not fail
ascertaining the fact from any of the stragglers of those uncouth
marauders, who--having survived the carnage inflicted upon their army, in
the plains of Clontarf, under the retributive auspices of the immortal
Brien--were allowed to cultivate their mercantile avocations in the
various maritime cities, where they would naturally be proud to perpetuate
every iota of demonstrative civilisation which they could pretend to have
imported. Alas! they _imparted_ none, but _exported_ a great deal; and,
what is more to be lamented, annihilated its evidences!

But it is not alone of the _property_ of this national organ that the
_moderns_ would deprive us, but the very _existence_ of the instrument
they affirm to be of recent date! Why, sir, it is as old as the hills.
Open the fourth chapter of the Book of Genesis, and you will find it there
recorded that “Jubal was the father of all such as handle the _harp_ and
organ.”

And now to the empirics of the “Fine Arts,”[455] and the deniers of their
antiquity, I shall quote the next verse, namely, “Zillah, she also bare a
son, Tubal-Cain, an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron.”[456]
And in Job xxviii. 2 it is said that “iron is taken out of the earth, and
brass is molten out of the stone.”

“In the _north of Europe_,” says Herodotus, “there appears to be by far
the greatest abundance of gold; where it is found I cannot say, except
that _the Arimaspians, a race of men having only one eye_, are said to
purloin it from the griffins.[457] I do not, however, believe that there
exists any race of men born with only one eye!”

Had this esteemed author known the allegorical import of the word
Arimaspians (from _arima_, one, and _spia_, an eye), such as it has been
explained at page 86, he would not have committed himself by the
observation with which the above extract has terminated. No doubt he
thought it extremely _philosophical_, because it is _sceptical_! but let
us see if another instance of his _scepticism_ will redound more to his
_philosophy_:--“I cannot help laughing,” says he elsewhere, “at those who
pretend that the ocean flows round our continent: no proof can be given of
it.... I believe that Homer had taken what he believes about the ocean
from a work of antiquity, but it was without comprehending anything of the
matter, repeating what he had read, without well understanding what he had
read!”[458]

Now, without disputing with Siberia the honour of possessing all this
_ancient_ gold, I will take the liberty of inserting an extract from one
of Mr. Hamilton’s letters on the Antrim coast, which will show, at all
events, the antiquity of our mining.

“About the year 1770,” says he, “the miners, in pushing forward an adit
toward the bed of coal, at an unexplored part of the Ballycastle cliff,
unexpectedly broke through the rock into a narrow passage, so much
contracted and choked up with various drippings and deposits on its sides
and bottom, as rendered it impossible for any of the workmen to force
through, that they might examine it farther. Two lads were, therefore,
made to creep in with candles, for the purpose of exploring this
subterranean avenue. They accordingly pressed forward for a considerable
time, with much labour and difficulty, and at length entered into an
extensive labyrinth, branching off into numerous apartments, in the mazes
and windings of which they were completely bewildered and lost. After
various vain attempts to return, their lights were extinguished, their
voices became hoarse, and exhausted with frequent shouting; and, at
length, wearied and spiritless, they sat down together, in utter despair
of an escape from this miserable dungeon. In the meanwhile, the workmen in
the adit became alarmed for their safety, fresh hands were incessantly
employed, and, in the course of twenty-four hours, the passage was so
opened as to admit some of the most active among the miners; but the
situation of the two unhappy prisoners, who had sat down together in a
very distant chamber of the cavern, prevented them from hearing altogether
the noise and shouts of their friends, who thus laboured to assist them.

“Fortunately, it occurred to one of the lads (after his voice had become
hoarse with shouting), that the noise of miners’ hammers was often heard
at considerable distances through the coal works; in consequence of this
reflection, he took up a stone, which he frequently struck against the
sides of the cavern; the noise of this was at length heard by the workmen,
who, in their turn, adopted a similar artifice; by this means each party
was conducted towards the other, and the unfortunate adventurers
extricated time enough to behold the sun risen in full splendour, which
they had left the morning before just beginning to tinge the eastern
horizon. On examining this subterranean wonder, it was found to be a
complete gallery, which had been driven forward many hundred yards to the
bed of coal: that it branched off into numerous chambers, where miners had
carried on their different works: that these chambers were dressed in a
workmanlike manner: that pillars were left at proper intervals to support
the roof. In short, it was found to be an extensive mine, wrought by a set
of people at least as expert in the business as the present generation.
Some remains of the tools, and even of the baskets used in the works, were
discovered, but in such a decayed state, that on being touched, they
immediately crumbled to pieces. From the remains which were found, there
is reason to believe that the people who wrought these collieries
anciently, were acquainted with the use of iron, some small pieces of
which were found; it appeared as if some of their instruments had been
thinly shod with that metal.”

There is no question but that the era when those collieries were before
worked, was that in which the Tuath-de-danaans were masters of this
island. _Had it been at any later period, we could not fail having some
traditions relating thereto._ Iron, therefore, the last discovered of the
metals, as stated at page 115, must have been known to this people: and
the absence of any name for it in our vernacular language is accounted for
on the same principle as that by which those excavations themselves had
been so long concealed, namely, the distaste of their successors to such
applications, or the reluctance entertained to make them acquainted with
their worth.

It is probable, however, that the little minikin fineries of life were not
then in fashion--that our loaves were not baked in tin shapes, as at
present, nor our carriages constructed in so many different varieties of
form, excluding altogether those worked by steam; that our gunlocks were
not prepared with percussion caps, nor our sofas furnished with air-blown
cushions; that the routine of etiquette was differently negotiated, and
that twenty, or more, several hands were not employed in the finish of a
common pin, before it could be dignified with the honour of acting a
useful part in adjusting the habiliments of a modern dandy:--but in all
the grand essentials of life--in all its solid refinements and elegant
utilities,--the scholar will confess that those who have gone before us
have been fully our equals; and traces, too, are not wanting to
countenance the belief that even those knick-knack frivolities on which we
so pique ourselves in the present day, have not been at some period
without a prototype,--so that the majority of those boasted patents for
what are considered _discoveries_ or inventions of something new, should
more properly be for _recoveries_, or unfoldings of something old, and
illustrative of the adage, as remarkable as it is correct, “that there is
nothing new under the sun.”[459]




CHAPTER XXVIII.


You ask me for the proofs of this early grandeur? I point you to the gold
crowns, the gold and silver ingots, the double-headed pateræ or censers,
the anklets, lunettes, bracelets, fibulæ, necklaces, etc., which have been
repeatedly found throughout all parts of Ireland, evidently the relics of
that “Sacred” colony who gave their name to this island, and who, to the
refined _taste_ which such possessions imply, united also the science
which appears in their workmanship.[460]

But these are scanty and insufficient memorials? Pray, what greater can
you produce of ancient Egypt? Her Pyramids? Our Round Towers are as _old_;
are likely to be as _permanent_; and are really more _beautiful_. What are
the vestiges of ancient Etruria? of Assyria? Troy? Chaldea? nay, of
Babylon the Great, the queen of the world? A few consolidations of stone
and mortar--disjointed rubbish--and incrusted pottery. All these _we_
retain, in addition to the thousand other evidences which crowd upon the
historian. And, while Britain can adduce no single vestige of the
Romans--who subjugated that country at their highest period of
civilisation--but what, in the words of my adversaries themselves, are
“only monuments of barbarism,” I answer--_no wonder_--for the Romans were
never to be compared to the Iranian Budhists, who brought all the
splendour of the East to the concentrated locality of this Hyperborean
Island.

“Infant colonies, forsooth, do not carry a knowledge of the ‘Fine Arts’
along with them; they are only to be found where wealth, luxury, and power
have fixed their abode.”[461] Most sapient remark! but unluckily out of
place; for the authors of our Round Towers were not “an infant colony” at
all; but the very _heads_ and _principals_ of the most polished and
refined people on the bosom of the habitable earth--the Budhists of Iran.
And, accordingly, in their train not only did “wealth, luxury, and power”
abound, but they seemed _exclusively_ to have taken up their abode amongst
them.[462]

Analogous to the above was the rhodomontade of another pillar of the same
order. “I, nevertheless,” says Montmorency, “am disinclined to believe
that those same persons, had they to choose a residence between Syria and
Ireland, would have taken the _wintry_ and _uncultivated wilds_ of
_Fidh-Inis_, in preference to the sunny plains which gave them
birth.”[463]

In both those cases, of which the former is but the _echo_, in all
opinions, of the latter, our eastern extraction is only objected to,
_considered as Phœnician_; and there, I admit that the Colonel and his
pupil may get an easy triumph over their adversaries. For had the
_Phœnicians_ been the erectors of those Round Towers, _what was to prevent
their raising similar structures in Cornwall_? where it is indisputable
that they had trafficked for tin. In Spain we are certain that they had
established _a home_; and _why does this appear as free from every
evidence of columnar architecture as does the former place_? The same may
be said of other countries whither this people resorted, Citium, Crete,
Cadiz, and all the islands in the Mediterranean. _In no one of them is
there to be found a single edifice approaching, either in design or form,
the idea of a Round Tower!_[464]

The Phœnicians, therefore, can have no pretensions to the honour of those
memorials; nor, indeed, can their connection with Ireland be at all
recognised, further than that, as having been, at one time, masters of the
sea, _it is merely possible_ that the Tuath-de-danaans may have availed
themselves of their geographical information, and even consigned
themselves to their pilotage for a secure retreat, aloof from the
persecution of intolerance.

But as we see from the stanza quoted at page 396, that the
Tuath-de-danaans were themselves possessed of a navy; and as it is
indisputable that, long before the Phœnicians, the dynasty of the Persians
had swept the ocean in its widest breadth, there is no need for our giving
the Phœnicians credit even _for this service_, which it now appears could
be dispensed with.

An effort, however, has been advanced to identify their language with
ours, by the analysis of the fragment of a speech which occurs in one of
the plays of Plautus.[465] The idea was ingenious, but totally unfounded.
_Affinity_, undoubtedly, there does appear,--as there does between all the
ancient languages,--but nothing like _identity_; and the very circumstance
of its having a _distinct_ denomination assigned to it in Ireland, viz.
_Bearla-na-Fene_, or dialect of the Phœnicians (who traded here, it is
admitted), proves it to be different from our _local_ phraseology--the
Iranian _Pahlavi_, the polished elocution of the Tuath-de-danaans.

The Phœnicians, besides being a mercantile people, never had any monuments
of literary value, whereas the Irish are known to have abounded in such
from the earliest era.[466]

It is true that we have been denied the possession of alphabetic
characters before the time of St. Patrick: but by whom? By Bolandus; on a
false deduction from the writings of Ward, Colgan, Nennius, etc., who
state that this apostle was the first who gave the “abjectoria,” or
alphabet to our nation. Who says otherwise? But what alphabet was here
meant? The Latin, certainly, and no other. Until then the Irish were
strangers to the _Roman_ letters;[467] but that they were not to _written
characters_, or the _cultivation of them in every variety of literature_,
is evident from the very fact of St. Patrick himself having committed to
the flames no less than one hundred and eighty volumes of our ancient
theology;[468] as well as from the recorded instance of his disciple,
Benignus,--his successor also in the See of Armagh,--having, according to
Ward, written a work on the virtues of the Saint, half Latin and half
Irish, and which Jocelyne afterwards availed himself of, when more fully
detailing his biography.

It has been the custom in all ages with those who would pass as the
luminaries of their respective generations, to maintain that _letters_ and
their application were but a _recent_ discovery! Their antiquity, however,
is an historical fact, than which there can be no other better
authenticated. The Bible makes frequent allusion to the cultivation of
alphabetic cyphers--thus in Ex. xxiv. 4, it is said, “And Moses _wrote_
all the words of the Lord”; and in Josh. xxiv. 26, “And Joshua _wrote_
these words in the book of the law of God.”

Nor is it only to the _elementary_ part of literature, but to the very
highest and noblest department of literary research that we find the
ancients had arrived. In the history of Job, an acquaintance with
astronomy is quite apparent. The names of Arcturus, Orion, and the
Pleiades,[469] are distinctly notified in that elaborate composition.[470]
Could this have been without the aid of written characters? Could the
abstruse calculations involved in that pursuit be possibly carried on
without an intimate knowledge of notation and of numbers? Or, if superior
memory may effect it in a few cases, without such characters or legible
marks, how could the _results_ arrived at, and the steps by which they had
been attained, be for any length of time preserved, and their value handed
down to successive experimentalists, unless by the instrumentality of
expressive signs?

We find, accordingly, in the same treatise,[471] the art of writing
expressly named: Thus, “Oh that my words were now written! oh that they
were printed in a book! that they were graven with an iron pen and lead in
the rock for ever!” And that it was of long-continued usage is evident
from a preceding chapter,[472] where it is said, “_Enquire_, I pray thee,
of the _former age_, and prepare thyself for the _search_ of their
fathers!”

The alphabet which we had here, before the Roman abjectorium, is still
preserved, and called _Beth-luis-nion_,[473] from the names of its first
three letters, just as the English is denominated _A B C_, from a similar
cause, and the Greek _Alpha-bet_ from a like consideration.

                        Irish.            Latin.          English.

   1   B   [Letter]     Beithe,         Betulla,          Birch.
   2   L   [Letter]     Luis,           Ornus,            Wild ash.
   3   N   [Letter]     Nion,           Fraxinus,         Ash.
   4   S   [Letter]     Suil,           Salix,            Willow.
   5   F   [Letter]     Fearn,          Alnus,            Alder.
   6   H   [Letter]     Huath,          Oxiacanthus,      White thorn.
   7   D   [Letter]     Duir,           Ilex,             Oak
   8   T   [Letter]     Timne,          Genist. Spin.     Furze.
   9   C   [Letter]     Coll,           Corylus,          Hazel.
  10   M   [Letter]     Muin,           Vitis,            Vine.
  11   G   [Letter]     Gort,           Hedera,           Ivy.
  12   P   [Letter]     Peth-bhog       Beite, or B mollified,
  13   R   [Letter]     Ruis,           Sambucus,         Elder.
  14   A   [Letter]     Ailm,           Abies,            Fir tree.
  15   O   [Letter]     Onn,            Genista,          Broom.
  16   U   [Letter]     Ur,             Erix, or Erica,   Heath.
  17   E   [Letter]     Eghadh,         Tremula,          Aspen.
  18   I   [Letter]     Iodha,          Taxus,            Yew.

This, you perceive, _falls short, by eight letters, of the number of the
Latin cyphers_, which could not have occurred if borrowed from that
people, and will therefore _stand_, independently and everlastingly, a
self-evident proof of the reverse.

[Illustration]

It is well known, that long prior to the arrival of Cadmus the Greeks were
in possession of alphabetic writing.[474] Diodorus states so, but adds
that a _deluge_ had swept all away. One thousand five hundred and fifty
before the era we count by, is agreed upon as the year in which Cadmus
visited Greece; and you have the authority of Pausanias, that he himself
had read an inscription upon a monument at Megara, the date of which was
1678 before our epoch, that is, one hundred and twenty-eight years before
Cadmus’s time.

Besides those ordinary letters of the _Beth-luis-nion_, the Irish made use
of various other _occult_ and secret forms of writing, which they called
_ogham_,[475] and of which I insert some specimens.

Among these you perceive the _arrow-headed figures_ whereof I have already
advertised you; and the _mysterious import_ of which reminded the
_initiated_ of the _solemn purchase of salvation by the cross_.

These are all peculiar and totally separate from any Phœnician alliance.
Instead, therefore, of my being _adverse_ to the _moderns_ as to the
Phœnician _bubble_, I am their _auxiliary_. But, Mr. Montmorency, are
there not other places in the East besides Phœnicia? And may not a people
leave the “sunny plains that gave them birth,” from other motives than
those of “choice”? And may not “Fidh Inis,” instead of being a name of
reproach, such as you affected, by associating it with “wintry and
uncultivated wilds,” be one of distinction and of renown? And though to
you its _authors_, as well as the _mystery of its import_, were an
_impenetrable_ secret, may it not, notwithstanding _what you see verified_
now, be made one of the engines exercised in the recovery of truth, to
prove the splendour and the refinement of our venerable ancestors?

It is to be hoped, therefore, that after this explanation, we shall hear
no more sarcasms upon this _favoured_ spot. Nor would the anticipation be
too great, that the whole _infidel_ host, with the gallant colonel himself
at their head, _becoming_ alive to the injustice of their former
disbelief, would now slacken their virulence, and if they will not _join_
in the acclamations of regenerated history, at least decently _withdraw_,
and let the lovers of truth, in security and happiness, celebrate its
triumph.

“The appellation of Britain,” says another _goodly_ (?) champion of this
_order_, “has been tortured for ages by the antiquarians, in order to
force a confession of origin and import for it. And erudition, running
wild in the mazes of folly, has eagerly deduced it from every word of a
similar sound, almost in every known language of the globe. But the Celtic
is obviously the only one that can lay any competent claim to it--and the
meaning of it may as easily be ascertained as its origin.”--And so,
accordingly, he proceeds to show, that “Breatin, Brydain, or Britain,” is
derived from a “Celtic word,” which signifies “separation or
division!”[476]

It is more than probable that I should have left Mr. Whittaker to his
vagaries, or rather his _clerical_ recreations, if he had not been
propelled by his all-illuminating reforms, to glance a ray upon us, here,
across St. George’s Channel.--“This,” says he, “has _equally_ given
denomination to the _tribes_ of _Ireland_, the nations of Caledonia, and
two or three islands on our coasts!”

“The original world is still retained in the Welch, Britain; and the
Irish, Breact,--anything divided or striped; in the Irish Bricth, a
fraction; the Irish Brisead, a rupture; and the Welch brig, a breach. And
it was equally pronounced Brict, or Brit (as the Icitus of Cæsar, or the
Itium of Strabo), Bris and Brig; and appears with this variety of
terminations, in the usual appellation of the islanders, Britanni, in the
present denomination of the Armorican Britons, and their language, Brez
and Brezonic, and in the name of Brigantes. Brit is enlarged into Briton,
or Brit-an in the plural, and Britan-ec in the relative adjective. And so
forms the appellation Britones, Britani, and Britanici; as Brig is either
changed into Briges, in the plural, and makes Allobroges, or Allo-broges,
the name of a tribe on the continent, and of all the Belgæ in the island,
is altered into Brigan and Brigants, and forms the denomination of
Brigantes.” And again, “the original word appears to have been equally
pronounced Brict, Brits, and Bricth, Breact, Breac, and Brig; and appears
to be derived from the Gallic Bresche, a rupture, the Irish Bris, to
break, and Brisead, a breach. And the word occurs with all this variety of
termination in the Irish Breattain or Breatin, Bretam, and in Breathnach,
Briotnach, and Breagnach, a Briton; in the Armorican names of Breton,
Breiz, and Brezonnec, for an individual, the country, and the language of
Armorica; in the Welch Brython and Brythoneg, the Britons and their
language; and in the ancient synonymous appellations of Brigantes and
Britanni.”

Doubtless the reader has been highly edified by this Britannic
dissertation! He is, I am sure, as thorough master of the subject, now, as
Mr. Whittaker himself!--can tell how many fractures, cross-lines, and
diagonals have been made upon _Britain_ ever since Noah’s _flood_! And as
he cannot fail, in consequence, being in love with the Reverend Author, I
will indulge his fondness by another _spark_ of enlightenment.

“At this period,” he resumes (three hundred years before Christ), “many of
the natives relinquishing their ancient seats to the Belgæ, found all the
central and northern parts of England already occupied, and transported
themselves into _the uninhabited isle_ of Ireland!”

I will now be understood as to the promise made some while ago,[477] in
reference to a definition for the word _modern_. A _modern_ then, be it
known, _is a philosopher_ (?), who fancies that _until three hundred years
before Christ, the whole world was in darkness! physical as well as
metaphysical! that it was even in a great measure uninhabited! by other
than the brute creation!--but that suddenly when ever any mighty feat was
to be achieved_ (in other words, whenever a modern theory was to be
bolstered up) _innumerable myrmidons armed cap-à-pié! full accoutred,
booted and spurred! used to gush forth from some obscure corner of the
earth!_ A miracle of production, to which even _Cadmus’s soldiers_ can
bear no parallel; for while the latter are located to a particular
_place_, and stated to have been generated by regular _seed_, even though
that was nothing more than a _tooth_ of a _dragon_,[478] the former burst
forward, nobody knows _whence_, nor will their _machiners_ condescend to
tell even so much as what may have been the _elements_ of their
composition!

To whom, however, is Mr. Whittaker beholden for this intellectual idea?
Verily, to a half-senseless poor friar,[479] a few centuries deceased, who
was no more competent--and no blame to him from his resources--to analyse
this question, than he was to stop the revolutions of the celestial orbs!

Yet _jejune_ and abortive as were Cirencester’s cerebral conceptions, he
was not less dogmatic in the utterance of them than was his imitator. “_It
is most certain_,” says he, “that the Damnii, Voluntii, Brigantes, Cangi,
and other nations, were descended from the Britons, and passed over
thither after Divitiacus, or Claudius, or Ostorius, or other victorious
generals had invaded their original countries. Lastly, the ancient
language, which resembles the old British and Gallic tongues, affords
another argument, as is well known to persons skilled in both languages.”

Now, by what authority, may I ask, is all this “most certain?” And by
authority I do not mean any quotation from previous historians. That I
waive, and should not here require it, if either _proof_ or _probability_
were tendered of the _occurrence_. But as none such is vouchsafed--as all
is mere _assertion_--and as I can _prove the exact contrary to have been
the actual fact_, is not _dogmatism_ too _mild_ a name to apply to the
_scribbler_ who _propounds_ such nonsense? And is not _servility_ too
_dignified_ an epithet to brand upon the _copyist_, who takes such _ipse
dixit_ evidence upon so intricate a proposition as gospel truth? and that
too when he must have absolute _demonstration_, and canvas every other
statement, emanating from that fraternity, with _the very eye of a
Lynceus_!

In the first place, then, the name _Damnii_ (to begin with the beginning)
is but a monkish Latinisation for _Danaans_; and _these I have established
to have been_ an eastern race, totally and universally distinct from
Britain, until upon their overthrow in Ireland they fled for shelter to
Scotland, whither on their way some straggling parties, reduced and
humiliated, took up their residence in the northern parts of England;
where, accordingly, to this hour we find evidences of their worship, such
as sculptured _crosses_,[480] and other _emblematic devices_, but _never a
Round Tower_, their impoverished circumstances not being now adequate to
such an expense.

The Brigantes, again, is another Latin metamorphosis for the inhabitants
of _Breo-cean_, in Spain, where the Phœnicians had fixed a colony, and
whence they doubtless had brought some portion with them to work the mines
at Cornwall. This _Breo-cean_ the Romans, in conformity with the genius of
their language, changed into _Bri_-gantia, which, however, was a very
allowable commutation, the letters _c_ and _g_ being always convertible,
and _tia_ nothing more than an ordinary termination.

Seneca well knew that the _Brigantes_ thus imported were a very different
extraction from the native _Britons_.

  “Illi _Britannos_ ultra noti littora ponti,
  Et cœruleos _Scuto-Brigantes_ dare Romuleis,”

says he, in his satirical invective upon the death of Claudius. Here, you
will observe, that the _Britons_ and the _Brigantes_ are _opposed to one
another_, and marked out as _distinct_ races. And to specify still further
the origin of the Brigantes is the epithet _Scuto_[481] prefixed thereto,
from _Scuitte_, the ancient mode of spelling _Scythia_.

Those Scoto-Brigantes were the persons who, having been driven from Spain
by the conquests of Sesostris, poured in with multitudinous inundation
upon the quietude of our _Tuath-de-danaans_, and wrested from them an
island which, during their blissful reign, had eclipsed in sanctity even
their _former_ Iran.[482]

The language which they spoke differed in nothing from the
Tuath-de-danaan, but that it was not quite so refined; and this feature of
similarity silences at once the _conjectures_ of _Stillingfleet_, Innes,
and their followers, who would make those _Scythians_ to be
_Scandinavians_, merely because the letter S occurs as the _initial_ and
_final_ of either name!

Why, sir, when the _Scandinavians_ did _really_ invade Ireland, which was
not until the early centuries of the Christian era, the great obstruction
to their progress was their _ignorance_ of our tongue; whereas, when the
_Scythians_ arrived here, many ages earlier, our legends, our traditions,
our histories, and our annals, _unanimously_ and _universally_ attest,
that they used the same conversable articulation with that of the
established dynasty.[483]

Where is the wonder, then, that we should find all the ancient names in
the north of England, correspond to a nicety with those of the Irish? And
which made Lhuydh, the author of the _Archæologia_, himself an Englishman,
declare, “_how necessary the Irish language is to those who shall
undertake to write of the antiquity of the isle of Britain_.”

But if Lhuydh was thus _candid_ in the avowal of his conviction, he was
not equally _successful_ in the discovery of the relationship. From want
of the true _touchstone_, he went on _hypothesising_! and came at last to
the _supposition_--“that the Irish must at one time have been in
possession of those English localities, and thence removed themselves into
Ireland”--_the exact opposite having been the fact_.

To atone for my long digression from Mr. Whittaker, and his _breakages_, I
will supply to you the derivations, as well of Britain as of Brigantia.
The former is compounded of _Bruit_, _tin_; and _tan_, a country abounding
in that metal, and corresponding to _Cassiteris_, assigned to it by the
Greeks: and Brigantia, as before explained, being but a formative from
Breo-cean, is compounded of _Breo_, which signifies fire; and _cean_, a
head or promontory, meaning the _head-land of fires_; or that whereon such
used to have been lighted for the convenience of mariners lying out at
sea.[484]

Neither the Scythians, therefore, nor the Celts, had connection
whatsoever, either of them, with the once-envied celebrity of this
“island.”[485] The latter were the persons who, under the name of
Fir-Bolgs, erected all the cromleachs spread over the country, the
accomplishment of which bespeaks, it is true, an acquaintance with
_mechanics_, of which the present artisans are altogether ignorant. And as
the original of their denomination has never been elucidated, I embrace
this opportunity of supplying the omission. It comes from _bolog_, which,
in the Irish language signifies a _paunch_; and _fir_, a _man_; so that
Fir-Bolg means the _big-bellied man_, being an evident allusion to their
bodily configuration: and to this day Bolcaig is the epithet applied,
vernacularly, to individuals of large girth or corpulent robustness,
exactly corresponding to what we are told by Cæsar, when describing the
tripartite division of Gaul, viz. that the Belgæ, who, in fact, were of
the same stock as our Fir-Bolgs, were the _stoutest bodied_, and the
_bravest otherwise_ of all its inhabitants.

The Scythian religion, which was Druidical, accorded with that of the
Fir-Bolgs, which was Celtic--not less as to modes of worship, than in
mutual aversion to that of the Iranians; and, accordingly, we find, that
when both conspired for the recovery of this country from the Iranians,
who had themselves wrested it from the Fir-Bolgs, antecedently, these
latter branching out into the septs of Cauci and Menapii, corresponding
to the kindred and cognominal tribes on the continent; and who, during the
occupancy of the Iranians--the interval of Ireland’s Hyperborean
renown--had retired to Arran[486] and the northern isles, were restored to
a partnership in the possession of the island, in return for the
assistance they lent the Scythians for its conquest: and this accounts for
that diversity of races which Ptolemy records, but which antiquarian
luminaries, unable to comprehend, took upon them to reject as altogether a
chimera.

As to the Iranians, the real Hibernians--the true Hyperborean
Tuath-de-danaans, or Magic-god Almoners--they were hurled from the throne,
their sanctified ceremonials trampled in the dust, their sacred harps,
which before used to swell to the praises of their Divinity, were now
desecrated for the inspiration of the Scythian warriors; and their divine
_Boreades_, who ere now composed canticles in adoration of Apollo, were
degraded to the secular and half-military occupation of Scythian _bards_.

The name of the island itself, from “Irin,” or the “Sacred island,” was
changed into Scuitte, that is, Scotia or Scythia, or the land of the
_Scythians_. Nor was it until the eleventh century of the present era,
that, _to remove the ambiguity which arose from the circumstance of there
being another country also called by this name_, Ireland assumed its
former name, Irin, as its people did Irenses, instead of Scoti.[487]

Yet in the general transmutation which so great a revolution bespeaks, we
behold the strictest regard paid to the literary fame and the mental
acquirements of those sages who had been ejected. They were retained as
the _instructors_ of the new establishment; and their refined precepts
tending gradually to soften the warlike propensities of this ferocious
group, the amalgamation became so complete, and the aristocracy of
intellect so recognised, that when religious dissensions were all
cancelled in the grave, many of them were able to trace their steps
backwards to the forfeited monarchy.

Of this number was Connachar-mor-mac-Nessan, that is, Connor
the-great-son-of-Nessan, styled indifferently _Feidlimidh_ and _Ollamh
Fodlah_, i.e. the _erudite man_ (the _Budhist_) and the _Doctor of
Budland_; and Brien, who ascended the Irish throne, A.D. 1014; and who,
after a succession of two thousand two hundred years, was the lineal
descendant of Brien, head of the Tuath-de-danaans; and this very
extraction, in the confusion of the names, was the circumstance which
occasioned the popular belief, not yet exploded, of his having been the
founder, by magic creation, in one single night, of those Round Towers of
his inheritance! The mistake, however, is of value, as it is a collateral
evidence that those edifices have been attributed to their real authors;
and the anachronism will be excused, seeing that there is nothing more
common than to assign to one Hercules the exploits of another.

Others of this colony, who could not brook the yoke, betook themselves on
their downfall to Scotland, and built there the two round temples of
Brechin and Abernethy, besides others that have disappeared; from thence,
however, they were again dislodged by the barbarous Picts, and obliged to
fly for shelter to the Highland fastnesses. These are they whom Macculloch
and others have misrepresented as Celts. During their sway in that
country, they called it also by the name of Iran or Eran, as the Scotch
language is, to this day, called Irish, or Erse. The name of Scoitte,
_i.e._ Scotia, was given it afterwards by the Picts, in compliment to
_this_ island, which had furnished them with wives, and otherwise joined
their fraternity.[488]




CHAPTER XXIX.


“The Scoto-Milesians,” says Dr. Hales,[489] “reckon twenty-three
generations from Feni an fear soid, ‘the Phœnician wise man,’ their
ancestor, to Heber and Heremon, who established the last settlement from
Spain, as observed before; which, at the usual computation of three mean
generations to a century, would give 766 years from Fenius to Heber. But
we learn from Coemhain, that the sons of _Milesius_ (this should have been
_Gallamh_)[490] were coeval with Solomon, and that the Gadelians[491] came
to Ireland in the middle of the reign of this illustrious prince,” B.C.
1002, according to the Irish chronology. Counting backwards, therefore,
from this date, 766 years, we get the time of Fenius about B.C. 1768. And
this agrees with sacred and profane history; for Joshua, whose
administration began B.C. 1688, according to Hales’s _Chronology_, notices
“the strong city of Tyre” (Josh. xix. 29); which maintained its
independence even in David’s days (2 Sam. xxiv. 7); and in Solomon’s (1
Kings ix. 11-14). And Herodotus, that inquisitive traveller and
intelligent historian, who visited Tyre about B.C. 448, saw there the
temple of the Thasian Hercules; and another erected to him by the
Phœnicians at Thasus itself, an island on the coast of Thrace, while they
were engaged in search of Europa, the daughter of Agenor, King of Tyre,
who had been carried off by some Greeks; an event, says Herodotus, which
happened five generations before the Grecian Hercules, the son of
Amphitryon, B. ii. sec. 44; who flourished about 900 years before he
wrote, sec. 145, or about B.C. 1348, to which adding 166 years for the
five generations, we get the rape of Europa about B.C. 1514.

“But the deification of the Thasian Hercules must have been after his
death, which may make him contemporary with Joshua, or even earlier.
Herodotus relates that the Tyrians themselves boasted of the remote
antiquity of their city, founded, as they said, 2300 years before (B. xi.
44), which would carry it higher than the deluge. The high antiquity,
however, of Sidon and her daughter Tyre, was acknowledged by Xerxes, king
of Persia, when he invaded Greece, B.C. 480; and in a council of his
officers allowed her ambassadors the honour of precedence” (sec. 11).

He adds: “In order to determine the cardinal data of ancient Irish
history, it is necessary to premise a synopsis of Coemhain’s System of
Chronology.

                           Y.             B.C.

  Creation                1656            3952
  Deluge                   292            2296
  Abraham born             942            2004
  David, king              473            1062
  Babylonish Captivity     589             589
                          ----
  Christian Era           3952               1

“In this table, the first column contains the years elapsed between the
succeeding events: thus, from the creation, 1656 years to the deluge;
from the deluge, 292 years to the birth of Abraham, etc.; and their
amount, 3952 years, gives the basis of the system, or the years elapsed
from the creation to the vulgar Christian era. The second column gives the
dates of these events before the Christian era.

“David began to reign B.C. 1062; from which subducting 60 years for the
amount of his whole reign, 40 years, and 20 years, the half of Solomon’s,
we get B.C. 1002, for the date of the expedition of Heber and Heremon to
Ireland.

“This same number has been noticed by two earlier chronologers, Marcus
Anchoreta, A.D. 647; and Nennius, A.D. 858; who both date the arrival of
the Scoti in Ireland, ‘1002 years after the passage of the Red Sea by the
Israelites, in which the Egyptians were drowned’ (O’Connor, _Proleg._ ii.
pp. 15-45). The identity of the number 1002 proves the mistake in the
reference to the exode of the Israelites, instead of to the Christian era,
which depresses the arrival of the Scoti five centuries too low. For
Coemhain reckons the exode 502 years after the birth of Abraham, or B.C.
1502; from which subtracting 1002 years, the arrival of the Scoti would be
reduced to B.C. 500; or, following Usher’s date of the deluge, B.C. 1491.
O’Connor reduces it still lower, to B.C. 489 (_Proleg._ ii. p. 45). Upon
the superior authority of Coemhain, therefore, as a chronologer, we are
warranted to rectify this important error of Nennius and Marcus Anchoreta,
which even Dr. O’Connor has failed to correct; not adverting to the
foregoing inference from Coemhain. But he has happily furnished himself
the materials for proving the error.

“He states, that one hundred and eighteen kings of the Scoti reigned, till
the arrival of St. Patrick, B.C. 489 + A.D. 435 = 921 years in all, which,
divided by 118, would give too short an average of reigns, only 7-9/11
years a-piece; whereas the true interval, B.C. 1002 + A.D. 432 = 1434
years, would give the average of reigns above twelve years a-piece; which
he justly represents as the standard, from Patrick to Malachy II., viz.
forty-eight reigns in 590 years (_Proleg._ ii. p. 45).”[492]

The date of the Scythian invasion, then, being fixed as B.C. 1002, it is
agreed on all hands that that of the _Tuath-de-danaans_ was but two
hundred years anterior, or B.C. 1202;[493] with this _exactly corresponds
the time at which Marsden, Kæmpfer, and Loubere date the arrival of the
Buddists at Siam_, viz. B.C. 1202. Among the Japanese also, they are
stated by Klaproth to have arrived not very distant from that era, or B.C.
1029. Dé Guignes and Remusat suppose 1029 as the epoch at which they
invaded China. B.C. 1000 is the epoch assigned by Symes for their descent
upon the Burman empire; and B.C. 1029 is that fixed by Ozeray for their
entrance into Ceylon; while the Mogul authors and the Bagwad Amrita (Sir
W. Jones) recognise their appearance respectively at B.C. 2044 and B.C.
2099.

Now, the extreme concordance amongst the calculations of those various
countries, one with the other, and their almost universal coincidence,
nay, _in the Siamese authorities_, almost _miraculous identifications,
with our Irish registries_, as to the influx, amongst all, of this
singular people, and their extraordinary ritual, makes us associate the
phenomena with one common cause, and that was the _expulsion_ of the
Budhists from India, the Rajas having proclaimed, at the instigation of
the rival Brahmins, that “from the bridge of Rama, even to the snow-capped
Himala, no man should spare the Budhists, young or old, on pain of death”
(_Guigniaud’s Creuzer_).

As to the Mogul dates, and those of the Bagwad Amrita, they evidently bear
reference to former colonies; nor are _we_, in Ireland, without similar
chronicles of an antecedent arrival, and precisely answering to the time
of the _first departure_ of the Tuath-de-danaans from the borders of
Persia.[494]

It was, indeed, the tradition of this early invasion, long mystified by
age, that we have seen so perverted at p. 385, for the sole purpose of
effecting a miracle! Nor is this the only fable that fastens upon that
narrative: we have that of Partholan and of Nemedius, and a thousand other
reminiscences, all directing towards the centre of a common nucleus. The
_East_ is the point whither they all aim, and the era they assign is
invariably that of the _deluge_! Is it not, therefore, inevitable, but
that the object recorded is our reception of the Tuath-de-danaans when
ejected by the arms of their Pish-de-danaan rivals?[495]

Amongst the Easterns themselves we find corresponding traditions, wrapt
up, as usual, in allegory, of this primordial departure. The Phrygians,
who were one of the most ancient and considerable nations of Asia Minor,
complain of Apollo having wandered from them, in company with Cybele, to
the land of the Hyperboreans.[496] The costume of the archers upon our
Knockmoy frescoes is strictly Phrygian, and confirms their testimony
better than any written memorial! “Hercules,” says Cedrenus, “first taught
philosophy in the _western_ parts of the world.” This was our Ogham, which
the Gauls had borrowed from us, as you will see by note, p. 420. “In
Egypt,” says Ausonius, “they called him Osiris, but in the _island_ of
Ogygia they gave him the name of Bacchus.” If we will remember the form
under which _Osiris_ was worshipped, viz. that of our _Round Towers_,[497]
and then recollect that the name of _Bacchus_ is still found amongst our
ancient inscriptions;[498] and in addition to all these, bear in mind that
Plutarch[499] expressly designates _the island_, from its extreme
antiquity, as _Ogygia_, all qualms as to the situation alluded to by
Ausonius must for ever evaporate?

Let us now glance at the institutions of this island, the personal
appearance of its inhabitants, and their popular customs, as compared with
ancient Persia.

To begin with the _aspect_, which often proves decisive in more
_interesting_ applications, I refer you to our real figures at p. 330, as
a fair outline of Irish contour; with this, if you will compare what
Captain Head affirms, in reference to the settlers at Bombay, viz. that
“the _ancient_ inhabitants of Persia were superior, not inferior, in
looks, to the _present_, who belong to a hundred mixed races, which have
poured upon that kingdom since the overthrow of Yezdijerd,” no disparity
will present itself, at least in that quarter.

As to _institutions_, I will instance that of our ancient clans,[500] and
place by them in juxtaposition what Sir John Malcolm delivers on the
subject of Persia. “Jemsheed” (a prince of the Pish-de-danaan dynasty,
founder of Persepolis, called after him, Tucht-e-jemsheed, which, in
Irish, signifies the Couch-of-Jemsheed) “divided,” says he, “according to
Persian authors, his subjects into four classes. The first was formed of
learned and pious men, devoted to the worship of God; and the duty
ascribed to them was to make known to others what was lawful and what
otherwise. The second were writers, whose employment was to keep the
records and accounts of the state. The third soldiers, who were directed
to occupy themselves in military exercises, that they might be fitted for
war. The fourth class were artificers, husbandmen, and tradesmen. The
authorities on which we give the history of Jemsheed make no mention of
Mah-abad; but, if we are to give credit to the Dabistan, _the institution
of Jemsheed can only be deemed a revival of that lawgiver_.”[501]

In respect to _religion_, Herodotus states that, “_from his own
knowledge_, the Persians had neither statues, temples, nor altars, but
offered on the tops of the highest mountains sacrifices to Jove, by which
they meant the deity of the air; that they adored the _sun, moon, earth,
fire, water, and the winds_, but that they sacrificed to these _only from
of old, according to ancient custom_, and that they gave the preference to
Trefoil, whereon they laid their offerings.”[502]

Now, two considerations are to be observed, as involved in this last
quotation: one is, that the historian attributes the usages of this nation
to two distinct periods of time. From ocular inspection, he avows that
they had no _temples, etc., because such were long exploded_. And _he knew
not what to make of the Round Towers_. Part, however, of the ceremonial
appertaining to those edifices still remained, such as the worship of the
sun, moon, earth, fire, water, and the winds; and “to these,” he frankly
acknowledges, “they sacrificed _only from of old_,” or in deference to the
practice of their predecessors--I will not say forefathers.

Contemplate now the reverence shown to the herb _Trefoil_, our _national
shamrock_, and will you not see another link of that great concatenation
uniting the two Irans, and triumphing at once over _supposition_ and over
_scepticism_? I have already deplumed St. Patrick of the _serpent_
expulsion; or, rather, I have done honour to his memory, by saving it from
the fabrications of _pious_ impostors. I now continue my course of
justice, by showing that he had as little to do with the veneration paid
to this plant. It was worshipped in the Emerald Island, and imported, you
perceive, by the Tuath-de-danaans, centuries upon centuries before the
apostle was born: and the cause of this devotion was, not alone that it
symbolised the _Trinity_, which was an article of Budhist doctrine, even
before the incarnation of Christ, but because that it _blended with_ it,
in mystery as well as in gratitude, the _Alibenistic cross_, the seal of
their redemption, and their passport to eternity! Here then are the
_shamrocks_, or _Free-masonic devices_, upon the crowns of our _Irish_
kings explained; and those upon the _Persian_ crowns, by and by to be
inserted, are similarly expounded![503]

Lastly, the _funerals_ of the Persians--after the soul’s liberation from
its tenement of clay, at the summons of its God--are described by
Herodotus[504] with so striking a similtude, that you would imagine he had
witnessed, and expressly referred to, the like scenes in Ireland.[505]

Oh! “if the human mind can ever flatter itself with having been successful
in discovering the truth, it is when many facts, and these facts of
different kinds unite in producing the same result.”[506]

In truth, the island was altogether an _Oriental Asylum_,[507] until, for
a moment broken in upon by the Fir-Bolgs, or Celts. Their usurpation,
however, was only that of a day, amounting, by all records, but to
fifty-six years;[508] after which, a new army of the Tuath-de-danaans,
driven now, not from Persia, but from India, by the Brahmins, laid claim
to the sceptre to which their brethren had invited them, and reinstated
themselves afresh in our kindred Iran.

It is not, therefore, you perceive, our individual history alone that is
rectified by this investigation. It supplies a vacuum in the history of
the world: which could not be said to have been correct, _so long as there
was nothing known on the various topics now explained_.[509]

Professor Müller,[510] in a very elaborate treatise upon the _Antiquities
of the Dorians_, has been pleased to affect astonishment, through one of
his notes, that Hecatæus should have believed in the existence of the
Hyperboreans! It became him, unquestionably, so to do, because that the
proofs of their existence were beyond his own reach. But though their
_reality_, as well as _locality_, have been already put beyond
disputation, I will, to justify the exclusiveness here proclaimed, enter
again upon the subject, and, without following in detail, show, by the
reverse of his positions, that his whole system of mythology is equally
erroneous.

In this determination I will of course be acquitted of any intentional
slight. Who could read Professor Müller’s work, and not be struck with the
labour and the ingenuity which distinguish its every page? I yield to no
man in my respect for his abilities, but I weep, from my soul, that his
classic care was not bequeathed upon some other subject, rather than be
split upon a rock by an _ignis fatuus_. I never saw such a waste of
letters as his book exhibits! I never saw such learned research so
miserably thrown away! And how could it be otherwise, his great object
having been to make everything square to the reveries of the
Grecians!--taking them as his clue, into a labyrinth of inextricability,
through one inch of which neither conductor nor traveller could see their
way!

Sweet _pahlavi_ of the Hyperboreans, I will take _you_ as my guide!

            “------Nor be my thoughts
  Presumptuous counted, if amid the calm
  That soothes the vernal evening into smiles,
  I steal impatient, from the sordid haunts
  Of strife and low ambition, to attend
  Thy sacred presence, in the sylvan shade,
  By their malignant footstep ne’er profaned.”--THOMSON.




CHAPTER XXX.


Before we descend to language, I shall collect the historical concordances
that bear upon this investigation.

Beo, a poetess of Delphi, mentions in the fragment of a poem, quoted by
Pausanias, that three individuals, sons of Hyperboreans, and named _Olen_,
_Pagasus_, and _Agyeus_, had founded the oracle of Delphi. Will it be
credited that those three names are but representatives of three several
orders of our Irish priests, viz. Ollam, Pagoes, and Aghois?[511]

At Delos the same tradition is to be encountered, with but a few local
alterations: such as that of Latona having arrived there from the
Hyperboreans, in the form of a _she-wolf_; Apollo and Diana, with the
virgins Arge and Opis, following afterwards. Two other virgins, viz.
Laodice and Hyperoche, succeeded, and with them five men, who were called
_peripherees_, or carriers, from their bringing with them offerings of
first-fruits, wrapt in bundles of wheaten straw.

But is this embassy altogether a fiction? “There is not a fact in all
antiquity,” says Carte, “that made a greater noise in the world, was more
universally known, or better attested by the gravest and most ancient
authors among the Greeks, than this of the sacred embassies of the
Hyperboreans to Delos, _in times preceding_, by an _interval of ages_,
the voyages of the Carthaginians to the north of the Straits of
Gibraltar.” “No argument to the contrary,” says Müller, “can be drawn from
its not being mentioned either in the _Iliad_ or _Odyssey_, these poems
not affording an opportunity for its introduction: moreover, the
Hyperboreans were spoken of in the poem of the Epigoni, and by Hesiod....
Stephanus quotes here a supposed oracle of a prophetess named _Asteria_,
that the inhabitants and priests of Delos came from the Hyperboreans.” So
that we are by no means dependent, as implied before, upon Diodorus
Siculus, for the narrative.

On this subject Herodotus says that “the suite of this Hyperborean embassy
having been ill-treated by the Greeks, they took afterwards another method
of sending their sacred presents to the temples of Apollo and Diana,
delivering them to the nation that lay nearest to them on the continent of
Europe, with a request that they might be forwarded to their next
neighbour: and thus they were transmitted from one people to another,
through the _western_ regions, till they came to the _Adriatic_, and
there, being put into the hands of the Dodoneans, the first of the Greeks
that received them, they were conveyed thence by the Melian Bay, Eubœa,
Carystus, Andras, and Tenos, till at last they arrived at Delos.”

Could he, I ask, more geographically pourtray their route from Ireland?

Alcæus, in a hymn to Apollo, says that “Jupiter adorned the new-born god
with a golden fillet and lyre, and sent him in a chariot drawn by swans to
Delphi, in order to introduce justice and law among the Greeks. Apollo,
however, ordered the swans first to fly to the Hyperboreans. The
Delphians, missing the god, instituted a pæan and song, ranged choruses of
young men around the tripod, and invoked him to come from the
Hyperboreans. The god remained an entire year with that nation, and, at
the appointed time, when the tripods of Delphi were destined to sound, he
ordered the swans to resume their flight. The return of Apollo takes place
exactly in the middle of summer; nightingales, swallows, and grasshoppers
sang in honour of the god; and even Castalia and Cephisus heave their
waves to salute him.”

Now Mr. Bryant assures us that--

  “The Celtic sages a tradition hold,
  That every drop of amber was a tear
  Shed by Apollo, _when he fled from heaven_,--
  _For sorely did he weep_,--and _sorrowing passed
  Through many a doleful region_, till he reached
  The sacred Hyperboreans.”[512]

Words could not convey a more direct delineation of the first arrival of
the Tuath-de-danaans amongst us, with their mysterious worship, after
their ejectment from _Iran_, their paradise, or earthly _heaven_, for the
loss of which they “sorely wept,” until at length they found a substitute
in _Irin_. The _lyre_ or _harp_ which they brought with them, and solely
for celebrating the praises of Apollo, continues still our national
emblem; and those swans which are said to have drawn his chariot formed so
essential a part of our ceremonial, that you shall be presented by and by
with one of his magic implements, to which they are still attached, as
they are similarly figured upon the painted vases, remaining after our
allied Etrurians in the south of Italy.

As to the embassy of Abaris, the direct fact is so completely
authenticated by our ancient records, which narrate the circumstance, with
no view to decide an historical controversy, but with indifference
thereto, and as in ordinary course,--that it is inevitable but that, when
the Greeks say that this philosopher had gone to them from the
_Hyperboreans_,--and when we produce proofs to show that a man of the
_same name_ had repaired on the _errand_ alluded to, from _our_ country to
_Greece_, it is inevitable, I say, but that, when both statements so
perfectly tally, the island of the _Hyperboreans_ and that of the
_Hibernians_ must be one and the same.

I shall now subjoin from General Vallancey’s works, as he translates it
from an old Irish poem, the authentic narrative of this our Hyperborean
embassy.

  “The purport of the Tuath-de-danaans journey was in quest of knowledge,
  And to seek a proper place where they should improve in Druidism.
  These holy men soon sailed to Greece. The sons of Nirned, son of Adhnam,
  Descendant of Baoth, from Bœotia sprung. Thence to the care of skilful
        pilots,
  This Bœotian clan, like warlike heroes, themselves committed,
  And after a dangerous voyage, the ships brought them to Loch Luar.
  Four cities of great fame, which bore great sway,
  Received our clan, in which they completed their studies.
  Spotless Taleas, Goreas, majestic Teneas and Mhuiras,
  For sieges famed, were the names of the four cities.
  Morfios and Earus-Ard, _Abhras_, and Lemas, well-skilled in magic,
  Were the names of our Druids; they lived in the reign of Garman the
        Happy.
  Morfios was made Fele of Falias, Earus the poet in Gone dwelt,
  Samias dwelt at Mhurias, but _Abhras_, the Tele-fionn, at Teneas.”

A quarrel, it would seem, ensued between them and the Fir-Bolgs on their
return: and the Seanneachees, in their incapacity to separate any two
events of a similar character from each other, confounded the differences
which arose herefrom with the battles fought _six hundred years before_,
between the ancestors of both parties, on the plains of _Moye-tureadh_!

At page 67 I have stated that this event took place about B.C. 600. And
this very circumstance it was--I mean the lateness of the date--which
rendered the expedition at all needful.

The Tuath-de-danaans having been for a long time humiliated, and allowed
but a mere nominal existence in a remote canton of the realm, their ritual
got merged into that of the Druids. A corresponding decay had vitiated
their taste for letters, while the Greeks, in proportion, rose in the
scale.

Pythagoras had by this time returned from his tour to Egypt, and the fame
of his acquirements had reached the Tuath-de-danaans. Naturally solicitous
to court the acquaintance of an individual who had derived his information
from the kindred of their ancestors,[513] they had address enough to
obtain leave from the several States of the kingdom to repair to Greece,
on the alleged plea of returning the visit[514] of the _Argonauts_ to our
shores many ages previously,[515] but actually with a view to gratify
their predilections by philosophical inquiry.

When the _meteors met_, it is difficult now to decide which orb it was
that emitted the greater light. But without being too much biassed by the
links of patriotism, I think we may very fairly aver that our countryman
communicated, _depressed even as was his order at that day_, as much
information as he had received.[516]

Who then can any longer doubt but that this was the island of the
Hyperboreans? Even the _peculiarity_ of our language mingles in the chain
of proof; as Diodorus states that “the Hyperboreans use _their own_
natural tongue.” But were all other arguments wanting, I would undertake
to prove the identity by an admission from this transcriber himself. “The
sovereignty of this city,” says he, “and the care of the temple belong to
the _Boreades_.”[517]

Now, nothing ever has puzzled etymologists so much to explore as the
origin of the Irish term _Bards_.[518] The _guesses_ which they have made
thereat are so exceedingly amusing, that I will take leave to _refresh_
myself, exhausted and languid as I now wellnigh am, with the outline of a
few.

First, Bochart would derive it from _parat_, to speak!!! Wilford from the
Sanscrit, _varta_!!! But “some learned friends of his are of opinion that
it comes from _bhardanan_, to burthen!!! because burthened with the
internal management of the royal household”!!!

I shall spare my reader any more of those _caricatures_, and submit to his
own candour to adjudicate whether _Bards_ could, by possibility, be
anything else than the modern Englification for our ancient _Boreades_?

Doubtless, Professor Müller, your astonishment has now subsided as to
Hecatæus’s credulity in the existence of the Hyperboreans. Diodorus
Siculus, who, though, as Granville Penn has affirmed, he “has transmitted
to us many _scattered_ and important truths,” yet does the same judicious
commentator add, that it was in a condition “intermixed with much idle
fiction, _equivocation_, and anachronism,”[519] was herein your guide! But
the _manes_ of the Hyperboreans now speak from the tomb, and vindicate
their _existence_ as well as their _locality_!

I come now to prove this by another mode.

Plato, in his _Cratylus_, represents Hermogenes as proposing several terms
to Socrates for solution, when the following acknowledgment transpires:--

“I think,” says the philosopher, “that the Greeks, especially such of them
as lived subject to the dominion of foreigners, adopted _many foreign
words_; so that, if anyone should endeavour to resolve those words by
reference to the _Greek language_, or to any other _than that from which
the word_ was received, he must needs be involved in error!”

The _foreign_ extraction, then, of _many_ of the Greek words being
admitted, it devolves upon me to establish this extraction to be purely
_Irish_.

To begin with Dodona--“In Eustathius and Steph. Byzantius,” says
Vallancey, “we meet with three different conjectures in regard to the
derivation of the name Dodona, which, they say, owes its origin either to
a daughter of Jupiter and Europa, or one of the nymphs, the daughter of
Oceanus; or, lastly, to a river in Epirus, called Dodon. But, as Mr.
Potter observes, we find the Greek authors all differ, both as to the
etymology of the name and the site of this oracle. In my humble opinion,
Homer and Hesiod have not only agreed that it was not in Greece, but in
Ireland, or some island, at least, as far westward.”

The passages to which the General refers in those ancient poets are--

  “Σευ ανα Δωδωναιε Πελασγικε τηλοθι ναιων
  Δωδωνης μεδεων δυσχειμερου.”[520]

That is,--

  Pelasgian Jove, who _far from Greece_ resid’st
  In cold Dodona.

  “Δωδωνην Φηγονν τε Πελασγων εδρανων ηκεν.”[521]

That is,--

  To Dodona he came, and the hallowed oak, the seat of the Pelasgi.

Valuable as are those authorities, the General needed not to have had
recourse to them at all, had he but been apprised of the origin of the
word _Dodona_.

One of the religious names of Ireland, which I have purposely left
unexplained till now, was _Totdana_.[522] This it derived immediately from
the _Tuath-de-danaans_, as indeed it did all its ancient names, with the
exception of Scotia. _Tuath-de-danaans_ I have shown to mean the
_Magic-God-Almoners_,[523] and _Totdana_, by consequence, must denote the
_Magic-almonry_.[524]

Now, the Greeks, having been initiated in all their religious mystery by
the Irish, did not only enrich their language with the vocabulary of our
ceremonial, but adopted the several epithets of our island as the
distinctive names for their various localities, so that our
_Muc-inis_[525] became their _Myc-ene_, our _Tot-dana_, their Do-dona,
etc. etc. And even the names of our lakes, with all their legends of
_hydras_ and _enchantments_, found their way to them also, so that from
our Lough-Erne was formed, by a crasis, their L-Erna.

The change from _Tot-dana_ to _Do-dona_ is much more obvious than may seem
at first sight. _T_ and _D_ being commutable, _Tot_-dana was at once made
_Dot_-dana; the intermediate _t_ was then left out for sound’s sake,
making it Do-dana; and, lastly, the penultimate _a_ was transformed into
_o_ for the “ore rotundo,”[526] completing the _Grecism_ of Do-dona.

You see, therefore, from this that the origin of _Dodona_ was exclusively
Irish! that _Dodona_ and _Ireland_ were, in fact, one and the same!--a
circumstance of which Homer was perfectly well assured when he styled it
Δωδωνη δυσχειμερος, or the _Hyperborean Tot-dana_.[527]

Neither was it in _name_ only, but in _sanctity_ also, that the Greek
_Myc-ene_ strove to imitate our _Muc-inis_. To this hour is to be found
one of the ancient Pelasgian temples, vulgarly termed the _Treasury of
Atreus_, from the mere circumstance, as Dr. Clarke well remarks, “of there
being found a few _brass nails_ within it, and evidently for the purpose
of fastening on _something_ wherewith the _interior surface was formerly
lined_, and that many a long year before Atreus or Agamemnon!” The
Doctor, however, was perfectly astray in supposing it a _sepulchre_! In
form it is a hollow cone, fifty feet in diameter, and as many in height,
composed of enormous masses of a very hard _breccia_, a sort of
pudding-stone, the very material whereof most of our Round Towers are
constructed, and the property of which is to indurate by time. The _Dune
of Dornadella_ in Scotland is _identically_ the _same kind of structure_,
built by our Tuath-de-danaans, and for the solemn purpose of _religion_
alone. This is so accurately described in an article in the _Edinburgh
Magazine_, copied into _Pennant’s Tour_, that I too will make free to
transcribe it.

“It is,” says the reviewer, “of a circular form, and now nearly resembling
the frustum of a cone: whether, when perfect, it terminated in a point, I
cannot pretend to guess; but it seems to have been higher, by the rubbish
which lies round it. It is built of stone, without cement, and I take it
to be between twenty and thirty feet still. The entrance is by a low and
narrow door, to pass through which one is obliged to stoop much; but
perhaps the ground may have been raised since the first erection. When one
is got in, and placed in the centre, it is open overhead. _All round the
sides of the walls are ranged stone shelves, one above another, like a
circular beaufait, reaching from near the bottom to the top._ The stones
which compose these shelves are supported chiefly by the stones which form
the walls, and which project all round, just in that place where the
shelves are, and in no others; each of the shelves is separated into
several divisions, as in a bookcase. There are some remains of an awkward
staircase. _What use the shelves could be applied to I cannot conceive._
It could not be of any military use, from its situation at the bottom of
a sloping hill, which wholly commands it. The most learned amongst the
inhabitants, such as the gentry and clergy, who all speak the _Irish_
language, could give no information or tradition concerning its use, or
the origin of its name.”

Now, our _Round Towers_ have similar _shelves_, or recesses in the wall,
and “reaching, like a circular beaufait, from near the bottom to the top”!
Wherever these do not appear, their place is supplied by _projecting
stones_, for the evident purpose of acting as supporters.[528] And as the
_Mycenian_, the _Caledonian_, and the _Hibernian_ edifices thus far
correspond, the only thing that remains is _to explain to what purpose
could those recesses_ serve.

I thus solve the question--_They were as so many cupboards for containing
the idols of Budha_, as the structures themselves for _temples_ of his
worship, etc. Nor is this their use yet forgotten, in the buildings of the
like description in Upper India, as appears from the following statement
by Archer. “In the afternoon,” says he, “I went to look at a _Jain
temple_. It was a neat building, with an upper storey. _The idol is
Boadh._ There is a lattice verandah of brick and mortar round the shrine,
and there are _small cupboards, in which numerous figures of the idol are
ranged on shelves_.”

Arguments crowd upon me to establish these particulars; the only
difficulty is in the compression. I shall, however, continue to prove this
from another source, even by showing that when Ezekiel declared, in
allusion to Tyre, that “the men of _Dedan_ were thy _merchants_,”[529] he
meant the men of _Ireland_.

First let me refer you to page 4, by which you will be reminded of our
ancient possession of a _naval equipment_. Secondly, let me quote to you
an extract from Vallancey, when directing the result to a different
application. His words are: “Another proof of the ancient Irish being
skilled in the art of navigation, I draw from a fragment of the Brehon
laws in my possession, where the payment, or the reward, for the education
of children, whilst under the care of fosterers, is thus stipulated to be
paid to the ollamhs, or professors, distinguishing private tuition from
that of public schools. The law says: ‘If youth be instructed in the
knowledge of cattle, the payment shall be three eneaclann and a seventh;
if in husbandry and farming, three eneaclann and three-sevenths; if in
milrach, _i.e._ _glais-argneadh as tear_, that is, _superior navigation_,
or the best kind of knowledge, the payment shall be five eneaclann and the
fifth of an eanmaide; if in _glais-argneadhistein_, that is, second, or
inferior (branch of) navigation, two eneaclann and a seventh.’ And this
law is ordained because the pupils must have been previously instructed in
_letters_, which is the lowest education of all.”

Thus you see, at all events, that we were _qualified_ for the duties
required. Now, I will _demonstrate_, and that too by the aid, or rather at
the expense, of Mons. Heeren, that we were the actual persons pointed to
by the prophet.

“Deden,” says the professor, “is one of the Bahrein, or rather more
northerly one of Cathema. The proofs, which to detail here would be out of
place, may be found in Assemani, _Bib. Orient._ tom. ii. par. ii. pp. 160,
564, 604, and 744. Difficulties arise here, not merely from want of maps,
but also from the variation and confusion of names. _Daden_, or _Deden_,
is also frequently called _Dirin_; and it may be conjectured that from
hence arose the name of Dehroon, which is given to one of the Bahrein
islands in the map of Delisle. If that were the case, then Dedan would not
be Cathema, as Assemani asserts, but the island mentioned above; and this
is rendered probable by the _resemblance of names, which is a certain
guide_.”

If the “_resemblance_ of names” be “a certain guide,” _identity_ of names
must be still more certain; and then must my _proofs_ already prevail, and
the professor’s _conjectures_ fall to the ground! Surely he cannot say
that there is any even resemblance between _D-Irin_ and _Dehroon_! But he
admits that the place alluded to is called indifferently _Dedan_[530] and
_D-Irin_; and have I not shown that each of those names, identical and
unadulterated, belonged _properly_ to Ireland? Ireland, therefore, _alone_
can be the country alluded to by the inspired penman.

In denying, however, a _Dodona_ to the Greeks, and an oracle also, General
Vallancey was quite incorrect. What he should have maintained was, that
both _name_ and _oracle_ had their _prototypes_ in Ireland; but that, so
remote was the date at which the transfer occurred, all insight into the
mysteries had long since perished.

Indeed, their priests very frankly acknowledged the fact to Herodotus,
when, in his thirst for information, he waited upon them at Dodona. “We do
not,” said they, “know even the _names_ of the deities to whom we make our
offerings--we distinguish them, it is true, by titles and designations;
but these are all adventitious and modern in comparison of the worship,
which is of great antiquity.” Upon which the historian very truly
concludes, “that their _nature_ and _origin had been always a secret_; and
that even the Pelasgi, who first introduced them and their rites, had been
equally unacquainted with their history.”

Like a true Greek, however, he must set about _coining_ an origin for
them; and so he tells us _a cock-and-a-bull_ story of two _pigeons_
(Peleiai) having taken flight from Thebes in Upper Egypt, and never
stopped until they perched, one upon the top of Dodona, and the other God
knows where; and then he flatters himself he has the allegory solved, by
_imagining_ that those _pigeons_ were _priestesses_, or _old women_,
carried off by Phœnician pirates, and sold into the land of Greece!

In this he has been followed by thousands of imitators, and quoted
miraculously at all the public schools. Nay, his disciples would fain even
_improve_ upon the _thing_; and Servius has gone so far as to say that the
_old woman’s_ name was _Pelias_!

Now, here is the whole mystery unravelled for you.

When the Greeks established an oracle of _their_ Dodona, subordinate to
our master one, they adopted, at the same time, one of the orders of our
priesthood. This was that of the _Pheeleas_, the meaning of which being to
them an enigma, they _bent it_, as usual, to some similar sound in their
own language.[531] This was that of _Peleiai_, in the accusative
_Peleias_, which, in the dialect of Attica, signifies _pigeons_, and in
that of Epirus, _old women_; and so the whole metamorphosis was forthwith
adjusted!

[Illustration]

“The very extraordinary piece of antiquity, represented in the annexed
woodcut, was found,” says Mr. Petrie, “in a bog at Ballymoney, county of
Antrim, and exhibited to the Royal Irish Academy, by the Lord Bishop of
Down, in March 1829. Its material is that description of _bronze_ of which
all the ancient Irish weapons, etc., are composed, and its actual size is
four times that of the representation. It is a tube, divided by joints at
A and B into three parts, which, on separating, were found to contain
brass wire, in a zigzag form, a piece of which is represented in _Fig._ G.
This wire appears to have been originally elastic, but when found was in a
state of considerable decomposition. At E and F are two holes, about
one-eighth of an inch in diameter, and seem intended for rivets or pins to
hold the instrument together. The birds move on loose pins, which pass
through the tube, and on the other end are rings. The material and style
of workmanship of this singular instrument leaves no doubt of its high
antiquity. But we _confess ourselves totally unable to form even a
rational conjecture as to its probable use_, and should feel obliged to
any antiquary who would throw light upon it.”[532]

Had the antiquarian _high-priest_ to this _magnanimous_ assemblage been
equally modest in former cases, and courted _instruction_, instead of
erecting _himself_ into a _Pheelea_, he would not cut the figure which he
now does. Ignorance is no fault: it is only its vagaries that are so
ridiculous!

However, he has said--I beg pardon, he is in the _plural_ number--well,
then, _they_ have said, that they would feel obliged to any _antiquary_
who would throw light upon the subject.

To be sure, I am no _antiquary_. The Royal Irish Academy have made _that_
as clear as the sun at noonday. Nay, they have even strove to make their
_brethren_ at this side of the water to think so also! But their brethren
at this side of the water are too _honest_ a people, and too _noble_ in
their purpose, to make history a trade, and to stifle _truth_ at the
unhallowed dictates of interest or partiality.

No matter; I will tell all what this piece of antiquity was. _It was the
actual instrument through which the oracle of Dodona was announced!_ You
see upon it the _swans_ by which Apollo was brought to the Hyperboreans!
The _bulbul of Iran_ also attends in the train; and the affinity of this
latter bird to the species of _pigeons_, convinced the Greeks that they
had really hit off the interpretation of the word _Pheelea_! and that
_pigeons_ were, in truth, the _deliverers_ of the oracle.

This was the block upon which Abbé Bannier was stumbling. Having learned
from some quarter, I believe from Aristotle, that there were some _brass_
appendages contiguous to Dodona, he converts those appendages into
_kettles_--a worthy friend of mine would add, _of fish_--“which,” says he,
“being lashed with a whip, clattered against one another until the oracle
fulminated”!!!

As to those oracles themselves, with the registries of which antiquity is
so replete, I will here articulate my individual belief. No one who knows
me can suppose that I am superstitious; and, for those who know me not,
the sentiments herein delivered will scarcely foster the imputation. Yet
am I as thoroughly persuaded as I am of my personal consciousness, that
some prescience they did possess, conducted partly by human fraud, and
partly by spiritual co-operation.

There is no question but that there must have been some _supernatural_
agency in the business; for _human_ skill and human sagacity could never
penetrate the deep _intricacies_ of doubt, and the important _pregnancies_
of time which they have _foreshown_.[533]

Porphyry, in his book _De Dæmonibus_, and Iamblichus in his _De
Mysteriis_, expressly mention that _demons_ were in every case the authors
of oracles. Without going all this length, we may readily allow that they
had perhaps a great share in them; neither will the ambiguity in which
their answers were sometimes couched detract anything from this admission,
because the spirits themselves, when ignorant of any contingency, would,
of course, try to screen their defect by the vagueness of conjectures, in
order that if the issue did not correspond with their advice, it may be
supposed owing to misinterpretation. The instance of Crœsus and the
Delphian oracle was an interesting event. He sent to all the oracles on
the same day this question for solution, viz. “What is Crœsus, the son of
Alyattes, King of Lydia, now doing?” That of Delphi answered thus: “I know
the number of the sand of Libya, the measure of the ocean--the secrets of
the silent and dumb lie open to me--_I smell the odour of a lamb and
tortoise boiling together in a brazen cauldron; brass is under and brass
above the flesh_.”

Having heard this reply, Crœsus adored the god of Delphi, and owned the
oracle had spoken truth; for he was on that day employed in _boiling
together a lamb and a tortoise_ in a _cauldron of brass_, which had a
cover of the same metal. He next sent, enjoining his ambassadors to
inquire whether he should undertake a war against the Persians? The oracle
returned answer, “If Crœsus passes the Halys, he will put an end to a vast
empire.”

Not failing to interpret this as favourable to his project, he again sent
to inquire, “If he should long enjoy the kingdom?” The answer was, “That
he should till a mule reigned over the Medes.” Deeming this impossible, he
concluded that he and his posterity should hold the kingdom _for ever_.
But the oracle afterwards declared that by “a _mule_” was meant _Cyrus_,
whose parents were of different nations--his father a Persian, and mother
a Mede. By which _mule_, says a facetious writer, the good man Crœsus was
thus made an _ass_!

That the priests, however, used much deception in the business, and that
this deception did not escape the notice of the learned men of the time,
is evident from the charge which Demosthenes had brought against the
_Pythia_, of her being accustomed to _Philippise_, or conform her notes to
the tune of the Macedonian emperor. The knowledge of this circumstance
made the prudent at all times distrust their suggestions, whilst the
rabble, without gainsay, acquiesced as blindly in the belief of their
infallibility.

But it was not only as to the meaning of the word _Pheelea_ that the
Greeks were unapprised, they knew not the import of their own name
_Pelargi_![534] It is compounded of this same term _pheelea_, an _augur_
or a _diviner_; and _argh_, the symbolic _boat_, or yoni! And, mind you,
that this was the great difference between the Pelargi--which is but
another name for Pish-de-danaans--and the Tuath-de-danaans, that the
latter venerated the _male_ organ of energy, and the former the _female_;
therefore in no country occupied by the former do you meet with _Round
Towers_, though you invariably encounter those _traces_ of _art_, which
prove their descent from _one common origin_.

As presiding over the _diviners_ of the _symbolical boat_, Jupiter was
called _Pelargicus_.[535]

_Agyeus_ was another term in their religious vocabulary, as applied to
Apollo, of which the Greeks knew not the source. They could not, indeed,
well mistake, that it was derived immediately from αγυια, _via_; but that
did not expound the fact, and they were still in ignorance of its proper
import. It is merely a translation of our _Rudh-a-vohir_, that is,
_Apollo-of-the high-roads_, not, what the Greeks understood it, as
_stationary_ thereon, but, on the contrary, as _itinerant_; and to whom
_Venus the stranger_ corresponded on the other side; the especial province
of both being to ensure the comforts of _hospitality_, of _protection_,
and of _love_, to all emigrants and all travellers.

_Grunie_ was another epithet applied to _Apollo_, as we may read in a hymn
composed by Orpheus, which they could not comprehend. It is derived from
_Grian_, one of our names for the _Sun_.

But, beyond comparison, the most inexplicable of all the epithets applied
to this divinity is _Lycæus_; which, though--as has been the case, you
perceive, in _every subject yet discussed_--it can be explained only in
the _Irish_!--yet, even _there_, it opposes some difficulties to
discourage, but not more than what give way to sagacity and to
perseverance.

At Glendalough, in the county Wicklow, one of the proudest abodes of
Budhism, are found, amongst other sculptures, upon the dilapidated ruins,
those which you see opposite.

The _wolf_ is the most frequent in the multitude of those hieroglyphics.
His character is exhibited in more attitudes than one--and all
mysteriously significant of natural designs.

In one place you observe his tail gracefully interwoven with the long hair
of a young man’s head. That represents the youth Apollo, controlling by
his efficacy--alias, the sun’s genial rays--the most hardened hearts, and
so revolutionising the tendency of the inborn system, as from antipathy
often to produce affection and love!

[Illustration]

Of this illustration, the practical proof is afforded in _Bakewell’s
Travels in the Tarentaise_, to the following purpose, viz.:--

“By way of enlivening the description of the structure of animals, he
(M. de Candolle, Lecturer on Natural History at Geneva), introduced many
interesting particulars respecting what he called _leur morale_, or their
natural dispositions, and the changes they underwent when under the
dominion of man. Among other instances of the affection which wolves had
sometimes shown to their masters, he mentioned one which took place in the
vicinity of Geneva. A lady, Madame M----, had a tame wolf, which seemed to
have as much attachment to its mistress as a spaniel. She had occasion to
leave home for some weeks; the wolf evinced the greatest distress after
her departure, and at first refused to take food. During the whole time
she was absent, he remained much dejected: on her return, as soon as the
animal heard her footsteps, he bounded into the room in an ecstasy of
delight; springing up, he placed one paw on each of her shoulders, but the
next moment he fell backwards and instantly expired.”

Elsewhere you discern two wolves unmercifully tearing at a human head! And
this is symbolical of a species of disease, of which there is published an
account in a work called _The Hospitall of Incurable Fooles_, translated
from the Italian by Todd, to the following effect, viz.:--

“Amongst these humours of Melancholy, the phisitions place a kinde of
madnes, by the Greeks called _Lycanthropia_, termed by the Latines
_Insania Lupina_, or _Wolves furie_: which bringeth a man to this point
(as Attomare affirmeth), that in Februarie he will goe out of the house in
the night _like a wolfe_, hunting about the graves of the dead with great
howling: _and plucke the dead men’s bones out of the sepulchres, carrying
them about the streets_, to the great fear and astonishment of all them
that meete him: And the foresaide author affirmeth, that melancholike
persons of this kinde have pale faces, soaked and hollow eies, with a weak
sight, never shedding one tear to the view of the world,” etc.

And that this was epidemic amongst the Irish is proved by _Spenser’s_
testimony, when, drawing a parallel between the Scythians and the Irish of
his day, he says: “Also, the Scythians said, that they were once a year
turned into wolves; and so it is written of the Irish: though Martin
Camden, in a better sense, doth suppose it was a disease, called
lycanthropia, so named of the wolf: and yet some of the _Irish doe use to
make the wolf their gossip_.”

Thus it appears, that the Irish were not only acquainted with the _nature_
of this _sickness_, but also with the knack of _taming_ that _animal_ of
which it bore the name. All this was connected with the worship of Apollo,
and with Eastern mythology. Nay, the very _dogs_, for which our country
was once famous,[536] and which were destined as protectors against the
ravages of the _wolf_, are clear, from Ctesias, to have had their
correspondents in India.

The epithet _Lyceus_, I conceive, now elucidated; and so leave to yourself
to _penetrate_ the rest of those devices. But I shall not, at the same
time, take leave of the “_Valley of the Two Lakes_.”[537]

On one of the loose stones, which remain after this wreck of
magnificence, you will see a full delineation of “The history of
Dahamsonda, King of Baranes (_modern Benares_), who, as his name implies,
was a zealous lover of religious knowledge; and was _incarnated_, in order
to be tried between his _attachment to religion_ and his zeal for the
_salvation of the world_ on the one side, and his love to _his own life_,
and his _attachment to his kingdom_ and wealth, as well as his kindred and
friends, on the other; for which purpose the gods had gradually and
completely _withdrawn the light of religious knowledge_ from the world by
the time of his accession to the throne.”[538]

This king, in his anxiety to regain the _lost_ condition of mankind--to
recover their literature and their _ancient_ knowledge of religion,
instructs his courtiers to proclaim the offer of a casket of gold, “as a
reward to any person” who would instruct his majesty in the mysteries of
the _Bana_,[539] that is, the Budhist _Gospel_, with a view to its
salutary repropagation.

The officers proceeded in quest of such a phenomenon; but, _in the extent
of their own realms, he was not to be found_!

This excites the uneasiness of the king, who “having by degrees _increased
his offers_ to thousands and millions of money, high titles, possessions
of land and great privileges; and, at last, offering his own throne and
kingdom, but still finding no instructor, _leaves his court, resolved to
become private traveller, and not to rest till he has found one who could
communicate to him the desired knowledge_. Having _for a length of time
travelled_ through many _kingdoms_, towns, and villages, enduring
hardships, he is, at last, by providential interference, led through _a
delightful valley_ (which affords him subjects for consideration and
recreation of mind) into a dismal forest, the habitation of frightful
demons, _venomous reptiles_, and beasts of prey.

“_Sekkraia_ having on the occasion come down from heaven, in the disguise
of a _Raksha_, meets _Bodhesat_ (the king) in the wilderness, who
fearlessly enters into conversation with him, and informs him of the
object of his wanderings. The disguised deity undertaking to satisfy the
king, if he will sacrifice to him his flesh and blood in exchange for the
sacred knowledge, _Bodhesat_ cheerfully ascends a steep rock, shown him by
the apparition, and throws himself headlong to the mouth of the _Raksha_.
The king’s zeal being thus proved, _Sekkraia_, in his own heavenly form,
receives him in his arms, as he is precipitating himself from the rock,”
and has him initiated in the desired information.[540]

Now, waiving for a moment the latter part of this legend--every word of
which, however, is still chronicled in our country, though transferred by
the _moderns_ to _St. Kevin_ and the _monks_--I return to add, that, on
the above-mentioned stone, you will see a representation of the
_ambassadors offering this caske of riches to a professor of letters
seated in his “doctor’s chair”_!!!

This stone itself is engraved in _Ledwich’s Antiquities_, where in his
ignorance of its meaning, as well as of everything else which formed the
subject of his libellous farrago, he perverts it into the _bribing_ of a
_Roman Catholic priest_!--as if the priests would so emblazon
themselves!--and quotes Chaucer to _prove_ the fact, when he says of one
them, that--

  “He would suffer, for a quart of wine,
  A good fellow to have his concubine”!

How inconsistent is error! Elsewhere this Reverend Doctor has asserted,
and, accidentally, _with truth_, that there was no such thing at all to be
met with at this place, as “Christian symbols.” I wonder was he one of
those who consider _Roman Catholics_ not to be _Christians_?

However, again from _this_ he diverges! And, when called upon to decipher
the _hieroglyphics upon a stone-roofed Tuath-de-danaan chapel, of the same
character as that at Knockmoy_, and discovered here a few years ago,
beneath the Christian piles which the early missionaries had built over
it, by way of _supersedence_, he throws himself, in his embarrassment,
into the arms of _St. Kevin_! associates _him_ with the whole! and that,
too, after he had fatigued himself, _until half choked with spleen_, in
bellowing out the _ideality_ and utter _non-existence_ of such a
personage!

On the front of the cathedral erected out of the fragments of the
Tuath-de-danaan dilapidations, you will find _Budha_ embracing the _sacred
tree_, known _in our registries_, by the name of _Aithair Faodha_, which
signifies literally the _tree_ of _Budha_.[541]

The _pomegranate_ of _Astarte_--the medicinal apple of
_affection_[542]--presents itself, also, in the foliage! The _mouldings_
upon the arch of the western window refer likewise to _her_. And, to
complete the union of Sabian symbolisation, the _serpent_ mingles in the
general tale! while the traditional story of the adjoining _lake_ having
been infested by the presence of that reptile, has a faithful parallel in
one of the lakes of Syria!

Will it not be believed, therefore, that the _valley_ at which Dohamsonda
had alighted, _after he had traversed many realms far away from his own_,
was that of Glendalough? And where, I ask, would he be more likely to
obtain the object of his peregrination, viz. initiation into _gospel_
truth, than in that country which, from its pre-eminent effulgence in its
beatitudes, was exclusively denominated the _Gospel-land_?

This, sir, is no _rhetoric_,--no _declamatory exaggeration_. I will reduce
it for you, in its simple elements, to the perspicuity of vision.

_Bana-ba_ is one of the names of our _sacred island_, which, like all the
rest of our _history_, has been heretofore a _mystery_ to literary
inquirers!

The light bursts upon you!--does it not already? Need I proceed to
separate for you the constituent parts of this word?

It is compounded, then, be it known, of _Bana_, which indicates good
tidings, or gospel, and _aba_, land--meaning, in the aggregate, the
_Gospel-land_! And accordingly the pilgrim, when he set out upon his
journey in quest of the _Bana_, very naturally betook himself to
_Bana-ba_, or the _land of the Bana_, where alone it was to be found!

And you presume to say that _Christianity_ is a thing which only commenced
last week?

                      “Great God! I’d rather be
  A _Pagan_ suckled in a creed outworn;
  So might I standing on this pleasant lea,
  Have _glimpses_ that would make me _less forlorn_;
  Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
  Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.”
                                      WORDSWORTH.




CHAPTER XXXI.


“They shall be astonished, and shall humble their countenances: and
trouble shall seize them, when they shall behold the Son of _Woman_
sitting upon the throne of his glory. Then shall the kings, the princes,
and all who possess the earth glorify him who has dominion over all
things--him who was _concealed_: for, from the beginning, the Son of Man
existed _in secret_, whom the Most High preserved in the presence of his
power, and _revealed to the elect_.”[543]

So speaks one of the most extraordinary productions that has ever appeared
in England, in the shape of literature! And the commentary of its
translator[544] is as follows:--

“In both these passages,” says he, “the _pre-existence_ of the Messiah is
asserted in language which admits not the slightest shade of
ambiguity--nor is it such a pre-existence as the philosophical cabalists
attributed to him, who believed the souls of all men, and, consequently,
that of the Messiah, to have been originally created together, when the
world itself was formed; but an _existence antecedent_ to all creation, an
existence previous to the formation of the luminaries of heaven; an
existence prior to all things visible and invisible, before everything
concealed.--It should likewise be remarked, that the pre-existence
ascribed to him is a divine pre-existence.”[545]

As to the _pre-existence_ of the Messiah, in the only way in which the
Archbishop affirms, I did not think that the doctrine was so obscure as to
require so much stress! Everybody acquiesces, who acquiesces in
Christianity--that its Founder had existence and dominion with His Father
before all worlds. And, therefore, when His Grace offers this as an
_illustration_ of our opening extract, he either _unconsciously
contradicts himself_, or, else, by dealing _in generalities, evades_ an
_exposition, which he was not at liberty to communicate_!

I am quite ignorant as to whether or not Dr. Lawrence belongs to the order
of _Freemasons_, but I confess that when first I glanced at the above
remarks I fancied he did. The care with which the two words “_secret_” and
“_concealed_” were distinguished by him in _italics_, led me to this
conjecture. But the _indefinite unsubstantiality_ into which he afterwards
wandered, made the fact of his _initiation_ become, itself, a _secret_.

Let me, however, prove the above _dilemma_.

His Lordship has asserted, that the _uninspiration_ of “the author” will
admit of no dispute:[546] and yet that “author,” whom the Archbishop
himself acknowledges to have written, at the very lowest, _antecedently_
to the _Advent_, speaks of the _Messiah_ as the “_Son of Man_” and the
“Son of _Woman_.”[547]

Either, therefore, the author was _inspired_, speaking _prospectively_ of
an occurrence _not then consummated_! or else, _uninspired_, he
historically transmits the record of an _incarnation vouchsafed before his
time_.

I feel perfectly indifferent as to which horn of this alternative you may
patronise. They both equally make for _me_. Nor do I want _either_,
otherwise than to show, that else the Archbishop is already of _my way of
thinking_, and _restrained_ from _avowing_ it, or _unwillingly_ involved
in a _contradictory nodus_, from a partial succumbing to education!

With this I leave Enoch! I have hitherto done without him! I shall
continue still to do so! But while bidding _adieu_, I must disburthen
myself of the sentiments which his merits have inspired, and that after a
_very short personal familiarity_.

Thou art, then, a GOODLY and a WISE book, Enoch, stored with _many_ and
_recondite truths_, but “_few_ they be who _find_” them. Better for thee
it were, however, that thou hadst slept a little longer in thy _tranquil_
retirement, than obtrude thyself, _unappreciated_, upon an _ungenial_
world--a cold, a calculating, an adamantine world--who fancy they know
_everything_, but who, in truth, know _nothing_--to meet with nothing but
their _scorn_! It is true, Enoch, that thy face hath been tarnished by
many a blemish! And that the hand of time hath dealt with thee, as it doth
with the other works of man! Yet, despite of the _curtailments_ thus
sustained, and the _exotics_ incorporated, thy magnificent ruin still
holds within it some _gleams_, which to the _initiated_ and the
_sympathetic_ afford delight and gratification.

  --------“Sweet as the _ecstatic_ bliss
  Of _souls_ that by _intelligence_ converse!”

Doubtless, reader, you are acquainted with the Gospel of St. John?--and
you have a heart?--and you have emotions?--and you have
sensibilities?--and you have intellect? Well, then, tell me frankly, have
not these all been brought into requisition, at the metaphysical
_sublimity_ and the oriental _pathos_ of the opening part of that
production?

“He was in the world, and the world was made by Him; and the world _knew
Him not_. He came unto _His own_, and _His own_ received Him not.”[548]

You surely cannot suppose this said in reference to the _late
incarnation_! Were it so, why should the Evangelist deliver himself in
terms so pointedly allusive to _distant times_? The interval between
Christ’s disappearance and St. John’s registration was but as _yesterday_,
and therefore the latter, when inculcating the _divinity_ of the _former_,
upon the belief of his countrymen, who were all contemporaries, as well of
one as of the other, need not advertise them of an addition, of which they
were themselves cognisant.

But to illustrate to you as _light_, that it was not the _recent_
manifestation that was meant by the above text, he tells us in the sequel,
when expressly narrating _this_ latter fact, that “the _Logos_ was made
flesh and dwelt _among us_”;[549] where you perceive that “_dwelling among
us_” is made a _distinct thing from_, and _posterior in eventuation to
“coming unto His own,”_ as before recorded![550]

Indeed, in the delineation, it is not only the _order_ of _time_, but the
_precision_ of _words_, that we see most rigidly characteristic. The
_Jews_, it is certain, could not be called “_His own_,” except by
_adoption_; and, I am free to allow, that from them, “as concerning the
_flesh_, Christ came”; but by “_His own_”[551] are meant His _real
relations!--emanations from the Godhead, such as He was Himself! beings
altogether separate from flesh and blood!_ and whose _mysteriousness_ was
perceptible most clearly to St. John, as you will perceive by the Greek
words from which this is rendered, viz. τα ιδια, having been put in the
neuter gender!

But suppose them, for an instant, to have been the Jews!--Then we are told
that, “to as many as received Him, gave He power to become sons of
God.”[552] Now, the apostles were they who did _implicitly receive_ Him:
and why does not St. John refer to those, whether living or dead, as
admitted to the privilege of becoming “sons of God”? I will tell you:--it
was because that they did not answer to that order of beings “which were
born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man,
but of God.”[553]

These were the persons to whom _Christ came before_--these were “His own,”
because that, _like Him_, they also were _of God_.[554] These were they,
who having lapsed into sin,[555] and vitiated their nature, drew down the
vengeance of heaven upon them; and to the descendants of these it was that
“the elect” and “the concealed one,” in mercy was made manifest, with
proposals of redemption to regain their lost state!!!

“O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how
unsearchable are His judgments, and how inscrutable His ways!”[556]

Seest thou not now, therefore, the propriety of St. John’s expression,
when He says, “And I knew Him not, but that He should _be made manifest_
to Israel”;[557] for when, before “He was in the world,” it was in
_secret_ and _concealed_--as _still and always represented_ in the
_mysteries_! The latter, he _asserts_, as a matter of _revelation_--for
the former he _appeals to the experience_ of his auditors, as a subject of
_history_: and _both epochs are confirmed_ by the “voice from heaven,”
which replied to Christ’s own prayer, as thus, “I have both glorified it,”
viz. _at Thy former manifestation_--“and will glorify it again,”[558] _at
this Thy present_!!!

I was myself twelve years of age before ever I saw a Testament in any
language. The first I was then introduced to was the Greek. Being in
favour with my tutor, he took an interest in my progress, and the
consequence was, to my gratitude and his praise, that no deviation from
the exactness of grammatical technicality could possibly escape my
observation. Soon as I arrived at the text wherein τα ιδια occurs, its
irregularity, at once, flashed across my mind. I sought for an
explanation, but it was in vain; my imagination set to work, but it was
equally abortive. At length, in despair, I relinquished the pursuit, and
never again troubled myself with it, or its solution, until recalled by
its connection with the present inquiry.

But it was not alone the peculiarity of gender that excited my
circumspection, the phraseology, when translated, sounded so familiar to
my ear, as to appear an old acquaintance under a new form. For, though I
could then tolerably well express myself in English, the train of my
reflections always ran in Irish. From infancy I spoke that tongue: it was
to me vernacular. I thought in Irish, I understood in Irish, and I
compared in Irish. My sentiments and my conceptions were _filtrated_
therein!

As to dialectal idioms or lingual peculiarities, I had not, of course, the
most remote idea. Whether, therefore, the expression coming to “His own”
were properly a _Greek_ or an _English_ elocution, I did not, then, know
either sufficiently well to determine; but that it was _Irish_ I was
perfectly satisfied; my ear and my heart, at once, told me so.

I now positively affirm that the _phrase is neither Hebrew_, _Greek_, nor
_English_! And if you are not disposed to admit the information which it
conveys,[559] to be an immediate communication from the Omnipotent, I have
another very adequate mode of accounting for St. John’s having acquired
it, and expressed it too in a phraseology so _essentially Oriental_.

[Illustration]

The three wise men--who came from the East to Jerusalem, saying, “Where
is He that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen His star in the
east, and are come to worship Him”[560]--to a mortal certainty imparted to
him the intelligence!

Here you see them with _crosses_ upon their crowns,[561] the religious
counterparts of our _Irish shamrocs_![562] And surely, as Jesus was then
but an infant, those mysterious devices were commemorative of His
crucifixion, when “He came to His own,”--and not to that which occurred
while He “dwelt among us,” a catastrophe which had not yet taken place!

Nor is it alone this single phrase (τα ιδια) that I claim as Oriental--the
five first verses of this Gospel, as at present arranged, appertain also
thereto. They speak the _doctrine_ alike of the _Budhists_ and of the
_Free-masons_; but in _diction_, and in _peculiarity_, in _tone_, in
_point_, and _essence_, they are irrefragably _Irish_.[563]

That St. John never wrote them is beyond all question! but having found
them to his hand, existing after the circuit of centuries and ages, the
composition seemed so pure, and so consonant with Christianity, nay, its
very vitality and soul, he adopted it as the _preface_ to his _own
production_, which begins only at the sixth verse, opening with, “There
was a man sent from God whose name was John”!

Having asserted that the preliminary part was inalienably _Irish_, I now
undertake to prove a _radical misconception_, nay, a _derogation_ from the
_majesty_ of the _Messiah_, to have crept into the text, in consequence
of its having been translated by persons unacquainted with that language!

The term _logos_, which you render _word_, means to an iota the _spiritual
flame_--_log_, or _logh_, being the _original_ denomination. The Greeks,
who had borrowed all their religion from the Irish, adopted this also from
their vocabulary; but its form not being suited to the genius of their
language, they fashioned it thereto by adding the termination _os_, as
_loghos_; and thus did it become identified in sound with the common
_logos_, which they had before, and which merely expresses a _word_ or
_term_!

But though thus confounded, their philosophers, for a long time, kept both
expressions distinct. The former they ever considered a _foreign
importation_, rendering it, as we did, by the _spiritual flame_; as is
evident from Zeno making use of the expression, δια του παντος λογος, that
is, the spiritual _flame_, which is diffused through, and vivifies
everything.

Pythagoras is so explicit upon this _spiritual flame_, that you would
swear he was paraphrasing the first five verses of St. John.

“God,” says he, “is neither the object of sense, nor subject to passion,
but invisible, only intelligible, and supremely intelligent. In His body,
He is like the _light_, and in His soul He resembles truth. He is the
universal _spirit_ that pervades and diffuseth itself over all nature. All
beings receive their _life_ from Him. There is but one only God, who is
not, as some are apt to imagine, seated above the world, beyond the orb of
the universe; but being Himself all in all, He sees all the beings that
fill His immensity, the only principle, the light of Heaven, the Father
of all. He _produces everything_, He orders and disposes _everything_; He
is the reason, the _life_, and the motion of all being.”

Even the Latins having borrowed the idea from the Greeks, steered clear of
the equivocation of the ridiculous _word_; and the immortal Maro, when
describing the quickening influence of this ethereal _logos_ through all
the branches of nature, interprets it as above, literally, by the
_spiritual flame_!

  “Principio cœlum ac terras, camposque liquentes,
  Lucentemque globum Lunæ, Titaniaque Astra,
  _Spiritus intus_ alit; totamque infusa per artus
  Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet.
  Inde hominum pecudumque genus, vitæque volantum,
  Et quæ marmoreo fert monstra sub æquore pontus.”[564]

Am I, therefore, presumptuous in appealing to the _community_ to reject
this _word_ as applied to the _logos_? A meaning, it is true, has been
trumped up for this, as the _communicating vehicle_ between God and His
creatures! No doubt the Saviour is all that: but _logos does not express
it_; and the _duration_ of an abuse is no reason why it should be
perpetuated after its _exposure_.

I have said that it degraded the dignity of the Godhead to render this
expression by the form of _word_. I do not retract the charge: on the
contrary, I _add_ that, independently altogether of the former arguments,
adduced to establish its _inaccuracy_, it would be _revolting to common
sense_, were it not even thus _incorrect_!

For example--“In Him was _life_,” says the text, “and the life was the
_light_ of men.”

Now, how could there be _life_ in a _word_? except by the most unnatural
straining of metaphor. Or, admitting that there was _life_, how could
there be _light_, except by the same? Whereas, by substituting the proper
term, then all is regular and easy; for what could be more natural, than
that there should be _life_ in _spirit_? and that _this life_ should give
_light_ to men?

You will observe accordingly, that Jesus Himself, when describing His own
character, exactly states what I here rectify, saying, “I am the _light_
of the world”--not the _word_ of the world--or any such nonsense. And He
continues the idea by noting further, that “he that followeth Me shall not
walk in _darkness_, but shall have the _light_ of life.”[565] Thus keeping
up an _uninterrupted_ reference to _logos_, or the _spiritual flame_!

I do, therefore, humbly, but strenuously, implore of the legislature that
they _restore_ this epithet to its _divine_ interpretation! I entreat of
the heads, as well of Church as of State, that they cancel the error; for
_error_ I unhesitatingly pronounce it to be,--a _derogation_ from the
Godhead, and a _perversion_ of the attributes of the Messiah!

I will myself show the way--thus: “In the beginning was the _spiritual
flame_: and the _spiritual flame_ was with God, and the _spiritual flame_
was God.”[566]

How beautiful! may I hope that it will never more be extinguished!

Now, there is another text in the same chapter, which, though not
incorrectly translated, yet _loses half its beauty_ as at present
understood! It will startle you when I recite it! Yet here it comes.
“Behold the _Lamb_ of God, which taketh away the sin of the world!”[567]

By _lamb_, no doubt, you mean a young sheep: but let me ask you, what
connection can you perceive between a _young sheep_ and the _taking away
of sin_? That of immolation, you answer, as typifying the _grand
offering_. Well, then, why add “of God”? Why say, the _young sheep of
God_, if it was an ordinary animal of the mere _ovine species_ that was
intended?

No, sir; recollect the “_Lamb_ slain from the beginning of the world,”
recorded in the Revelations, as quoted before.[568]

A deep mystery is involved in this expression, which the ingenuity of man
could not evolve but through the Irish. In that language _lambh_ is a word
having _three_ significations. The first is a _hand_; the second a _young
sheep_; and the third a _cross_.[569]

Let us now, in rendering the text, substitute this latter instead of the
intermediate; and it will be, “Behold the _cross_ of God, which taketh
away the sin of the world!” By which you perceive that when John the
Baptist, by inspiration, pointed out Jesus Christ as the universal Saviour
of the world, his _very words_ establish a previous _crucifixion_!

You now see how it happened that ten, in numerals, came to be represented
by a cross X. _This_ being the _number_ of _fingers_ upon each person’s
hands: and a _hand_ and a _cross_ being both prefigured in the _sacred_,
that is, in the _Irish_ language,[570] by the same term, _lambh_, it hence
occurred that in all reckoning and notation, a _new score_ should be
commenced therefrom--that its _sanctity_ should be still further enhanced
by the epithet of _diag_, or _perfection_, which characterises it as a
_submultiple_, and that the _mysteriousness_ of the _whole_ should be
additionally shrouded under the _comprehensive symbol_ of a _pyramid_ or
_triangle_ △[571]

“Our Hibernian Druids,” says Vallancey, “always wore a key, like the
doctors of law of the Jews, to _show they alone had the key of the
sciences_, that is, that they alone could communicate the knowledge of the
doctrine they preached. The name of this key was _kire_, or _cire_; and
_eo_, a peg or pin, being compounded with it, forms the modern _eo-cire_,
the key of a lock. The figure of this key resembled a _cross_; those of
the Lacedæmonians and Egyptians were of the same form.”

Estimable and revered Vallancey, it pains me to say anything against you!
but on those subjects you were quite _at bay_! _It was not_ to “show that
they alone had the key of the sciences,” that “the doctors of law of the
Jews always wore _a key_,” but because that _they had seen it in the
ceremonial of the Egyptians_, from whom, like the Lacedæmonians, they had
borrowed its use, without _either of them being able to penetrate its
import_![572]

The origin, then, of this _badge_ appearing amongst the _habiliments_ of
our ancient priests, is developed by the _name_ which those priests
themselves bore, viz. _Luamh_, which, being but a direct formative from
_lambh_, a _cross_, _unlocks_ the _secret_ of their being its
_ministers_.[573]

The _Idæi-Dactyli_, who superintended the mysteries of Ceres, obtained
their designation from the very same cause, and corresponded literally
with our _Luamhs_: for the _Iod_ of the Chaldeans being equivalent to the
_lambh_ or _hand_ of the Irish, the number of fingers thereon were made
religiously significant of the X, or _cross_! And,--what cannot fail to
excite astonishment, as to the _immutability_ of a nation’s
_character_,--_to this very hour, the symbolical oath of the Irish peasant
is a transverse placing of the forefinger of one hand over that of the
other_, and then uttering the words, “_By the cross_”!

Are not the opposers of my _truths_, then, as yet satisfied? or will they
still persist in saying that it was the _Pope_ that sent over our
Tuath-de-danaan crosses?[574] in the ship _Argho_! some thousands of years
before ever Pope was born. I wonder was it His Holiness that transported
emissaries also to that ancient city in America, lately discovered in
ruins, near Palenque; amongst the sculptures of which we discover a
_cross_! And the _priority_ of which to the times of _Christianity_ is
borne witness to by the gentleman who has published the “Description” of
those ruins,[575] though _glaringly ignorant as to what was commemorated
thereby_.

“Upon one point, however,” he says, “it is deemed essentially necessary to
lay a stress, which is the _representation of a Greek cross_, in the
largest plate illustrative of the present work, from whence the _casual_
observer might be prompted to infer that the Palencian city flourished at
a period _subsequent_ to the Christian era; whereas it is _perfectly well
known to all those conversant_ with the mythology _of the ancients_, that
the figure of a _cross_ constituted the leading symbol of their religious
worship: for instance, the augural _staff_ or wand of the Romans was an
exact resemblance of a _cross_, being borne as the ensign of authority by
the community of the augurs of Rome, where they were held in such high
veneration that, although guilty of flagrant crimes, they could not be
deposed from their offices; and with the Egyptians the _staff_ of Bootes
or Osiris is similar to the _crosier_ of Catholic bishops, which
terminated at the top with a cross.”

But if the Pope had so great a taste for beautifying our valleys with
those costly specimens of art, whereof some are at least eighteen feet in
height, composed of a single stone, and chiselled into devices of the most
elaborate mysteries, is it not _marvellous_ that he has not, in the
plenitude of his piety, thought proper to adorn the neighbourhood of the
Holy See with any similar trophies? And why has he not preserved in the
archives of the Vatican any _record_ of the bequest, as he has taken care
to do in the case of the four _palls_?

But, transcendently and lastly, why did he deem it necessary to depict
_centaurs_ upon those _crosses_, with snakes, serpents, dogs and other
animals, such as this following one exhibits, which is that at Kells, and
which has been alluded to, by promise, some pages backwards.[576]

[Illustration]

I have now done with the _appropriation_ of those columns; and shall just
_whisper_ into my adversaries’ ears--_if they have but recovered from the
downcrash of their_ fabric--that so far from laying claim to the honour of
their erection, the Pope has actually excommunicated all such as revered
them! and has otherwise disowned all participation therein, by the
fulminating of bulls and of anathemas![577]

Yet did the zealots of party, after the history of those crosses was
forgotten, associate them individually with some favourite saint! “This
notion,” says Mosheim, referring to such _diversions_, “rendered it
necessary to multiply prodigiously their number, and to create daily new
ones. The clergy set their invention at work, and peopled at discretion
the invisible world with imaginary protectors; they invented the names and
histories of saints that never existed; many chose their own patrons,
either phantoms of their own creation or distracted fanatics whom they
sainted.”

Here, however, the historian is as _inaccurate_ as he is _severe_: for not
only did the majority of those _saints_, if not all of them, exist, but
the greater part also of those _exploits_ ascribed to them have actually
occurred! _The imposition consisted in making them the heroes of events
and legends belonging to former actors._[578]

I shall now give you, from the Book of Ballymote, my proof for the
assertion before advanced as to the _Goban Saer_, whom they would fain
appropriate, having been a member of the Tuath-de-danaans, viz.: “Ro
gabsat sartain in Eirin Tuatha Dadann is deb ro badar na prem ealadhnaigh:
Luchtand saer credne ceard: Dian ceachd liargh etan dan a hingeinsidhe:
buime na filedh Goibneadh _Gobha lug_ Mac Eithe Occai; ro badar na huile
dana Daghadae in Righ: oghma brathair in Righ, is e ar arainic litri no
Scot.” That is, The Tuath-de-danaans then ruled in Eirin. They were first
in all sciences. Credne Ceard was of this people; and his daughter _Dean_
Ceachd, who presided over physic: she nursed the poet Gohne _Gobha_, the
Free-mason (_lug_ is the same as _Saer_), son of Occai Esthne. Daghdae the
king was skilled in all sciences: his brother Ogmus _taught the Scythians
the use of letters_.

Thus you see that he could not, by possibility, be on the same theatre
with _St. Abham_; while the popular tradition is still substantially true
which connects his name with the erection of the Round Towers!

The Church festivals themselves, in our Christian calendar, are but the
direct transfers from the Tuath-de-danaan ritual. Their very _names_ in
Irish are identically the same as those by which they were distinguished
by that earlier race. If therefore, surprise has heretofore been excited
at the conformity observable between our Church institutions and those of
the East, let it in future subside at the explicit announcement that
_Christianity_, with us, was but the _revival_ of a religion imported
amongst us, many ages before, by the Tuath-de-danaans from the East, and
not from any chimerical inundation of Greek missionaries--a _revival_ upon
which their hearts were longingly riveted, and which Fiech himself, the
pupil of St. Patrick, and bishop of Sletty, unconsciously registers in the
following couplet, viz.:--

  “_Tuatha_ Heren, tarcaintais
  Dos nicfead sith laithaith nua.”[579]

That is,--

  The _Budhists_ of Irin prophesied
  That _new_ times of _peace_ would come.

What kind of _peace_, you ask? Is it of _deliverance_ from their
_Scythian_ oppressors? No, but that spiritual tranquillity, such as they
enjoyed before, and at which even the angels of heaven rejoiced, while
announcing the tidings to man[580]--

  “And sweet, and with rapture o’erflowing,
    Was the song from that multitude heard,
  Who their heav’n for a season foregoing,
    To second the Angel appear’d.
  ‘All glory,’ the anthem resounding,
    ‘To God in the highest,’ began;
  And the chant was re-echoed, responding,
    ‘_Peace_ on earth, loving-kindness to man.’”[581]

You will remember that the Scriptures themselves record, how that the
_wise men of the East_ foresaw this epoch; and “Lo, the star which they
saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the
young child was.”[582]

Is it therefore to be wondered at that our Tuath-de-danaans, who were
their brethren, should equally anticipate it?

Yes, from the commencement of time, and through all the changes of
humanity, God had always witnesses to the _truth_ in this nether world.

“And Melchizedec, King of Salem, brought forth bread and wine, and he was
the priest of the most high God.

“And he blessed him, and said, Blessed be Abram of the most high God,
possessor of heaven and earth:

“And blessed be the most high God, which hath delivered thine enemies
into thy hand. And he gave him tithes of all.”[583]

“Now consider how great this man was, unto whom even the patriarch Abraham
gave the tenth of the spoils.

“For this Melchizedec, King of Salem, priest of the most high God, who met
Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings, and blessed him:

“To whom also Abraham gave a tenth part of all: first being, by
interpretation, king of righteousness, and after that also king of Salem,
which is king of _peace_.

“Without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning
of days nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God--abideth a
_priest_ continually.”[584]

Thus does the apostle proceed, in a strain of the closest argumentation,
to point out the superiority of this king of _peace_, over Abraham and his
lineage: after which Mr. Brown, in his _Commentary_ upon the Bible,
expresses himself as follows, viz.:--“Who this Melchizedec was, this
priest of God among the Canaanites, greater than Abraham, the friend of
God, who were his parents or his successors, is on purpose concealed by
the Holy Ghost. And hence he is without father or mother, predecessor or
successor, in his historical account, in order that he might typify the
incomprehensible dignity, the amazing pedigree and unchangeable duration
of Jesus Christ, our great High Priest.”

Nobody can quarrel with the _piety_ of this commentator: but _piety_ is
not the only requisite for a commentator upon the Scriptures: the _absence
of stupidity_ is an essential condition. It is not, however, as applied to
_this particular passage_ that I thus express myself: were this the only
instance of _accommodating oversight_ it should draw forth no critique
from me. But the instances are _innumerable_, to verify the expression
that “some persons _see_, but _perceive_ not.”

Mr. Brown had no idea of an _emanation_! Mr. Brown did not comprehend the
_sons of God_! Mr. Brown did not know the connection which existed between
the _peace_ of Christ and that which was represented by Melchizedec.[585]

“How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of Him that bringeth _good
tidings_, that publisheth _peace_; that bringeth _good tidings_ of good,
that publisheth _salvation_; that saith unto Zion, Thy _God_
reigneth.”[586]

“These things have I spoken unto you, that in Me ye might have _peace_. In
the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome
the world.”[587]

“If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day the things which
belong unto thy _peace_! but now they are hid from thine eyes.”[588]

“_Peace_ I leave with you; _My peace_ I give unto you: not as the world
giveth, give I unto you.”[589]

“Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and
which entereth into that within the veil;

“Whither the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus, made an _High
Priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec_.”[590]

  “From our fathers to us the good tidings descend,
    From us to our children agen;
  Unrestrain’d as the sun, and as lasting, they blend
    All the nations and ages of men.
  Good news of great joy to all people, they speak
    At once to the learn’d and the rude,
  To barbarian and Scythian, the Jew and the Greek,
    Nor country nor person exclude.

  From the man who goes forth to his labour by day,
    To the woman his help-meet at home;
  From the child that delights in his infantine play,
    To the old on the brink of the tomb;
  From the bridal companions, the youth and the maid,
    To the train on the death-pomp that wait;
  From the rich in fine linen and purple array’d,
    To the beggar that lies at his gate:

  To all is the ensign of blessedness shown,
    To the dwellers in vale or on hill,
  Alike to the monarch who sits on his throne,
    And the bond-man who toils at the mill;
  High and low, rich and poor, young and old, one and all,
    Earth’s sojourners, dead and alive,
  Who perish’d by Adam, our forefather’s fall,
    Shall in Jesus the Saviour revive.

  Not an ear, that those tidings of welfare can meet,
    But to _it_ doth that welfare belong:
  Then those tidings with rapture what ear shall not greet,
    What tongue shall not echo the song?
  All hail to the Saviour! all hail to the Lord!
    God and Man in one person combined!
  The Father’s Anointed! by Angels adored!
    The Hope and Delight of mankind!”[591]




CHAPTER XXXIII.

  “Yet once I was blind, and could not see the light,
  And straight to Jeru-_salem_ I then took my flight;
  They led me through a wilderness, with a multitude of care,
  You may know me by the system, or badge I wear.

  Twelve dazzling lights I saw, which did me surprise;
  I stood in amaze where I heard a great noise;
  A _serpent_ came by me,--I fell unto the ground,
  With joy, peace, and comfort the _secret_ I found.”[592]


The _principle_ of all mysteries having been already elucidated, it only
remains, that in this concluding chapter, I point out a few more instances
of their practical application.

In the Gospel, then, according to St. Matthew, I find the words, “_O
generation of vipers_, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to
come?”[593] And in that according to St. John, the following, “We be not
_born of fornication_; we have one Father, even God.”[594]

The juxtaposition of these texts, one with another, and the comparison of
them, mutually, with the explication of the _serpent_, given at p. 229,
will not only confirm the _truth_ of all the foregoing developments, but
satisfy you further, what I am very certain you did not before identify,
viz. that the phrases _generation of vipers_, and the being _born of
fornication_, are one and the same--the _viper_, or _serpent_, being the
symbol of _lustfulness_, making the former equivalent to _ye offspring of
concupiscence_; that is, in other words, ye _born of fornication_![595]
And the very stress laid upon this mode of _geniture_, implies not only
the _possibility_ of a different sort, but its _frequency_ also!

“In the Purana prophecies concerning the expected Saviour,” say the
_Asiatic Researches_, “it is said, that he was the son, or rather the
incarnation, of the great serpent: and his mother was also of that tribe,
and incarnate in the house of a pot-maker. She conceived, at the age of
one year and a half, the great serpent gliding over her while she was
asleep in the cradle: and his mother, accordingly, is represented as
saying to the child, once that she brought him to a place full of
serpents--‘Go and play with them, _they are your relations_.’”

Here it will be seen that, under the form of a serpent, is personified the
_Deity_, or the _generative power_.

Nunez de la Vega, Bishop of Chiapa, in Mexico, when describing Nagualism,
in his _Constitutions_, as observed in that country, says: “The Nagualists
practise it by superstitious calendars, wherein are inserted the proper
names of all the Naguals, of stars, the elements, birds, beasts, fishes,
and reptiles; with observations upon the months and days; in order that
the children, as soon as they are born, may be dedicated to that which, in
the calendar, corresponds with the day of their birth; this is preceded by
some frantic ceremonies, and the express consent of parents, which is an
explicit part between the infants and the Naguals that are to be given to
them. They then appoint the _melpa_, or place, where, after the completion
of seven years, they are brought into the presence of the Nagual to ratify
the engagement; for this purpose they make them renounce God and His
blessed Mother, instructing them beforehand not to be alarmed, or sign
themselves with the cross: they are afterwards to embrace the Nagual
affectionately, which, by _some diabolical art or another, appears very
tame, and fondly attached to them, although it may be a beast of a
ferocious nature, as a lion, a tiger, etc._ They persuade the children, by
their _infernal cunning_, that this Nagual is _an angel sent by God_ to
watch over their fortunes, to protect, assist, and accompany them; and
that it must be invoked upon all occasions, business, or occurrences, in
which they may require its aid!”

It is very clear, that the _Nagualism_ above notified is but a degenerate
offshoot of that _serpent_ worship, which is coeval with the _fall_: yet,
degenerate as it is, it is equally indisputable, that this good man’s zeal
outsteps far his judgment, the exaggerations of his fancy even committing
him so far, as to make him imperceptibly contradict himself!

Surely, were it a principle of action with those unfortunate beings to
make their children, on their entrance upon active life, to _renounce
God_, they would not teach them, at the same time, to _reverence_ a brute
creature, merely as being a _subordinate servant of that God_!

To reconcile the Bishop, therefore, to something like truth, I will
suppose him to mean by the word _God_, where it first occurs, _Christ_,
which is evident from the context, of “His blessed Mother”: and then the
prohibition against the sign of “the cross,” must be understood
exclusively as in reference to _him_; a conclusion which is confirmed by
an additional reference to that _oath_, which I have before mentioned, as
still prevalent amongst the Irish.

_By the cross_ is the oath, accompanied by a transverse location of the
forefinger of one hand upon that of the other: and the addition alluded to
is _of Christ_, which is never volunteered except when equivocation is
suspected; and then it is exacted as a matter of _distinction_ between
_His_ cross and the _more antecedent_ one!

But no further proof is requisite to prove the Bishop’s want of candour
than his _withholding_ documents from the public eye, which would appear
to illustrate the subject.--“Although in these tracts and papers there
are,” says he, “many other things touching primitive paganism, they are
not mentioned in this epitome, lest, in being brought into notice, they
should be the means of confirming more strongly an idolatrous
superstition.” He should have had more confidence in his own cause, and
feel that--“If anything, in consequence of this scrutiny, totter and fall,
it can only be the _error_ which has attached itself to truth, encumbering
and deforming it. _Truth_ itself will remain _unshaken, unsullied, fair,
immortal_!”

Now, in the description of the ancient city, near Palenque, quoted before,
I find some words, which prove an affinity between the worship of the
ancient inhabitants of America and those of Ireland, and which rescue both
from the imputations of bigotry. “I am _Culebra_,” says _Votan_, one of
the early princes, I believe, of Mexico, who wrote an historical tract in
the Indian idiom, “because I am Chivim.”

The man’s name, you perceive, was _Votan_, but his ambition was to be
considered _Culebra_, or the _snake_, that is, the deity so personified:
the mode whereby he sought to establish it is foreign from my inquiry.

The _Gadelglas_ of the ancient Irish was precisely similar to this
_Culebra_ of the Americans: _gad_ signifying a snake, or tortuosity: _el_,
god; and _glas_, green--in all, the _green snake-god_! And conformably
with this import, we are assured by a man who knew very little as to the
_reason why_, but whose testimony is here valuable in a matter of
_record_, not of _opinion_; namely, that the “Milesians, from the time
they first conquered Ireland, down to the reign of Ollamh Fodhla, made use
of no other _arms of distinction in their banners_ than a _serpent twisted
round a rod_, after the example of their Gadelian ancestors.”[596]

You have now the _proof_ of “_who puts the snakes_ upon our _ancient
crosses_?” And, independently of such proof, the antiquity itself of all
the traditions associating the _serpent_ with the early memoirs of our
ancestors was so great as to appal even the _monks_! And as they could
not, in their system of _transferring_ our history, _bring down_ this
serpent to the era of the _saints_, they resolved, at all events, to have
him in their dispensation, and so made _Moses_ the hero!

This they contrived by inventing the name of _Gadel_ for one of our
forefathers, and then transplanting him to the coast of the Red Sea, just
as the Legislator of the Jews was conducting them out of Egypt! They then
very unsacerdotally make a serpent bite him in some part of the heel, but
very graciously afterwards restore him to sanity by Moses’s interposition!
with a stipulation, however, that the former _sore_ should ever appear
_glass_ or _green_! And thus was he called _Gadelglas_, or _Gadel the
Green_!!!

In truth, it was from this _green_ snake-god, above explained, that the
island obtained the designation of _Emerald_; and not from the _verdure_
of its soil, which is not greater than that of other countries.

The Arabians have a tradition, that Enoch was the first who, after Enos,
son of Seth, son of Adam, wrote with a pen, in the use of which he
instructed his children, saying to them additionally, “O, my sons, know
that ye are _Sabians_!”

Although the substance of the _religion_, couched under this designation,
has been already explained, yet the origin of the name itself remains yet
to be unfolded.

Then be it known, that in the _sacred_, _i.e._ _Irish_ language, the word
_Sabh_,[597] has three significations--firstly, _voluptuousness_, or the
_yoni_; secondly, a _snake_, or sinuosity; and, thirdly, _death_ or life!
And in accordance with this triple import, if you roll back the leaves as
far as p. 229, you will find in the plate inserted there, and which has
been transcribed from the sculptures of the ancient Palencian city before
alluded to, those three symbols, viz. the _yoni_, the _serpent_, and
_death_, all united in design, and illustrating my development of that
mysterious scene wherein--

  “Eve _tempting_ Adam by a _serpent_ was stung.”[598]

The sculpture itself is intended to pourtray the situation of those
progenitors of the human species in the Garden of Eden. And yet, striking
as it is, would its tendency remain ever a _secret_, were it not for the
instrumentality of the _Irish_ language!

“That the society of free and accepted Masons possess a grand _secret_
among themselves is an undoubted fact. What this grand secret is, or of
what unknown materials it consists, mankind in general, not dignified with
the order, have made the most ridiculous suppositions. The ignorant form
incoherencies, such as conferring with the devil, and many other
contemptible surmises, too tedious to mention, and too dull to laugh at.
While the better sort, and more polished part of mankind, puzzle
themselves with reflections more refined, though equally absurd. To dispel
the opinionative mist from the eye of general error is the author’s
intention; and however rash the step may be thought, that he, a mere atom
in the grand system, should attempt so difficult, so nice a task, yet he
flatters himself that he shall not only get clear over it, but meet with
the united plaudits both of the public and of his brethren. And he must
beg leave to whisper to the ignorant, as well as the judicious, who thus
unwarrantably give their judgment, that the truth of this grand secret is
as delicately nice as the element of air; though the phenomenon
continually surrounds us, yet human sensation can never feelingly touch it
till constituted to the impression by the masonic art. The _principal_,
similar to the orb of light, universally warms and enlightens the
_principles_, the first of which, virtue, like the moon, is heavenly
chaste, attended by ten thousand star-bright qualifications. The masonic
system is perfectly the emblem of the astronomic; it springs from the
same God, partakes of the same originality, still flourishes in immortal
youth, and but with nature will expire.”[599]

The _contortions_ of the snake were easily transferred to the revolutions
of the heavenly bodies. “When the ancients,” says Boulanger, “found out
the true cycle of the sun, they coined names by a _jeu de mots_, or words,
signifying its heat, or its course, that made up the number 365, as they
had done before to make up 360. The name Sabasins, that has so much
perplexed antiquaries and etymologists, is no more than a _numerical
name_, which was given to Jupiter and to Bacchus as _periodical_ deities.
When the suppliant was initiated into the mysteries of Sabasins, a
_serpent_, the symbol of revolution, was thrown upon his breast. Το ΣΑΒΟΕ,
which the Greeks repeated so often in the feasts of Bacchus _without
understanding the meaning of the words_, meant no more than the cycle of
the year, from the Chaldean _Sabb circuire vertere_, etc. The ancient
religion, which applied entirely to the motions of the heavens and
_periodical return_ of the stars, was for that reason named _Sabianism_,
all derived from the Chaldee _Seba_, a _revolution_”; and this, though
Boulanger knew it not, from the Irish Sabh, _serpent_, or _pith_.

Sabaism, therefore, and Ophiolatreia were all one with Gadelianism; and
while, apparently, purporting to be the worship of the _serpent_ and the
_stars_, were in reality the worship of the _Sabh_ or _Yoni_--so that the
dialogue in Genesis between Eve and the _serpent_, was, in truth, a parley
between Eve and the _Yoni_: and the materials for the allegory were
afforded by the fact of _serpent_ and _yoni_ being both expressed in the
sacred, _i.e._ Irish language, by one and the same name, just as the
Lingam and the Tree of Knowledge have been before identified.

The mystery, then, of our ancient escutcheon, viz. a _serpent_ twisted
_round a rod_, resolves itself into the _Yoni embracing_ the _Lingam_.

Hence, too, it was that the portals of all the Egyptian temples were
decorated with the impress of the circle and the serpent. You see also,
why the _seasons_, at the equinoxes and solstices, should have been marked
upon the circle at p. 225; and you further see the mysterious tendency of
the Prophet’s injunction to his children, when he said, “Remember that ye
are _Sabians_,” to have been equivalent with--Keep constantly in view that
you are the offspring of _concupiscence_, and, by the suggestion of the
_serpent_, begotten in _sin_, the penalty of which, as a breach of the
Creator’s commandments, is inevitable _death_, from which you are only
extricated through the promised Redeemer, emanating from the same source
which was before instrumental in entailing your sorrow!

Every syllable of this is hieroglyphically expressed upon the plate
inserted at p. 223, where you observe the _cockatrice_, or snake-god,
placed at the bottom; over him the _crescent_, or mysterious _boot_,
_i.e._ _yoni_, the object seduced; and, finally, the _cross_ in triumph
over both, intimating emancipation by the vicarious passion of God’s own
Son.

This, then, is my answer to V. W.’s question at p. 225, where he asks,
“What relation had this with the Nehustan, or brazen serpent, to which the
Israelites paid divine honours in the time of Hezekiah?”

From this _Sabaism_, or _serpent worship_, Ireland obtained the name of
_Tibholas_ or _Tivolas_; _S_ and _T_ being commutable letters, _Tibholas_
is the same as _Sibholas_, and this being derived from _sibal_, a circle,
shows the name to have been equivalent with the _land of circles or
revolutions_, otherwise, both to the serpent and the planets.

Those prophetic women of Etruria, designated _Sybils_, were named from the
same cause, being priestesses of the _serpent_, _i.e._ the _Sabh_ or
_Yoni_--allegorically represented as married to Apollo, and gifted with a
longevity of a thousand years. Here, again, the same conversion of letters
occurred, for the place which _they_ inhabited was called from themselves,
_Tivola_, corresponding to our Tivolas, the _S_ and _T_ being, as before
explained, commutable, and _b_ or _bh_ being equivalent to _v_.

_Pythia_ is exactly synonymous with _Sybil_, meaning the priestess who
presided over the _Pith_, which, like Sabhus, means as well _serpent_ as
_yoni_: and the oracle which she attended was called _Delphi_, from _de_,
divine, and _phith_, yoni--it being but a _cave_ in the shape of that
symbol,[600] over the orifice of which the priestess used to take her seat
upon a sacred _tripod_, or the religiously emblematic pyramid,[601] while
the inspiring vapour issued from beneath through a tube similar to that
exhibited at p. 460, and one end of which, passing through the aperture,
held fast the tripod to which the priestess had been secured, so that she
should not, in her delirium, relinquish the position.

The great Samian philosopher, known as Pythagoras, only assumed this name
in deference to those rites: for _Pyth-agoras_ means one who _expounds_
the mysteries of the _pith_, viz. _death_ from its weakness, and
_redemption_ from its virtue.

“Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call his name
Immanuel,”[602] was the spiritual substance of those _expositions_: the
only difference being in that _Isaiah_ spoke prospectively towards a
lately verified issue, whereas the _initiated_ took the promise from the
moment of the _fall_: and of its _partial_ accomplishment prior to our
era, there can be no doubt, even from the writings of this prophet.

On the opposite plate are three profile likenesses of Christ, as He
appeared upon earth in human form--the first is a facsimile from a _brass_
medal, found at Brein Owyn, in the Isle of Anglesey, and published in
Rowland’s _Mona Antiqua_. The inscription upon it has been translated as
meaning, “Jesus the Mighty, this is the Christ and the Man together.”

The second, likewise of brass, and found at Friar’s Walk, near Cork, is
now in the possession of a Mr. Corlett.--Inscription upon one side, “The
Lord Jesus.”--Upon the other, “Christ the King came in _peace_, and the
light from the heaven was made life.”

You will please observe here, that he does not say the _Word_ was made
life, but the _Light_ was made life.

The third is of silver, and the inscription means, “Jesus of Nazareth, the
Christ--the Lord and the Man together.”

The originals of these inscriptions are all in Hebrew, and the
likenesses which accompany them, although on different metals, appear
almost copies one of another: whereas the cruciform figures herein already
inserted, have no one feature of correspondence whatsoever with them, but
prove themselves, on the contrary, in every particular, an antecedent
generation.[603]

[Illustration]

As everything else appertaining to the history of the Round Towers has
already been explained, I shall now account for the difference of
appropriation noticed at p. 6. Having been all erected in honour of the
_Budh_, they all partook of the phallic form; but as several enthusiasts
personified this abstract, which, in consequence of the _mysteries_
involved in the thought and the impenetrable veil which shrouded it from
the vulgar, became synonymous with _wisdom_ or _wise man_, it was
necessary, of course, that the Towers constructed in honour of each should
portray the distinctive attributes of the individuals specified. Hence the
difference of apertures towards the præputial apex, the crucifixions over
the doors, and the absence or presence of internal compartments.[604]

Those venerable piles vary in their elevation from fifty to one hundred
and fifty feet. At some distance from the summit there springs out a sort
of covering, which--accompanied as it sometimes is with a cornice, richly
sculptured in foliage, in imitation, if you must have it, _præputii
humani_, but such also was the pattern of the “nets of checker-work and
wreaths of chain-work,” which graced “the chapiters which were upon the
top of the two pillars belonging to Solomon’s temple”--terminates above in
a sort of sugar-loaf crown, concave on the inside and convex on the
outside.

Their diameter at the base is generally about fourteen feet through, that
inside measuring about eight, which decreases gradually, but
imperceptibly, to the top, where it may be considered as about six feet in
the interior.

The distance of the door from the level of the ground varies from four to
twenty-four feet. The higher the door the more irrefragable is the
evidence of the appropriation of the structure to the purposes specified.
The object was two-fold, at once to keep off profane curiosity and allow
the votaries the undisturbed exercise of their _devotions_; and to save
the _relics_ deposited underneath from the irreverent gaze of the casual
itinerant.

Analogous to these would appear to have been the edifices which the Lord
had in view when He said, “Neither shalt thou go up by steps unto Mine
altar, that thy nakedness be not discovered thereon,”[605] which
additionally proves the antiquity of the Irish _philebeg_; for, as with
any other costume, such a prohibition would be needless, it follows that
the prevailing fashion, in the eastern habiliments, must have been diffuse
and open in the nether extremes.

I beg the reader will now be pleased to look back at the Tuath-de-danaan
cross at p. 358, and he will at once see how it happened that the _Goban
Saer_, who is there represented, has been imposed upon the Royal Irish
Academy, or rather promulgated by them, as a _woman_! viz. from the
peculiarity of his _dress_! being the distinctive badge of his sacerdotal
order.

Nor is it only the character of those sculptures, but the existence of any
sculptures upon those relics, as well crosses as towers, that proves them
to have been Tuath-de-danaan; for the reason why Jehovah forbade the
Israelites from using any _tools_ upon the stones used in their religious
edifices was, that other nations had loaded theirs with sculptured images
of different gods, which made Him say, “If thou wilt make Me an altar of
stone, thou shalt not build it of _hewn_ stone, for if thou _lift up thy
tool upon it_, thou hast polluted it.”

In their masonic construction there is nothing in the Irish Towers
appertaining to any of the four orders of architecture prescribed by the
moderns. It is so also with those in the East. They approach nearest,
however, to the Tuscan, and the reason of that similarity may be imagined
from what I have already stated as to the Etrurians.

Prepared stone is the material of which they are generally composed, and
evidently, in some instances, brought from afar. Sometimes also they
appear constructed of an _artificial_ substance resembling a reddish
brick, squared, and corresponding to the composition of the Round Towers
of Mazunderan. Now if the monks possessed this secret, why were not the
monasteries, the more important edifices, according to our would-be
antiquarians, composed of the same elements? And is it not strange that
all _elegance_ and _extravagance_ should have been lavished upon the
_appendages_, while _uncouthness_, _inelegance_, want of durability, or
other architectural recommendation are the characteristics of what they
tell us were the principals? Yet neither in the monasteries, nor in any
other Christian building, do we meet with those materials above described,
either _generally_ or _partially_, except where the ruins of a
neighbouring Round Tower have made them available, which, in itself, is
sufficient to overthrow for ever the anachronisms of those who would deny
the existence of those temples anterior to the present era.

But Christian edifices, they say, are generally found in their vicinity.
Yes, and as I have already explained the reason why,[606] I forbear now
rehearsing the fact. But even _this stronghold_ of the _moderns_ I cut
away from them, by stating that at the “Giant’s Ring,” in the county Down,
the indisputable scene of _primordial veneration_, we have an instance of
a Round Tower, _without any church hard by_! And while recalled by this
circumstance, I must observe that the vitrification manifest within the
walls of that structure arose from the _burning of the dead bodies_
therein, and not from the indications of the _sacred fire_.

With three exceptions, all have a row of apertures towards the top, just
under the projecting roof, made completely after the fashion of those
which Solomon had built, being windows of narrow lights.[607] In general
the number is four, and then they correspond to the cardinal points. In
three instances there is one aperture towards the summit, in one instance
there occur five, in one six, in one seven, in one eight.

Inside they are perfectly empty from the door upwards, but most of them
divided, either by _rests_ or _projecting_ stones, into lofts or storeys,
varying in number from three to eight. In the temple of Solomon we find
the same, for “within, in the wall of the house, he made narrowed _rests
round about_, that the beams should not be fastened in the walls of the
house.”[608] And the images which I have shown to have been cupboarded
upon these rests, were nothing more than what Solomon himself did, when
“he carved all the walls of the house _round about_ with carved figures of
cherubims, and palm-trees, and open flowers, within and without.”[609]

In a future publication I intend to show a more startling correspondence
between our Round Towers and some other parts of Solomon’s temple.
Meanwhile I wish it to be borne in mind,--as in some degree accounting for
the correspondence,--that Solomon’s architect was a Sidonian.

A striking perfection observable in their construction is the inimitable
perpendicular invariably maintained. No architect of the present day, I
venture to affirm, could observe such regularity. Nelson’s pillar itself
has been proved to vary somewhat from the perpendicular line; but the
keenest eye cannot trace a deviation, in a single instance, from amongst
the whole of those Sabian monuments. Even the tower of Kilmacdugh, one of
the largest in the kingdom, having from some accident, earthquake, or
other cause, been forced to lean terrifically to one side; yet, miraculous
to mention, retains its stability as firm as before; such was the accuracy
of its original elevation.[610]

If asked how it was I conceive them to have been constructed, I should
answer, by a scaffolding raised gradually from within. The expense in this
case would be infinitely less, and the labour also. It would be very easy
to let fall a plumb-line at various intervals of height, by which at all
times the perpendicular may be ascertained, and the masonry carried on by
what may be called overhanding, while the cement employed in giving
solidity to the whole, and which is the direct counterpart of the Indian
chunan, bids defiance to the efforts of man to dissever, except by the
exertion of extraordinary power.

That this was the mode in which their erection was effected, is evident in
the instance of Devenish Tower, which, from the elegance of its cut-stone
exterior, would seem to negative the idea of their being built from
within. But a judicious eye cannot but at once discern that near the top,
where it is probable that one or two of the artists may have come out, by
the help of some contrivance devised for the purpose, the execution and
finish which the workmanship displays is incomparably superior to that of
any of the lower parts. In other instances, where the ancient top having
been removed, a modern one has been substituted, the case is very
different indeed.

The cohesiveness of all these columns will be best estimated by the fact
of the Round Tower at Clondalkin having firmly stood its ground when, in
the year 1786-87, the powder-mill explosion, which took place within
twenty-four feet of its base, shivered to annihilation every other
structure within its influence; nay, extended its violence so far as to
shatter the windows in some of the streets of Dublin. That at Maghera also
lay unbroken after its fall, exhibiting to the spectator the almost
appalling spectacle of a gigantic cannon!

That both Indians and Irish performed circular _dances_ around them,
typical of the motions of the heavenly bodies, is highly probable, as we
have still the name of a particular movement, apparently that practised on
the occasion, still amongst us in common use, namely, _Rinke-teumpoil_, or
the temple dance: and that they otherwise honoured them by performing
_penances_ around them, is evident from the name of _Turrish_, which means
a _religious circuit round a tower_! applied afterwards by the Catholics
to any penitential _round_. And we have the authority of Sanchoniathon,
when talking of the Creation, for stating that “the next race consecrated
_pillars_--that they _prostrated themselves before them_, and made annual
libations to them”![611]

These, I conceive, were the halcyon days of Ireland’s legendary and
romantic greatness. In this sequestered isle, aloof from the tumults of a
bustling world, this Tuath-de-danaan colony, all of a religious race, and
all disposed to the pursuits of literature, united into a circle of
international love, and spread the fame of their sanctity throughout the
remotest regions of the universe. That its locality was familiar to the
Brahmins of India I make no earthly question; that it was that sacred
island which they eulogised so fondly, and spoke of with such raptures, I
am sanguinely satisfied; and equally convinced am I, that it was that
beautifying region, whose widespread holiness, and far-famed renown, made
such an impression on the minds of Orpheus and of Pindar, when those
divine bards, speaking of its Hyperborean inhabitants, thus enchantingly
sung--

“On sweet and fragrant herbs they feed, amid verdant and grassy pastures,
and drink ambrosial dew, divine potation: all resplendent alike in coeval
youth; a placid serenity for ever smiles on their brows and lightens in
their eyes; the consequence of a just temperament of mind and disposition,
both in the parents and in the sons, inclining them to do what is great,
and to speak what is wise. Neither disease nor wasting old age infest this
holy people, but without labour, without war, they continue to live happy,
and to escape the vengeance of the cruel Nemesis.”[612]

Though clothed in the cadence of measured phraseology, and decked in the
charms of an imaginative style, this is scarely more beautiful than the
simple summary of the Tuath-de-danaan moral code, as given you at page
112, and of which, in truth, this is but the paraphrase. For instance,
they fed, it is stated, “on sweet and fragrant herbs,” because they were
prevented by their first commandment from eating “anything endowed with
life.”[613] They drank “ambrosial dew,” because their fifth commandment
forbade their touching “any intoxicating liquor.” And the healthful
aspects they exhibited were but the natural result of temperate habits and
virtuous demeanour.

  “The simplest flow’ret of the vale,
  The simplest note that swells the gale,
  The common air, the earth, the skies,
  To them were opening Paradise!”

Five hundred years after the period of their dethronement, while the
influence of their example still continued to operate, we are told by the
Dinn Seanchas, that “The people deemed each other’s voices sweeter than
the warblings of a melodious harp, such peace and concord reigned amongst
them, that no music could delight them more than the sound of each other’s
voices.”

With these compare what Cambrensis, who was no friend, has said of this
island, about two thousand years after. “Of all climes,” says he, “Ireland
is the most temperate; neither Cancer’s violent heat is felt there in
summer, nor Capricorn’s cold in winter; but in these particulars it is so
blessed, that it seems as if Nature looked upon this zephyric realm with
its most benignant eye. It is so temperate,” he adds, “that neither
infectious fogs, nor pestilential winds, are felt there, so that the aid
of doctors is seldom looked for, and sickness rarely appears except among
the dying.”

The repose of this happy people being at length disturbed by the ungenial
inundation of the Scythian intruders, the ritual of the temple worship was
precipitated apace; and this, if I mistake not, “satisfactorily removes
the uncertainty in which the origin and uses of those ancient buildings
has been heretofore involved.”[614] For the Scythians being warriors[615]
rather than students, and looking with distrust upon the emblematic images
of their temple-serving predecessors, which they considered to be
idolatry, did all in their power by legislative, as well as military
enactments, to efface every trace thereof; so that in a few years the
temple, or tower, worship became utterly extinct, and--more than
annihilated--forgotten.

Instead thereof, they substituted the worship of _fire_,[616] which,
though their predecessors were far from recognising as a deity, yet they
always showed to it some reverential respect: and this approximation of
sentiment, on both parts, contributed to what may be called a passive
reconciliation; the victors assuming the mastery of the soil; and the
vanquished, in deference to their high literary repute, being continued as
superintendents of the national education, as well as the practical
followers of all trades and professions.

It was so also at Rome, when Romulus dislodged the Pelasgi, who, we are
told by Festus, had themselves some time previously, under the name of
“Sacrani,” that is, the religious caste, corresponding to “Irish,” which
signifies the same thing, drove the Ligures and Siculi from Septimontio,
_i.e._ Rome.

The only use now made of those Sabian edifices, after stifling the
religion for which they were designed, was, we may suppose, to promote the
study of astronomical science, for which they were admirably adapted, and
with which their _original_ destination was inseparably interwoven.[617]
But as the stimulus of religion was wanting for the prosecution of those
researches, we cannot be surprised that _this_ part of their purpose, too,
sharing the fate of its collateral helpmate, insensibly repined under the
altered aspect of the scene; for, to apply to it what has been said of the
great scheme of the creation itself, viz. that--

              “if each system in gradation roll
  Alike essential to the amazing whole,
  The least confusion--but in one--not all,
  That system only, but the whole must fall.”

The knowledge of this delightful study, however, did not yet completely
die away; it formed still an essential in the education of every Irish
youth; and the remnant of our language, at this very moment, shows how
piously attentive were its framers to that divine precept which told them,
that the “lights of the firmament of heaven were for signs and for
seasons, and for days and for years.”

The profligate degeneracy of the Druids, however, tended to bring _this_
also into disesteem.

This order of priests got so overbearing here, grasping at not only high
ecclesiastical power, but also intermeddling in secular transactions,
that they made themselves obnoxious to the great body of the people, and a
disregard both to the literature and the religion which they inculcated
was the inevitable result. To this I ascribe the plebeian war of Ireland,
A.D. 47, that deplorable state of a country, when faction and rage usurp
the place of counsel and discretion! when commerce stagnates! confidence
decays! when lust stalks abroad to desecrate everything holy! and all is
doubt, suspicion, melancholy, and death!

How beautifully and how aptly, but yet, for himself, how unwisely, did the
philosophic Callisthenes apply the sentiment of Euripedes to Philip of
Macedon, at Alexander’s Feast?--viz.:--

  “When civil broils declining states surprise,
  There the worst men to highest honours rise.”

Many virtuous persons, we are told, opposed themselves to the
encroachments of this degenerate hierarchy. When Conlah, in his retreat
from the glitter of life, betook himself to an humble cottage, and devoted
the faculties of his comprehensive mind to philosophical pursuits and the
improvement of his species, the greatest praise which the analyst, in
recording such worth, could bestow, was, “She do rinni an choin
bhliocht-ris inna Druwdh”; that is, It is he that disputed against the
Druids!

The Books, however, of their predecessors, the Boreades, still remained,
and the knowledge of astronomy was kept alive by their perusal. But of
these we were despoiled, very shortly after, by that mistaken piety
elsewhere deplored. Some few treatises even then must have escaped, and
their effect was best illustrated, as shown before, by the unprecedented
success with which the gospel dispensation was hailed in this island.

I have before shown the instance of Fergil or Virgil, who, in the eighth
century, maintained the rotund and true form of the earth, when the rest
of Europe were ignorant on the subject. “He was,” says Sir James Ware,
“the author of a Discourse on the Antipodes, which he most truly held,
though against the received opinion of the ancients, who imagined the
earth to be a plain.”

In this sweeping ban upon the ancients, however, Sir James must not
include the ancient Irish, whose hereditary doctrine upon the subject it
is evident that Fergil did here only give utterance to; and dearly did he
suffer for it; his life, like that of Galileo, having been forfeited
thereby, at the hands of the same enlightened tribunal. This was enough to
put the _last_ extinguisher upon the cultivation, or at least avowal, of
the Irish notions of astronomy. It is astonishing, notwithstanding, what
an instinctive thirst still lurked in the Irish mind for the sublimities
of this pursuit.[618] Smith mentions an instance of a “poor man near
Blackstones, in the county Kerry, who had a tolerable notion of
calculating the epacts, golden number, dominical letter, the moon’s
phases, and even eclipses, although he had never been taught to read
English.” The author of this essay has known many such characters;--one in
particular who, from his great proficiency in the art, had obtained for
himself the honourable designation of the _Kerry Star_.




LIST OF IRISH ROUND TOWERS AND CROSSES.[619]

_An asterisk (*) is prefixed to the names of the most remarkable._


I. TOWERS.

AGHABOE (Queen’s Co.).

AGHADOE (Kerry), only 12 or 15 feet left. Its masonry greatly superior to
that of the church near it (167).

AGHAGOWER (Mayo), near Westport. Imperfect.

AGHAVILLER (Kilkenny), six miles south of Thomastown. Imperfect.

ANNADOWN (Galway), only 7 feet of a very fine base left.

*ANTRIM (Antrim), one of the most perfect, but of the smaller class.

ARANMORE (Galway), base only.

ARDFERT (Kerry), site only.

ARDKEEN, or ARDKYNE (Down).

ARDMORE (Waterford), very perfect specimen, 97 feet high by 52 feet round
(_v._ p. 71).

ARDPATRICK (Limerick), imperfect.

ARDRAHAN (Galway), site interesting from having a subterranean passage.

ARMAGHDOWN (Galway).

ARMOY (Antrim), near Ballycastle, 40 feet only left.

ASSYLIN (Roscommon), site only.

BAAL, or BALLA (Mayo), only 40 feet left, but fine specimen.

BALLYBEG (Cork), site only.

BALLYCARBERY (Kerry), alluded to by O’Brien as a “Cathoir ghall” (p. 48).

BALLYGADDY (Galway), near Kilbannon.

BALLYVOURNEY (Cork), site only.

BELTURBET (Cavan).

BRIGOON (Cork), site only; tower blown down in 1704.

CAILTREE ISLE, so mentioned by Vallancey; probably INISCALTRA (_q.v._).

CASHEL (Tipperary), 90 feet high by 42 feet round. Sculptured doorway.

CASTLE DERMOT (Kildare), imperfect, but with fine doorway.

CLAREEN (King’s Co.), see SIERG KIERAN.

*CLONDALKIN (Dublin), complete, but renovated, specimen, nearly 80 feet
high by 45 feet round; curious projecting base 13 feet high (p. 101).

CLONES (Monaghan), imperfect.

*CLONMACNOISE (King’s Co.), two fine, but renovated, specimens.

CLOYNE (Cork), well preserved, but tampered with in rebuilding. Originally
92 feet high, which has been increased to 102 feet.

CORK (near St. Finbar’s), site only.

DERRY (city), site only.

*DEVENISH (Fermanagh), the most perfect and highly finished of all, 79
feet high by 48 feet round (p. 38).

DISART CARRIGEN, or DISERT ANGUS (Limerick), near Adare; about 60 feet
left; ornamented doorway.

DONOUGHMORE (Meath), 79 feet left; fine, but imperfect, specimen.

DROMCLIFFE (Clare), very imperfect remains of.

DROMESKIN (Louth), a reconstruction; church now stands on original site.

DRUMBOE (Down), only the base, with quadrangular doorway, remaining.

DRUMCLIFFE (Sligo), only 40 feet left.

DRUMLAHAN, or DRUMLANE (Cavan), only 20 feet of original left, with
“belfry” added.

DUBLIN (city), site on left side of Ship Street, now built on.

DURROW (King’s Co.).

DYSART ENOS (Queen’s Co.), imperfect.

DYSART O’DEA (Clare), near Ennis; 50 feet left, 61 feet in circumference.

FERBANE (King’s Co.), Vallancey mentions two specimens.

FERNS (Wexford), evidently a modern structure made out of the old
materials.

*FERTAGH (Kilkenny), one of the loftiest and most perfect.

FINGLAS (Dublin), site only.

GIANT’S RING (Down), a specimen “without any church hard by” (O’B.), p.
514.

*GLENDALOUGH (Wicklow), locality most interesting; contains two specimens,
one 110 feet high by 50 feet round.

INISCALTRA (Galway), probably the “Cailtree Isle” of Vallancey.

INIS KEEN (Monaghan), 42 feet left standing.

INIS MACNESSAIN (Ireland’s Eye) (Dublin), site only.

INIS-MOCHOE (Down), on shore of Lough Strangfal; imperfect.

*INIS SCATTERY (Clare), more than 100 feet high, injudiciously repaired.

IRELAND’S EYE (Dublin), materials of tower taken to build R.C. church.

ISLE OF ARAN (Galway).

KELLISTOWN (Carlow), site only.

*KELLS (Meath), in very good preservation, though unroofed; quite
unaltered; 99 feet left.

KILBANNON, or BALLYGADDY (Galway), 40 feet left.

KILCOONA (Galway).

KILCULLEN (Kildare), 40 feet remaining.

*KILDARE, very fine, and elaborately ornamented; 105 feet high, but top
spurious.

*KILKENNY, perfect, all but the top 108 feet high. Good specimen.

KILLALA (Mayo), good specimen, judiciously repaired; 84 feet high by 50
feet round.

KILLASHEE (Kildare), also known as Killossy. Imperfect.

KILLESHANDRA (Cavan).

KILLESHIN (Queen’s Co.), site only.

*KILMACDUAGH (Galway), fine Cyclopean base; 120 feet high by 57 feet
round; 3 feet out of the perpendicular.

KILMALLOCK (Limerick), very imperfect, and much altered.

KILNABOY (Clare), 12 feet only standing.

KILREA (Kilkenny), nearly perfect.

KINNETH, pronounced KINNEIGH (Cork), remarkably fine hexagonal base,
underground passage, rock basins, etc.

LORUM (Carlow), site only.

LUSK (Dublin), fine Cyclopean doorway; much repaired; 100 feet high by 43
feet round.

MAGHERA (Down), only 20 feet left, rest blown down in 1704.

MAGHTURREIDH (Sligo), doubtful.

MAHEE ISLAND (Down), imperfect.

MEELICK (Mayo), 72 feet left; in good condition.

*MONASTERBOICE (Louth), characteristic doorway, top shattered by
lightning, otherwise perfect; 110 feet high by 50 feet round.

ORAN (Roscommon), only 12 feet left, must have been one of the largest.

OUGHTERARD (Kildare), scanty remains.

RAM ISLAND (Antrim), scanty remains; said to have been used as a
sepulchre.

RATH (Clare), site only.

RATHMICHAEL (Dublin), stump only.

*RATTOO (Kerry), very perfect; the loftiest and least injured by
renovation.

ROSCOM (Galway), three miles east of Galway. Imperfect.

ROSCREA (Tipperary), imperfect, curiously sculptured rounded doorway.

ROSENALLIS (Meath?), site only; the subject of a bitter controversy (_v._
Petrie, pp. 40-42).

ROSSCARBERY (Cork), site only.

*SCATTERY ISLAND (see INIS SCATTERY), 125 feet high by 52 feet round. The
only specimen having doorway level with the ground.

SIERG KEIRAN or CLAREEN (King’s Co.), site only.

SLANE (Meath), very doubtful site.

SWORDS (Dublin), almost entirely rebuilt; 73 feet high.

TAMLAGHTFINLOGAN (Derry), scanty remains.

TEGHADOE (Kildare), 60 feet left, in excellent preservation.

TEMPLE FINGHIN (at Clonmacnoise).

*TIMAHOE (Queen’s Co.), 96 feet high by 60 feet round; beautiful specimen.

TOMGRANEY (Clare), site only.

TORY ISLAND (Donegal), imperfect.

TRUMMERY (Antrim).

TULLAGHERIN (Kilkenny).

TULLOSHERIN (Waterford), near Dungarvan; mentioned by Vallancey.

*TURLOUGH (Mayo), good specimen, but reconstructed in part.

WEST CARBERY (?), so mentioned by Vallancey, but probably ROISCARBERY
(_q.v._).

NOTE.--Round Towers, evidently imitations of the Irish R. T., exist at
Brechin and Abernethy in Scotland. There is, also, a rather doubtful
specimen at Peel (Isle of Man), and a still more doubtful one at Hythe
(Kent).


II. CROSSES.

_Achath_, _Abhall_, or _Aghold_ (Wicklow), much weather-worn.

*_Ardboe_, or _Arboe_ (Tyrone), about 20 feet high, with remarkable
sculpture.

_Armagh_, imperfect; when complete, at least 26 feet high; sculptured.

_Banagher_ (Derry), curious sculptured figure of man on horseback.

_Cashel_ (Tipperary), much weather-worn.

_Castle Dermot_ (Kildare), two specimens of some interest.

_Clondalkin_ (Dublin), ancient granite specimen, 9 feet high.

_Clones_ (Monaghan), handsomely sculptured, but weather-worn.

_Clonfeacle_, (Armagh), without sculpture or inscription.

*_Clonmacnoise_ (King’s Co.), two fine specimens (_v._ p. 358).

_Cong_ (Connemara), base only, with inscription in Erse.

_Conwall_ (Donegal), only the socket remaining.

_Donoughmore_ (Meath), imperfect, and much weather-worn.

*_Drumcliffe_ (Sligo), handsomely sculptured.

_Drumeskin_ (Louth), used as a headstone in burying-ground.

_Duleck_ (Meath), handsomely sculptured.

*_Durrow_ (King’s Co.), very beautiful, but hard to find, being situated
among trees in an old burial-ground.

*_Dysart_, or _Disert_, _O’Dea_ (Clare), now in ruins, once richly
sculptured.

_Fassaroe_ (Wicklow), in private grounds.

_Ferns_ (Wexford), remains of four specimens in different places.

_Finglas_ (Dublin), well cut, but without ornament (_v._ p. 366).

_Glanculmkill_ (Clare), base only.

_Glen_ (Donegal).

*_Glendalough_ (Wicklow), _v._ p. 466.

*_Kells_ (Meath), three beautiful specimens (_v._ p. 491).

_Kilclispeen_ (Tipperary), with very remarkable sculptured base.

*_Kilcullen_ (Kildare), portions of two specimens (_v._ p. 338).

*_Killkieran_ (Kilkenny), three specimens.

*_Killamery_ (Kilkenny), beautiful specimen.

_Kilmacduagh_ (Galway).

_Kilnaboy_ (Clare), has been shifted from its original position.

*_Kilnafora_ (Clare), remains of five out of seven.

_Kilnafosse._

_Kilrea_ (Kilkenny).

_Maheramore_, or _Banagher_ (Derry). See _Banagher_.

*_Monasterboice_ (Louth), the most perfect in Ireland.

*_Moone Abbey_, or _Timolin_ (Kildare), two specimens; one very
remarkable.

_Moville_ (Donegal), ancient cross, with hole in top of shaft.

_Nevinstown_ (Meath), in mutilated condition.

_Old Leighlin_ (Carlow), only the base remaining.

_Oughterard_ (Kildare), several specimens near the Round Tower.

_Roscrea_ (Tipperary), broken, but with curious carving.

_Rosstrevor_ (Down), fine specimen in burying-ground.

_Temple Cronan_ (Clare).

_Temple Kieran_ (Leitrim).

*_Termon Fechin_ (Louth), fine specimen.

_Timolin_, or _Moone Abbey_ (Kildare).

_Tory Island_ (Donegal), several specimens.

*_Tuam_ (Galway), “the finest monument of its class and age” (Petrie).

_Tynan_ (Armagh).




INDEX.

(_R. T. signifies Round Tower, or Towers._)


  AARON, or Inaron, 149.

  ABAD (Persian dynasty), 246.

  ABARIS, the Boreadan;
    his mission to Delos from the Insula Hyperboreorum, 53-56, 397, 448;
    why he did not adopt the Scythian dress, 56;
    meaning of the “arrow” which he bore with him to Delos, 328.

  ABERNETHY (R. T.), 10, 431.

  AGRICULTURE, an object of Sabaic worship, 111.

  AGNARUPI, a manifestation of the Deity (Brahminic), 288.

  AICHE BAAL-TINNE and AICHE-SHAMAIN, 199, 200.

  AITHAIR FOADHA, or the tree of Bhudda, explained, 472.

  ALPHABET (Irish), a “tree” code, 229, 418.
    See ST. PATRICK.

  AMERGIN, the bard, brother of Heremon and Heber, 22, 387, 388.

  ANNALS of Ulster and of the Four Masters, cited against the theory that
        R. T. were belfries, 364;
    also to prove that they existed before the 5th century, 374.

  ANATTA, ANUZZA, and DOCHA, their respective meanings, 114.

  APIS, the Egyptian deity, what he represented, 159.

  APOLLO, meaning of the name, 61;
    his alleged cyclic visits to the Insula Hyperboreorum (Ireland), 52,
        397;
    Christnah, the Indian equivalent of, 218, 219;
    sculptured with the Python at Knockmoy, 330;
    meaning of the Python myth, 291;
    the “great year” of the Greeks, 397;
    his musical worship in Ireland, 403;
    his supposed temple at Kilmalloch, 202;
    Phrygian account of his visit to the Hyperboreans, 436;
    _Grynæus_ and _Lycæus_ explained, 466.
    See SUN-WORSHIP.

  APPLE, Eve and the, 227 _et seq._

  ARABIC Sabaism, 503-506.

  ARCHITECTURE of the R. T., 513.

  ARD-MELCHAN, derivation of the name, 203.

  ARDMORE (R. T.), 71, 75;
    meaning of the name, 75.

  ARGUES, its Sabaic import, 195.

  ARIMASPI, their connection with Cyclopean architecture and mining, 86,
        407.

  ARK of Scripture, what it means, 224-226, 267, 270 _et seq._

  ARMAGH (R. T.), destruction of, by lightning, 50.

  ARON distinguished from TEBAH (both signifying “ark”), 270.

  ARRAN, meaning of the name, 429 _n._

  ARROWHEAD character, 340.

  ARTEMIDORUS cited, 301, 302, 400.

  ARYANS, site of the ancient Aria or Artacoana, 183;
    Aria and Ariana distinguished, 183, 184;
    the latter equivalent to Iran or Eriene, 184;
    Eriene corrupted into Ierne, 185;
    Zendavast description of the Aryan country, 185 _et seq._;
    change in its climate, 186, 187;
    consequent Western migration of the Aryans, 187;
    Jemshid and his times, 188;
    policy of Zoroaster, 188;
    laws of Ormuzd corrupted, 188;
    two claimants for the name of Zoroaster, 189;
    antiquity of the original Zoroaster, 189;
    his predecessors, 189;
    the Dabistan and its author, Moshan or Fani, 189;
    religion of Hushang, 189, 190;
    the Mahabadean dynasty, 190;
    antiquity of the Iranian monarchy, 190.

  ASIA, the “cradle of the human race,” 265, 266.

  ASTARTE, phallic worship of, 101, 102;
    description of her temple at Hieropolis, 168;
    known also by the name Rimmore, 102;
    signification of the latter, 102;
    perpetuation of this meaning in sculpture at Glendalough, 473;
    traces of her worship (as the Moon) at Athlone, 204;
    the Irish term of endearment, “Astore,” derived from her name, 213;
    Astarte distinguished from Militta, 213;
    use of bells in her worship, 175.

  ASTORE. See ASTARTE.

  ASTRONOMY, proficiency of the ancient Irish in, 59, 60, 521-3;
    R. T. used for purposes connected with, 61, 62, 521;
    entered into the religion of the ancient Egyptians and Indians, 77-79;
    connection of serpent-worship with, 515;
    Fergil and the theory of the earth’s rotundity, 523;
    predilection of the Irish peasantry for, 523;
    malign influence of the Druids on, 521.

  ATHLONE, 204.

  ATREUS, “treasury” of, its analogy to the Round Towers, 454, 458.

  AUGURS (Roman), symbolism of the cross connected with, 490.

  AVATARA and AVANTARA, incarnations (Brahminical) of the Deity,
        distinguished, 288.

  AVENTINE (Roman), derivation of the name, 198 _n._

  AVIENUS on the _Insula Sacra_, 28, 29, 117;
    his opinion of Irish antiquities, 28;
    applies the term “Hibernian” to the Irish, 28.


  BAALS, plurality and divinity of, 29;
    meaning of “Baal,” 29, 65;
    connection between them and the R. T., 29;
    twofold signification of the word “Baal” in Scripture, 74;
    Septuagint rendering of the expression “high place of Baal,” 75;
    the Irish _Bail-toir_ and _Aoi-Bail-toir_ distinguished, 75.

  BAAL-PHEARAGH, how connected with the _Baal-peor_ of Scripture, and with
        the African _Belli-Paaro_, 111;
    signification of the name, 103;
    form of the R. T. attributable to his influence, 29.
    See FARRAGH or PHEARAGH.

  BAAL-THINNE, or sacred fire of Baal, 88-90.

  BAALTIS, meaning of, 65.

  BABEL, tower of, its purpose, 63, 64;
    meaning of “Babel,” 65;
    the Hebrew (scriptural) name for, indicative of its phallic character,
        283, 284.

  BABYLONIANS, proficient in astronomy, 64 _n._

  BACCHUS, name of, found in ancient Irish inscriptions, 437;
    only another name for one of the various Buddhas, 235 _n._;
    the “Maypole” ceremony specially connected with his worship, 235;
    significance of the name _Sabasins_, 505.

  BADHHA, worshipped by the Tuath-de-danaan women, 132.

  BAKU, description of fire-temple at, 72.

  BALLYCARBERY (R. T.), 48.

  BANAVAN (in Scotland), its connection with the Tuath-de-danaans, 114 _n._

  BARDS, nature of their office, 22, 23;
    their high reputation, 23, 24;
    their use of rhyme and verse, 25;
    also of music, 25, 405, 406;
    their decadence into prose after their conversion to Christianity, 25;
    suppressed by the English, 26;
    superiority of Irish bardic music, 405, 406;
    origin of the name “Bards,” 451;
    the knowledge of astronomy preserved in their sacred books, 522.

  BASILISK, or COCKATRICE, its Sabaic and scriptural significance, 225,
        226.

  BAVANA and DANA, 113, 114.

  BEAUFORT (Miss), and the enactment of Tara (A.D. 79), 88-96.

  BELFRIES, the R. T. could not have been intended as, 5-13, 36, 37;
    the names _Cloic-teacha_ and _Erdam_ applied to them in the Irish
        Annals, as distinguished from _Fiadh-Nemeadh_, 50, 51.

  BELLI-PAARO, or _Baal-Peor_, and _Baal-Phearagh_, phallic nature of, 111.

  BELLS, origin of, 10, 11;
    Irish CEOL and _Ceolan_ date from pagan times, 11;
    the Sabian and Druidic use of, adopted by the Christian missionaries
        to their own worship, 11, 170-175;
    introduced into England from Ireland by Gildas, 11, 173, 174;
    miraculous effects supposed to result from the tolling of, 35 _n._;
    date of their introduction into churches, 174;
    shape of the Irish _crotals_, or pagan bells, 175;
    square bells, 175;
    connection of bells with the worship of Astarte, 175;
    St. Finnan’s bell, 174 _n._;
    references to bells in Scripture, 171;
    traces of apparatus for ringing bells found in some of the R. T.
        accounted for, 172, 173;
    used for worship in Ceylon, Burmah, and China, 173, 174.

  BELUS, description of the tower of, by Herodotus, 283 _n._

  BENARES, cruciform shape of pagodas at, 352;
    sepulchral pyramids at, 75, 76.

  BETH (Irish alphabetical letter), significance of, 228, 229.

  BIRS-NIMROD, or tower of Nimrod, its Sabaic character, 65 _n._

  _Bleain_, the Irish for year, its meaning and derivation, 58.

  BOAR-INCARNATION (of Vishnu) and the White Island, 326-328.

  BOAT (lunar), or crescent, 273.

  BOAZ and JACHIN (pillars of Solomon’s temple), 372, 511-514.

  BOLATI, meaning of, 65.

  BONA DEA, Sabaic rites of, 348, 349.

  BOO and A-BOO, origin of the Irish expressions, 132, 133.

  BOREADES, or Tuath-de-danaan priests of Boreas, superseded by the
        Scythian Druids, 56;
    relics of their costume, 56, 57;
    likewise priests of Apollo, 397-401;
    origin of the name, 401;
    Irish astronomy preserved in their sacred books, 522.
    See BARDS and INSULA HYPERBOREORUM.

  BRAHMINISM, subsequent to and distinct from Buddhism, 108, 213-215;
    its doctrine of multiple divine emanations, 287, 288.
    See INDIA.

  BRAZEN SERPENT (of Scripture), or _Nehushtan_, its relation to the
        basilisk, 225;
    also to Sabaism generally, and to that of Ireland in particular,
        501-506.
    See SERPENT-WORSHIP.

  BRECHIN (R. T.), 8, 10, 431;
    description and explanation of its symbolic sculpture, 299-301.

  BRITAIN, inclusive of Ireland, in ancient writings, 58;
    derivation of the name, 427;
    Irish etymology of some English local names accounted for, 426, 427.

  BRONTES, Sabaic import of the name, 195.

  BROOCHES (Irish) of crescent form, their symbolism, 273, 274.

  BUDDHISM, speculations regarding nature of, 107;
    antecedent to Brahminism, 108, 213, 214;
    Buddhists expelled from India, 108, 109;
    date of Buddha’s ministry, 109;
    abstract character of his teaching, 109, 110;
    the Sun and Moon (_i.e._ generation and production) as objects of
        primitive worship, 109, 110;
    Buddhism preceded Buddha, 109, 110;
    definition of Bhud and Buddhism, 112;
    transmigration of souls, a tenet of, 112, 113;
    abstract purity of, 112, 220;
    moral code of Buddhists, 112, 220;
    _Dana_, _Bavana_, _Anuzza_, _Docha_, and _Anatta_ explained, 113, 114;
    forbids the taking of animal life, 113;
    reverence of Buddhists for the elephant, 113 _n._;
    _Budh-Nemph_, _Nemph-Thur_, and _Tor-Boileh_ equivalent, 114 _n._;
    _Badha_, _Macha_, and _Moriagan_ worshipped by Tuath-de danaans, 131,
        132;
    _Farragh_ or _Phearagh_ (Irish), identical with Bhud, 132;
    origin of the Irish suffixes _Boo_ and _a-Boo_, 130, 132;
    Tuath-de-danaan effigy of Buddha, 139, 141;
    its Sabaistic and Phallic character, 213, 227, 311;
    Colebrooke’s charges against considered, 214, 215;
    subterranean temples for practice of, 215, 216;
    Buddha distinct from Paramon, 216;
    _Dearg_, _darioga_, and _darag_ as epithets of Buddha, 216, 217;
    meaning of _Magh_ and _Maghody_, 217;
    CHRISTNAH, or the “Indian Apollo,” 218, 219;
    _Buddha_ stands for a series of incarnations, 220, 221;
    _Budh_, the forbidden “apple” of Scripture, 227;
    twofold meaning of _Budh_, or _Fiodh_, 228 _et seq._;
    Eve, the first Buddhist, 230;
    Cain, the first priest of Buddhism, 230;
    Bacchus identical with Buddha, 235 _n._;
    significance of the Ceylon “Maypole” festival, 238, 239;
    the Palencian “tree”-symbolism, 229;
    original seat of, 244, 264;
    _Budh_ and its derivatives, _Fiodh_, _Fidhuis_, _Fides_, with Deus and
        Hercules, 250;
    _Tuath_ and _Suath_ identical with _Buddha_, 264;
    birthplace and parentage of Buddha, 264;
    corresponding Brahminic doctrine of multiple incarnation 287;
    its doctrine of a virginal conception, 288;
    its symbolism of the cross compared with that of Christianity, 293,
        294, 295;
    _Budh_ synonymous with _Phallus_, 311;
    also with the Egyptian _Thot_, 323;
    Bhagavan, Crishna, the White Island, and snake-legend of the _Puranas_
        considered, 325-329;
    connection of the “boar incarnation” with Ireland, 326-328;
    Buddhist sculpture at Knockmoy, 328-336;
    also on Cross at Old Kilcullen, 337, 338;
    analogies between Buddhism and Christianity, 364, 365;
    theory that Orpheus was a Buddhist, 405.

  BUDH (Irish), or FIODH, its signification, 103;
    primary and secondary meaning of, 228, 229.

  BUDH-GAYE (Irish) and BUDDA-GAYA (Indian), their phallic meaning,
        310-312.

  BUD-NEMPH and NEMPH-THUR (birthplace of St. Patrick), also TOR BOILEH
        (Indian local name), identical in meaning, 114 _n._

  BUNS (I. for children), e.g. _Surage-buns_, or children of the sun;
    cf. with _Hindu-Buns_ (E. I.), children of the moon, 74.

  BURWAH SANGOR, description of snake-sculpture on Hindu temple at, 363;
    its mutilation by Mohammedans analogous to that of the similar
        sculpture on Irish crosses by St. Patrick, 364.


  CABIRI and CABIRIC, origin and meaning of the name, 354;
    connected with Freemasonry, 354, 359.

  CAIN, the first priest of Buddhism, 230;
    nature of his offence, 230;
    and of the “sin-offering” prescribed for him, 230, 231;
    also of the “mark” set upon him, 232;
    computation of the time at which he lived, 234;
    his predecessors, 241, 242;
    his immediate progeny, 247.

  CAMADEVA (Hindu god of desire), origin and meaning of his name, 94;
    other names for, 94;
    his parentage, marriage, and friendships, 94, 95;
    personal aspect of, 94, 95;
    hymn to, 95, 96;
    his connection with the phallic symbolism of the R. T., 91-101.

  CAMBRENSIS (Giraldus Cambrensis) on the R. T., 49, 83;
    on the climate of Ireland, 529.

  CAMDEN on the R .T., 374.

  CANONISATION of local pagan objects of worship in Ireland, 43, 44.

  CARNAC, Buddhist symbolism at, 321-323.

  CASTLEREAGH, evidence of Sabaic worship at, 205, 206.

  CATHOIR-GHALL (as a name of R. T.), its meaning, 48, 61, 62, 103.

  CAUCASUS, origin and meaning of the name, 354, 355;
    existence of buildings similar to the R. T. in, 74.

  CAVES. See MITHRATIC CAVES.

  CELESTIAL INDEXES, theory of the R. T. being, considered, 52.

  CELESTINE (pope), his commission _Ad Scotos_, 41.

  CELLS, theory of the R. T. being, 13, 14.

  CEOL and CEOLAN (bells), their pagan use, 11.

  CEYLON, bells used at the _Dagob_ temples in, 173 _n._;
    the Maypole ceremony as observed in, 238;
    Buddhist temple of _Calane_ in, resemblance between it and Brechin
        R. T., 300;
    meaning of the name _Dagobs_, 369;
    description of a _Dagob_, 369-371;
    sepulchral character of, 370, 371.

  CHAILDEES, or CULDEES, not connected with the Egyptian Cophtes, 40, 41;
    the latter may, however, have derived their knowledge from the
        Tuath-de-danaans, 155;
    did not admit the papal supremacy, 46;
    meaning of the name, 44.

  CHALDEANS, their connection with the Tuath-de-danaans, 155.

  CHRISTIANITY, existed in Ireland before the time of Pelagius, or of St.
        Patrick, 41;
    early Irish Christians ostracised, 42;
    St. Patrick’s actual share in the diffusion of, 42, 43;
    canonisation of objects of pagan worship by the apostles of, 44, 492;
    to what its reception by the Irish pagans, is attributable, 344 _et
        seq._;
    prophecy in the Hindu Puranas of a coming redeemer of mankind, 345;
    the “Yugas” to the same effect, 345, 346;
    Hindu “History of Vicrama Ditya,” 346;
    Arabic poetic prediction to same effect, 346;
    analogous inscription on pillar at Buddal, 346, 347;
    theory that, in its leading essentials, it was introduced into Ireland
        as a revival of an early Eastern religion by the Tuath-de-danaans,
        493;
    the Greek term _logos_ considered with reference to this point, 478,
        479;
    also the reference in St. John’s gospel to Christ’s coming to his
        “own,” 478;
    the incident of the _Magi_, and the symbolism of the cross in its
        sculptured representation, 482, 483;
    meaning of the expression “Lamb of God,” 486-489;
    conformity between Buddhism and Christianity, 365;
    the Church festivals derived from the Tuath-de-danaan ritual, 493.

  CHRISTNAH (the Indian Apollo), 218, 219;
    the legend of his incarnation and his connection with the “White
        Island” (Muc-Inis), 326, 327.

  CHRONOS, deification of, accounted for, 197.

  CHURCHES, arguments from their being found in the neighbourhood of Round
        Towers, Cromleachs, and Mithratic caves against the pre-Christian
        antiquity of the R. T. considered, 7, 8, 356, 357.

  CLEMENT (the Irish doctor), German testimony to his learning, 54 _n._

  CLIMATE of Ireland praised by Geraldus Cambrensis, 529.

  CLOGAD, meaning of, 12;
    the name accountable for a mistake as to the R. T., 12.

  CLOICTEACH, or belfrey, distinct from R. T., 36, 37.

  CLONDALKIN (R. T.), 101, 359.

  CLONMACNOISE, antiquity of its crosses, churches, and round towers
        accounted for, 356, 357;
    once a stronghold of Buddhism, 356, 357;
    its sculptures unconnected with Christianity, 358, 359;
    inferiority of the architecture of its churches to that of the other
        remains, such as crosses and round towers, 163;
    Abbot O’Brien and his “cell,” 13, 14.

  COCKATRICE, or BASILISK, its symbolism, 225.

  COLEBROOKE’S statement regarding Buddhism refuted, 214.

  COLGAN on the R. T., 37, 51.

  COLZOUM (Egyptian monastery), supposed to resemble the R. T., 30-33.

  COPTIC, Hurd’s description of the Ethiopian monks so-called, 45, 46;
    such monastic orders not analogous to the Irish Culdees or Chaildees,
        45.

  CORMAC (bishop of Cashel), his allusions to fire-worship, 81, 82;
    his description of the R. T., and opinion of their great antiquity,
        368, 394.

  CRESCENT-WORSHIP, its origin and significance, 261, 262, 273 _et seq._;
    its symbolism preserved in the Irish crescent brooches, 273, 274;
    crescent on the summits of R. T., 103;
    the crescent of Sheva (Hindu), 103;
    the crescent and the “ark,” 224-226;
    the Pish-de-danaan votaries of, 261, 262.

  CRIOCH-NA-FUINEADHACH, a name of Ireland, its meaning, 344.

  CROCODILES as objects of worship, 165, 166;
    bearing of this on the question of sub-pyramidal (and R. T.) cavities,
        166.

  CROMLEACHS, their Buddhist origin, 2, 3;
    that churches are found in their vicinity no disproof of this, 8;
    possibly the work of Firbolgs or Scythians, 428.

  CROSS-WORSHIP, its antiquity and universality, 289-308;
    Egyptian interpretation of the cross symbol, 289, 291;
    Druidic cross worship, 289;
    practised among all ancient Gothic peoples, 290;
    the Egyptian _Taut_ symbol, 291;
    Buddhist origin of cross-worship, 291;
    Greek allegory of Apollo and the Python, 291, 292;
    the Irish _Tuath_ cross, 291;
    the cross a symbol of universal nature, 294;
    Irish cross with _kilted_ figure thereon--of whom? 295-297;
    crosses on obelisk at Sandwick (Ross-shire), 305-309;
    crosses in cryptograms of heathen deities, 308;
    Plato on the prevalence of the cross symbol, 308;
    cross symbols found at the temple of Serapis, 312;
    the forehead “mark” in Ezekiel, a cross, 313;
    cross on the coinage of the Emperor Decius, 314;
    also on Phœnician medals, 314, 315;
    description of the great cross at Forres, 317-320;
    the latter cross probably erected by Tuath-de-danaans, 320;
    theory that such crosses are of Danish origin refuted, 321;
    cross symbols on monolith at Carnac, 321, 322;
    resemblance of sculpture on cross at Old Kilcullen to those on the
        temple at Kalabche in Nubia, 337-342;
    crucificial Buddhist effigy of Deva Thot, 343, 344;
    freemasonry and the crucifixion, 344;
    cruciform construction of Mithratic temple at New Grange, 350;
    also of the so-called “Devil’s Yonies,” 314, 350, 351;
    also of pagodas at Benares and Mathura, 352;
    union of cross with lingam symbol at Elephanta, 353;
    analogy between Irish and Eastern cross-symbolism, 353, 354;
    snake-sculpture on Irish crosses, 502;
    the crosses of Clonmacnoise, Clondalkin, Armagh, Finglas, etc.,
        357-367;
    cross-symbolism at Brechin and Donoghmore R. T., 8;
    its connection with serpent-worship, Freemasonry, and Buddhism,
        358-367;
    all ancient Irish crosses the work of Tuath-de-danaans, 359-361;
    the dog-effigy on the cross at Clonmacnoise, 359;
    demolition and restoration of cross at Finglas, 365-367;
    cross-worship symbolised in the shamrock, 440;
    meaning of the expression “Lamb of God,” 486-489;
    also of the emblem × for the number _ten_, 487, 488;
    also of the Druidic “key” emblem, 488, 489;
    also of the Irish cross (or “finger”) oath, 489;
    theory of crosses having been introduced into Ireland by the Pope,
        489-492;
    the cross-symbolism of Palencia, 490;
    the cross-staff of the Roman Augurs, 490;
    pagan sculpture on the cross at Kells, 490, 491;
    how Irish crosses became associated with Christianity, 492-494;
    how the crosses over the doors of some of the round towers may be
        accounted for, 511.

  CRUCIFIXION, sculpture of, at Knockmoy, explained, 328-345;
    analogous sculpture on temple at Kalabche (Nubia), 337;
    Hindu (Purana) legend of, 339;
    testimony of Buddhists and of Freemasonry to the fact of a primeval
        crucifixion, 343, 344.

  CUMMAN, the Irish astronomer, 59.

  CYCLE, of nineteen years--“the great year” of the Greeks, 52.

  CYCLOPEAN WALLS, their origin, and derivation of the name, 86;
    found wherever the Pelasgi settled, 86.

  CYCLOPS, public origin of the name, 86;
    its Sabaic import, 195, 196.


  DAGOBS (Cingalese temples), analogous to the R. T., 369-372.

  DAHAMSOUDA (King of Baranes, or Benares) and the _Bana_, or Buddhist
        gospel, sculpture of the legend at Glendalough, 470 _et seq._

  DALTON on the date of the Scotch R. T., 10;
    his theory that _Iris_ was not Ireland considered, 398.

  DANA, as the root of _Danaans_, its meaning, 113.

  DANCING, connected with Sabaic worship, 110;
    circular dances performed round the R. T., 517;
    _Rinke-teumpoil_ and _Turrish_ dances, 517.

  DANES, the R. T. could not have been constructed by, 9, 10;
    nor have been intended as places of refuge from, 35, 36;
    crosses not commemorative in any way of the, 321.

  DAVIES on the genealogy of the Irish language, 58.

  DEARG, DARAG, and DARIOGA, their origin and meaning, 206, 216, 217.

  DECIUS (Roman Emperor), the cross-emblem on his coinage, 314.

  DELOS, visit of Abaris to, 53-56, 397, 448;
    why the fleet of Xerxes did not molest, 69;
    Hyperborean embassies to, repulsed, 445, 446;
    account of the subsequent transmission of Hyperborean offerings to the
        shrines of Apollo and Diana there, 446.

  DELPHI, poetic account of the foundation of the oracle by Hyperboreans
        representative of the Irish priesthood, 445;
    similar tradition at Delos, 445;
    hymn of Alcæus commemorating the visit of Apollo to the Hyperboreans
        on his way to, 446, 447;
    derivation of the names _Delphi_, _Pythia_, and _Sybil_, 507;
    whence the Pythia derived her inspiration, 507.

  DELUGE, scriptural narrative of, explained, 266 _et seq._;
    number of the Noachidæ, 269, 270;
    distinction between _Aron_ and _Thebit_ (both signifying “ark”), 270;
    meaning of the name _Noah_, and of the mandate, “Come thou and all thy
        house into the ark,” 272;
    derivation of _Deucalion_, 275;
    figurative character of the, 275, 276;
    the argument from marine strata, 276-278;
    signification of the _raven_, _dove_, and _olive branch_, 278;
    Purana account of the, 279 _n._;
    whence the Mosaic version may have been derived, 280, 281;
    _Japhet_ and _Javan_ explained, 283 _n._;
    coincidence between the diluvian period and that of the
        Tuath-de-danaan migration from the East, 436;
    legend of Fintan and Caisarea, niece of Noah, 385;
    Moses and the Pish-de-danaans, 283.

  DENDERA, resemblance between the respective worships of ancient Egypt
        and India exemplified by conduct of Sepoys at, 143, 144.

  DEUCALION, origin of the name, 275.

  DEUS and Hercules synonymous, 250;
    meaning of Deus Fidhius, 250.

  DEVA THOT (Buddhist), represented as crucified, 343.

  DEVENISH (R. T.), 38, 71, 167.

  DEVIL’S YONIES, 314, 350, 351.

  DIODORUS SICULUS and _Iris_, or the _Insula Hyperboreorum_, 120 _n._,
        397-399.

  DIONYSIUS OF SICILY, sense in which he uses _Iris_ and _Irin_, 120.

  DOCHA, included with _Anuzza_ and _Anatta_ in the _Bavana_, 114.

  DOG, personified in sculpture at Persepolis and Clonmacnoise, 359.

  DOGHDA (Milk), the title of the tutelar goddess of Ireland, 339.

  DONATUS (bishop of Etruria, 9th century), his description of _Scotia_,
        or Ireland, 54.

  DONOGHMORE (R. T.), bas-relief of crucifix over door of, 8.

  DOVE, its signification in the Noachian allegory, 278.

  DOWNPATRICK, St Patrick’s alleged “granary” near, 164.

  DRUIDS, superiority of the Irish, 57;
    Cæsar and Pomponius Mela on the, 57;
    whence the Irish Druids derived their superiority, 57;
    were fire-worshippers, 82;
    significance of the golden “sickle” used by them in cutting mistletoe,
        200;
    influence of their degeneracy on the study of astronomy in Ireland,
        521;
    how that study was kept alive by the books of their predecessors, the
        Boreades, 522.

  DUMBOE (R. T.), 81.

  DUNE OF DORNADELLA (Scotland), its resemblance to the R. T., 455;
    the mystery of its stone shelves explained, 456.

  DUNGEONS, theory of the R. T. being, 16 _et seq._


  EGYPT, ancestral connection of Ireland with, 77;
    Sabian character of its ancient worship, 77;
    resemblance of the latter to that of India and China, 143;
    remarkable confirmation of this in the conduct of Sepoys at Dendera,
        143;
    its Ghizan pyramids popularly ascribed to Philitis (a _shepherd_), and
        the evidence of Sanskrit records to the same effect, 144-146;
    the _Uksi_, or shepherd kings, 146, 151;
    derivation of the word “pyramid,” 146-148;
    the Coptic name and its signification, 148;
    _Armæus_, _Amosis_, and _Inaron_ (the supposed founders of the Ghezan
        pyramids), who they were, 149;
    sojourn of the Israelites in, 149;
    did not take place until after the Uksi invasion, 151;
    the dislike of the Egyptians to the Israelites accounted for, 151;
    Manetho’s account of Osarsiph or Moses, 151;
    proximity of Goshen to Ghiza, 153;
    date of the Exodus, 150;
    civilisation and magic of the Egyptians borrowed from the Chaldeans,
        155;
    connection of this circumstance with Irish history, 155;
    the ancient Egyptians not idolaters, 268;
    indebtedness of Moses to them, 281.

  ELEPHANTA (subterranean or Mithratic temples of), Buddhist sculptures
        of, 215;
    their defacement by the Brahmins, 215, 216;
    cross-symbolism in, 353.

  ELEPHANTS, objects of reverence to Buddhists, 113 _n._

  ELEUSINIAN _mysteries_, their nature, 110, 111, 347, 348;
    kindred rites of _Bona Dea_ and _Phiditia_, 348, 349;
    degradation of such rites into the _Saturnalia_, 349, 350;
    the Irish _Nullog_, 350;
    the typification of regeneration, or the _new birth_, 350.

  ELLORA (caves of), 215, 216.

  EMERALD ISLE, explanation of the name, 503.

  ENGLAND, traces of the Danaans in, 425.

  ENOCH (Book of), 401, 402, 475-478.

  ERDAM (Irish for belfry), contradistinguished from _Fidh-Nemead_, 50.

  ERIGENA, or SCOTUS (John or Shane), the Irish doctor, 54 _n._

  ETRURIANS, their origin and connection with the Tuath-de-danaans, 85.

  EVE, the forbidden fruit and the serpent, 227-230, 285 _et seq._, 506,
        508.

  EXODUS. See EGYPT.


  FARRAGH, or PHEARAGH, 56;
    identical with Budh and Moriagan, 132, 141;
    meaning of the name 132;
    Spencer’s theory as to his being Fergus, king of Scotland, 132;
    his identity with _Peor_ and _Priapus_, 132 _n._;
    his effigy in the Museum of T. C. D., 137, 138;
    similar effigies found at Rampore (Himalayas), 139;
    as to his being synonymous with Pharaoh, 142;
    represented as wearing a kilt, or philabeg, 141, 341.

  FENIUS, or FENI, ancestor of the Scoto-Milesians, 432;
    date of his era, 432.

  FERGIL, Irish astronomer, who in the 8th century taught the rotundity of
        the earth, 523.

  FIDH-NEMEAD, or FIDH-NEMPHED, its meaning, 50, 105, 353;
    Colgan’s and O’Connor’s errors respecting, 51.

  FINE ARTS, existed in remote antiquity, 407;
    proficiency of the ancient Irish in, 411;
    evidence of this proficiency, 412;
    Oriental character of the Tuath-de-danaan fine art work, 412, 413.

  FINGER-OATH of the Irish peasantry, its connection with cross-worship,
        489, 501.

  FINGLAS, old cross at, 365-367.

  FIODH, or FIDHUIS, its derivation and meaning, 228, 250.

  FIRBOLGS, or Celtic inhabitants of Ireland before the Tuath-de-danaans,
        297;
    assisted the Scythians to expel the latter, 297, 428;
    their attire described, 297;
    could not have built the R. T., 386, 387;
    but probably constructed the Cromleachs, 428;
    origin of the name, 428;
    their religion akin to that of the Scythians, 428;
    how the existence of two distinct races (Celtic and Scythian) in Arran
        and the northern isles may be accounted for, 428, 429;
    duration of their rule between the first Tuath-de-danaan emigration
        (from Persia) and the second (from India), 442, 443;
    confusion as to the battle of Moytura, which they fought with the
        Tuath-de-danaans, 386, 387, 448, 449.

  FIRE-WORSHIP, alluded to in Scripture, 67, 68;
    originated in “Ur of the Chaldees,” 68;
    spread thence to Persia, 69;
    the Persian “Ur,” 69;
    the “Pyrea” noticed by Brisson, its nature, 69;
    question as to whether the round towers were fire-temples, 70-75,
        80-82;
    also as to whether the Ghebre or Parsee temples were exclusively
        devoted to this worship, 71;
    structural peculiarities of fire-temples, 71, 72;
    the temples at Baku and Smerwick, 72;
    Strabo’s description of the “Pyratheia,” 72;
    fire-temple at Zezd, 72;
    pagodas considered and described, 73;
    derivation of the name “pagoda,” 73, 352 _n._;
    pagodas devoted to worship of the sun and moon, 73;
    significance of their form, 73, 74;
    fire-worship introduced into Italy by the Pelasgi, 86, 87, and into
        Ireland by the Scythians, 520;
    could not have been the exclusive purpose of round towers, 80-82;
    Cormac’s allusion to, 81, 82;
    Druidic fire-worship, 82;
    St. Bridget’s fire-temple, 82, 83;
    testimony of the Venerable Bede to its existence in Ireland, 83;
    structural affinity of the Irish fire-temples to those of ancient
        Greece and Rome, 85, 86;
    the vestal fire, 87;
    the _Baal-thinne_, Miss Beaufort’s theory as to, 88-90.

  FOMORIANS, in what sense they may be regarded as builders of the R. T.,
        394, 395;
    their affinity to the Tuath-de-danaans, 393-395;
    meaning of the name, 394, 395.

  FORBIDDEN FRUIT (of Scripture), its meaning, 227, 229 _n._

  FOREHEAD-MARK (Ezek. ix. 4, 5, 6), a cross, 313.

  FORRES (Scotland), description of sculpture on cross at, 317-320.

  FOUR MASTERS. See ANNALS.

  FREEMASONRY, 20;
    essentially Christian in principle, 344;
    its Cabiric rites similar to those practised in the Fiodh Aongusa or
        the Mithratic caves of Budh, 353, 354;
    its connection with the R. T., 19, 20.
    See MASONIC.

  FULLER, allusion in his writings to the Irish harp, 406.


  GADELGLAS, origin of the name, 502, 503;
    its connection with serpent-worship, 502.

  GADELIANS, ancestors of the Milesians, 432, 502.

  GAL AND NOUDABAL (Persian legend from Ferdosi), its meaning, 102 _n._

  GALLAMH, father of Heber and Heremon, 393, 432.

  GAUR TOWERS of India, similar to the R. T., 371.

  GAYE-PHALLUS, twofold meaning of, 311, 312.

  “GENERATION OF VIPERS,” meaning of the phrase, 498 _et seq._

  GHEBRES, or PARSEES, their fire-temples, 71.

  GHIZEH and its pyramids, 144-153.

  GIANT’S RING (R. T.), an instance of a R. T. without a church near it,
        514.

  GILDAS, introduction of bells into England by, 11, 121, 173, 174.

  GIRALDUS. See CAMBRENSIS.

  GLENDALOUGH (R. T.), 167, 469, 474.
    See SAINT KEVIN.

  GNOMONS, theory that the R. T. were. See CELESTIAL INDEXES.

  GOBAN SAER (the supposed architect of the R. T.), legendary account of,
        375-385;
    not contemporary with St. Abhan, 383, 384, 493;
    was a Tuath-de-danaan, 386, 492;
    meaning of his name, 385, 386;
    his individuality, 379, 385;
    his effigy at Clonmacnoise, 358;
    the sacerdotal character of its attire, 513.

  GOSHEN, significance of its situation, 153.

  GRANARD, derivation of the name, 208.

  GREECE, not the source of Irish religion or learning, 41, 453;
    nature of Greek Sabaism, 194-197;
    Herodotus on the Greek theogony, 196;
    remarkable derivative analogy between Greek and Irish names, 453-470.

  GRIAN (Irish), as the root of _Grynæus_ (epithet of Apollo), 208.

  GYAH, Buddhist subterranean temple, 215.

  GWALIOR (Hindu temple), its subterranean passage, 166.


  HARP, cultivation of harp music in Ireland, 403-406.

  HEBER and HEREMON, 387;
    their parentage, 393, 432;
    headed the Scythian invasion of Ireland, 393;
    their epoch according to Irish chronology, 432;
    distinct, except in language, from the _Danaans_, 393.

  HEBREW, its affinity to Irish, 228.

  HECATÆUS on the mission of Abaris from the island of the Hyperboreans to
        Delos, 53-55;
    on the peculiar appearance of the moon as seen from the latter island,
        397;
    on the cyclic visits of Apollo to the latter, 397;
    on the prevalence of _harpers_ there, 403.

  HEEREN on the history, language, architecture, and institutions of
        ancient Persia, 178-183.

  HELIOGABALUS, connection of the name with the perverted sense of
        _Gaye-phallus_, 312.

  HERCULES, and his twelve labours, 195;
    worshipped in Egypt, Phœnicia, and elsewhere, before his inclusion in
        the Greek theogony, 195;
    a personification of the sun, 195;
    pronounced by Orpheus the father and destroyer of all things, and the
        great deliverer of mankind, 195;
    explanation of the Zodiac, 195, 196;
    Hercules Astrokiton, 196;
    worshipped by different nations under a diversity of names, 196;
    Hercules Fidhius, 250;
    Hercules and Deus synonymous terms, 250;
    the founder of Western philosophy, 437;
    worshipped as _Osiris_ and _Bacchus_, 437.

  HERODOTUS cited, 160, 161, 180, 196.

  HIBERNIA, meaning and derivation of the name, 28, 29, 115-126, 128, 129.
    See IRAN, IRELAND, INSULA HYPERBOREORUM.

  HINDUS, their origin and the meaning of their name, 74.
    See INDIA.

  HOLY and MOST HOLY (places mentioned in Scripture), anatomical
        significance of, 373.

  HYPANIS (River), identity of the Egyptian and Indian religions, and of
        the destination of their respective pyramids, suggested by
        architectural remains found near, 76.

  HYPERBOREAN (an epithet of Ireland), its twofold meaning, 55.
    See INSULA HYPERBOREORUM.


  INARON. See AARON.

  INDEX theory of the R. T. See CELESTIAL INDEXES.

  INDIA, idea underlying the morphology of Brahminism, 77, 78;
    purpose of the Indian cave-temples, 78;
    devotion of Brahmins to astronomy, 78, 79;
    ancient Hindu civilisation, 79, 80;
    its decadence under Mohammedan rule, 80;
    Sir W. Jones on the pantheistic idealism of, 94 _n._;
    Buddhism, 107-114 (and see BUDDHISM);
    identity of ancient Egyptian worship with Brahminism, 143;
    Sepoys worshipping in Egyptian temples, 143;
    reference in Sanskrit records to the Pyramids, 144;
    Indian origin claimed for Orpheus, 405;
    second migration of the Tuath-de-danaans to Ireland was from, 443;
    sculpture at Glendalough explained by reference to the history of,
        469-474.

  INSULA HYPERBOREORUM, identity of Ireland with, 52, 396-403, 437, 445
        _et seq._;
    twofold meaning of Hyperborean, 55;
    description by Hecatæus of, distorted by Diodorus, 397, 398;
    likewise by Dalton and Macpherson, 398;
    incredulity of Diodorus accounted for, 398, 399;
    known also as Ogygia, 437;
    scepticism of Müller respecting, 443, 444;
    mission of Abaris from, 447, 448;
    Greek evidence of its identity with Ireland, 451 _sq._

  IONA, derivation of the name, 83 _n._;
    its connection with St. Columbe Kille, 83 _n._

  IRAN, the generic name of both Persia and Ireland, 127;
    its specific form, _Irin_, appropriated to Ireland, 120-127;
    meaning of both these names, 127;
    origin of the diverse forms, _Ire_, _Eri_, _Ere_, _Erin_, 128;
    how _Iran_ was metamorphosed into _Ierne_ and _Hibernia_, 128, 129;
    its occupation by the Tuath-de-danaans, and their expulsion by the
        Pish- (or Pith-) de-danaans, 252-259;
    equivalent in meaning to _Paradise_, 285;
    properly applicable to all India lying north-west of the Indus, 184;
    changed by the Greeks into _Ariana_, 185;
    Pahlavi _Erin_ and Zend _Eriene_ and Pelasgic _Ierne_, 185;
    _Irad_ and _Iran_, 244;
    _Iranians_ and _Turanians_, 123-126.
    See PERSIA and IRELAND.

  IRELAND, its early repute for academic learning, 45, 46, 59 _n._;
    its learning not borrowed from Greece or Rome, 45, 46;
    the “Insula Hyperboreorum” of the Ancients, 52, 396-403, 445 _et seq._;
    alleged cyclic visits of Apollo to, 52, 397;
    description of, by Donatus (9th century), 54;
    its identity with _Scotia_, 54 _n._;
    why called the “Sacred” Island, 55, 117, 130;
    persecution in Scotland of exiles from, 57 _n._;
    included by the Ancients in the general term _Britain_, 58;
    antiquity and astronomic character of the Irish language, 58, 250;
    also of its alphabet, 416-418;
    genealogy of the language according to Davies, 58;
    Mosheim’s testimony to the learning of the ancient Irish, 59 _n._;
    also that of Henricus Antisiodrensis, 59 _n._;
    description of Ireland by Artemidorus, 400;
    its ancestral religious affinity with Egypt and India, 77-80;
    resemblance of its early architecture to that of ancient Greece and
        Rome, 86;
    derivation and meaning of the name Hibernia, 115-126;
    Tacitus on, 119;
    _Iran_ and _Irin_ as names for, 120, 121-126;
    _Irenses_, 121;
    origin of the name _Ogygia_, 131;
    also of the names _Fuodhla_, _Fudh_, _Inis_, and
        _Inis-na-Bhfiodhbhadh_, 131;
    its connection with Sabaism, 193-210;
    Hebrew and Irish, branches of the same root-language, 228;
    twofold signification of Irish letters and words, 228, 229;
    the Irish alphabet a “tree” code, 229;
    Irish (_i.e._ the language of Iran) an original and universal tongue,
        250;
    Artemidorus on the ancient religion of, 301, 302;
    mentioned in the _Puranas_ as “the white island” (_Muc-Inis_) 325-328;
    significance of its readiness to accept Christianity, 344;
    _Crioch-na-Fuineadhach_ as a name of, 344;
    St. Patrick not the introducer of letters into, 416-419;
    proof that the Irish is not derived from the Roman alphabet, 416-419;
    the Ogham character, 340, 419, 420;
    views of Montmorency and Whittaker refuted, 418-428;
    ancient celebrity of, not due to the Celts or Scythians, 428;
    resemblance of the Irish, as regards physique, manners, customs,
        religious observances, etc., to the ancient Persians, 437-440;
    in ancient times an “Oriental Asylum,” 441;
    twice invaded by the Tuath-de-danaans, 442, 443;
    Firbolg occupation of, 442, 443;
    meaning of _Bana-ba_ as a name of, 470-474;
    also of its Sabaic name _Tibholas_, 507;
    its existence known to the Greeks and Brahmins, 517, 518.

  IRIS and IRIN and IRAN, names of Ireland, 120, 121, 127, 398.

  ISIDORE of SEVILLE, on the identity of _Scotia_ with Ireland, 54 _n._

  ISIS (Egyptian deity), phallic worship of, 105, 106;
    what she personified, 106.

  ISRAELITES, sense in which the author uses the term, 11;
    their use of bells, 11.


  JAPHET (Noachian) and JAVAN (his son), derivation and meaning of the
        names, 283 _n._


  KAIOMURS (king of Persia), 245-247;
    identical with Noah, 272.

  KALABCHE (Nubian temple), resemblance of its sculptures to those at
        Knockmoy and Old Kilcullen, 337-342.

  KELLS (R. T.), 83;
    snake sculpture on cross at, 361, 490.

  KILL (in Irish names), its origin and signification, 43;
    existence of a “Kill” evidence of previous existence of paganism, 43,
        44.

  KILCULLEN, or OLD KILCULLEN, remarkable Tuath-de-danaan cross at, 337;
    its Buddhist character, 337, 338.

  KILLESHANDRA, phallic meaning of the name, 207.

  KILLMALLOCK (R. T.), 44, 167, 202;
    derivation of the names, 201;
    description of its tower as contrasted with the churches in its
        vicinity, 202, 203.

  KILMACDUGH, remarkable leaning round tower at, 515.

  KILT, or PHILABEG, 138, 296;
    originally a Tuath-de-danaan article of attire, not a Celtic, 297;
    disappeared from Ireland before the introduction of Christianity, 298;
    kilted figures of Budh, 138, 296;
    antiquity of the Irish philabeg, 512.

  KNOCKMOY, description of supposed Buddhist sculptures at, 328-335;
    refutation of theory that they depict the death of MacMurrough’s son,
        333, 334;
    representation of the kings, with doves, explained, 330;
    similarity of the sculpture to that on temple of Kalabche (Nubia),
        337-341;
    confirmatory Purana evidence, 339;
    Phrygian attire of the subordinate figures, 329, 437.


  LA-BEUIL-TINNE (first of May), or day of Baal’s fire, 201.

  LAMBH and LUAMH, twofold meaning of, 487-489.

  LANIGAN on the theory that the round towers were repositories for
        ecclesiastical treasure, 35.

  LEDWICH’S views regarding the round towers, 13-15;
    on CUMMAN, 59.

  LINGAJAS (worshippers of the _Lingam_, or male nature), 102, 113, 228,
        259, 260, 282, 353;
    their connection with Babel, 284.

  LOTOS, phallic significance of, 257 _n._;
    Chinese legend of the, 257, 258.

  LOUGH DERG, meaning of its name, 206.

  LOUGH NEAGH, submerged round towers of, 50.

  LOUGH REA, and its connection with the worship of Astarte, 204, 205.

  LYCANTHROPY (or wolf-madness) in Ireland, 468, 469.


  MACCARTHY MORES, reputed founders of round towers, 39, 40.

  MACHA, one of the three deities specially worshipped by Tuath-de-danaan
        women, 132.

  MADURA, cruciform pagoda at, 352.

  MAGADHA (birthplace of Buddha), 264;
    its bearing on the question, how the Tuath-de-danaans made their way
        to Ireland? 265, 266 _n._

  MAGH-ABADEAN (name of Persian dynasty), 190, 246;
    another name for Tuath-de-danaan, 248;
    its derivation, 247, 248.

  MAGH and MAGHODY, representing the _bounty_ of Providence, 217, 218.

  MAHADEVA (Hindu legend of), and the _Lingajas_ and _Yonijas_ or
        _Yavanas_, 260, 261.

  MANETHO, his account of the invasion of Egypt by the _Uksi_, or shepherd
        kings, 142;
    also of the Israelites, 151.

  MANUSCRIPTS (ancient Irish), loss of, 54 _n._;
    destruction of by St. Patrick, 135;
    preservation and _habitat_ of the remainder, 136.

  MARINE STRATA, their bearing on the chronology of the Deluge, 276-278.

  MASONIC significance of the round towers, 19, 20;
    meaning of Saer, 20 _n._

  MAYA and RITTY (Hindu), parents of Camadeva, meaning of the legend, 94.

  MAYPOLE ceremony (Irish), its Eastern origin, 233;
    its phallic and astronomic significance, 233, 234;
    what it commemorated, 234;
    corresponds to the Bacchic _Phallica_, _Donysia_, and _Orgia_, 235;
    description of the Irish Maypole festivals, 237;
    mode of celebration at Waterford, 238;
    similar ceremony at Ceylon celebrated by women only, 238, 239.

  M’PHERSON’S theory of _Erne_ as the _Insula Hyperboreorum_, 398.

  MEDAL effigies of Christ, 508-510.

  MELCHISEDEC, of what he was the type, 494-497.

  MILESIANS, 328, 432, 502;
    date of their invasion of Ireland, 432-434.
    See HEBER and HEREMON.

  MILNER on the “belfry” theory of the round towers, 12.

  MINING, Tuath-de-danaans proficient in, 408;
    traces of their workings on the coast of Antrim, 408-410;
    their acquaintance with iron, 115, 410;
    the _Arimaspi_, or Cyclopean miners, 86, 407.

  MITHRATIC CAVES, Buddhist origin of, 2, 3, 353;
    argument from the vicinity of churches to, 8;
    also from Cromleachs being found near them, 17, 18;
    as to their Phœnician origin, 18;
    _Fiodh Aongusa_ as a designation of, 353;
    Mithratic temple at New Grange, 351, 352;
    their cruciform character, 353, 354;
    cave of Elephanta, 353.

  MOLOCH, meaning of the name, 65, 201.
    See KILLMALLOCK.

  MOLTEN SEA at Solomon’s temple, 172.

  MONTMORENCY, his theories as to the round towers refuted, 16-19, 30,
        34-37, 413 _et seq._

  MOON, prominences of, strikingly visible from the _Insula
        Hyperboreorum_, 52, 53;
    phallic worship of, 91, 92, 110;
    generally an object of Sabaic worship, 111, 193-210;
    worshipped as _Astarte_ and _Rimmon_, 102;
    different names for, as a fructifying power, 91;
    connected with the deification of the feminine principle, 211, 212;
    different names expressive of this deification, 211;
    dual sense of such epithets preserved in the primitive Irish tongue,
        212, 213;
    _Militta_, ASTARTE, and the Irish derivative _Astore_, 213;
    connection of the round towers with her worship, 74, 75, 112.
    See ASTARTE, and 109, 112.

  MORIAGAN, a deity worshipped by the Tuath-de-danaans, 131, 132;
    his military character, 132;
    a personification of Budh under the name FARRAGH, 132;
    meaning of the latter name, 132;
    Spenser’s theory that he was Fergus, king of Scotland, 132.
    See FARRAGH.

  MOSES, his identity with _Amosis_ and _Osarsiph_, 149-152;
    Manetho’s account of, 151, 152.
    See DELUGE.

  MOSHAN FANI, his account of ancient Persia, 189 _et seq._

  MOSHEIM on the learning of the Irish schoolmen, 59 _n._

  MOYTURA (battle), meaning of the name, 386;
    first not to be confounded with another and subsequent battle, 448,
        449;
    scenes of the respective battles, 386;
    retreat of the Firbolgs to Arran after the first battle, 386, 387;
    cause of the second battle, 448.

  MUC-INIS as a name of Ireland corresponding to the _White Island_
        mentioned in the _Puranas_, 325;
    threefold meaning of the name, 327;
    Dr. Keating’s interpretation of it refuted, 328.

  MÜLLER’S scepticism as to the Hyperboreans, 443, 444.

  MUSIC, antiquity of Irish music, 403;
    Hecatæus cited in evidence of its culture by the ancient Irish, 403;
    Giraldus Cambrensis on the proficiency of the Irish harpers, 403, 404;
    _Clarsech_, _Cruit_, and _Orphean_, as names for the harp, 404;
    music of the Irish bards superior to that of their contemporaries,
        405, 406;
    Fuller’s eulogium on the Irish harp, 406;
    a Danish origin falsely ascribed to the Irish harp, 406.
    See APOLLO.


  NAGUALISM, a Mexican form of Sabaism, described, 499 _et seq._

  NAVIGATION, ancient Irish skilled in the art of, 457.

  NEW GRANGE, Mithratic temple at, cruciform character of, 351, 352.

  NIMROD, the inventor of Sun-Worship, 63;
    builder of the tower of Babel, 63;
    his object in building it, 63, 64;
    why called _rebel_, 64;
    _Birs Nimrod_, or _Mujellibah_, 65 _n._

  NIRACARA (Brahminic), bodiless manifestations of the deity, as opposed
        to _sacara_, or visible ones, which latter are, when in a human
        form, the progeny of virginal conception, 288.

  NOAH and the NOACHIDÆ, 269-273.
    See DELUGE and ARK.

  NUBIA, resemblance of sculptures, found at temple of Kalabche in, to
        certain sculptures at Old Kilcullen and Knockmoy, 337-343.

  NULLOG (Irish name for Sabaic rites), its derivation and meaning, 350.


  OBELISK at Sandwick (Ross-shire), description of, 305-309.

  O’CONNOR on the _gnomon_ or _celestial-index_ theory of the round
        towers, 51.

  OGG (Colonel), phallic sculpture presented by him to the H. E. I. C.,
        229 _n._

  OGHAM character, 419, 420, 437.

  OGYGIA, name of Ireland, or of the _Insula Hyperboreorum_, 437.

  OLIVE BRANCH (Noachian), its significance, 278.

  OLLAMH FODLAH, or FEIDLIMIDH (king of Ireland), meaning of his name, 430;
    date of his accession, 430;
    his ancestry, 430;
    reputed founder of the round towers, 430, 431;
    and see 502.

  OPHIOLATREIA (a form of Sabaism), identical with _Gadelianism_, 505;
    the specific object of its worship, 505.
    See SERPENT-WORSHIP.

  ORDERICUS VITALIS, his use of the name _Irenses_ for the Irish, 121.

  O’RORKES, reputed founders of the round towers, 39, 40.

  OROSIUS (fifth century) on the _Scoti_ as being inhabitants of Ireland,
        54 _n._

  ORPHEUS and ORPHEAN, 404. 405.

  OSARSIPH (name for Moses), 151.

  OSIRIS (Egyptian deity), the object of Sabaic and Phallic worship, 105,
        106;
    the same as Apollo, 437;
    his staff, 490.
    See ISIS.


  PADMA-DEVI (Brahminic), its meaning, 93;
    connection with the Pyramids, 92.

  PAGODAS (Hindu), derivation of the name, 73, 352 _n._;
    not fire-temples, but devoted to the worship of the sun and moon, 73;
    significance of their form, 73, 74;
    their phallic import, 103;
    cruciform construction of those at Benares and Madura, 352.

  PALATINE (Hill), etymology of the name, 198 _n._

  PALAVER (I.), identical with _Pahlavi_, the Persian court dialect, 122.

  PALENQUE, or PALENCIA, Sabaic and Phallic import of sculptures at, 229;
    cross symbolism at, 489;
    affinity of its religion to that of ancient Ireland, 501;
    _votan_ and the _Culebra_, 501, 502;
    its triple symbolism of _yoni_, the _serpent_, and _death_, 229, 503.

  PALI (Hindu), name for the _Uksos_, or shepherd kings, 142, 143, 146.

  PARADISE, another name for _Iran_, 285.

  PARAMON (apostate Buddhist), founder of Brahminism, derivation and
        meaning of his name, 216, 217.

  PARSEES, or GHEBRES, disciples of Zoroaster, and fire-worshippers, 71.

  PARVATI, the regenerate name of _Sati_ (Hindu goddess), and the
        _Yonijas_, 260, 261.

  PEIROM and PIROMIS (cf. Sanskrit _Birouma_), as the origin of the name
        _Pyramid_, 147.

  PEIRUM (king of Formosa), Japanese legend of, 147, 148.

  PELASGI, sprang from the same stock as the Tuath-de-danaans, 55;
    were in fact a branch of the latter, 85;
    called also _Tyrseni_, 85;
    the real builders of Cyclopean walls, 86;
    correspondence of the Cyclopean architecture with that of certain
        Irish remains, 86;
    introduced fire-worship into Italy, 87.

  PENANCES (Turrish), performed round the round towers, 517.

  PERSEPOLIS, description of, 179.

  PERSIA, derivation of the name, 177;
    the source of European civilisation, 177;
    Heeren’s account of the origin of the Persian empire, 178-183;
    antiquity and grandeur of the remains of Persepolis, 179;
    remarkable absence of ancient records of, 180;
    erroneous views of Herodotus and Arrian respecting, 180;
    Terceira on the ignorance by Persians of their own history, 181;
    Heeren’s classification of ancient eastern empires, 182, 183;
    the _Zend_ and _Pehlivi_ languages of Persia, 182;
    Irish the possible key to both, 183;
    Lake Zevora and the _Aria Palus_, 183;
    site of the ancient _Aria_, the latter distinct from _Ariana_, 183,
        184, 187;
    description of ancient Aria (Eriene-Veedjo), 186;
    disastrous change of its climate leading to its desertion by the
        Arii, 186, 187;
    subsequent immigration of the latter into, 187;
    Zoroaster and his predecessors, 188-190;
    the Mahabadean dynasty, 190, 245, 246;
    meaning of the name, 247;
    antiquity of the Iranian monarchy, 190;
    Moshan Fani’s account of the ancient Hushang religion, 188-193;
    Sir J. Malcolm’s description of the same, 193;
    its Sabian character, 194;
    its origin, 194 _n._;
    its adoption by the early Greeks, 194;
    original seat of Buddhism, 244;
    evidence of the Dabistan, 245-247;
    the pre-Zoastrian dynasty founded by Mahabad, 245, 246;
    his _Abad_ successors, 246, 247;
    decadence of the Mahabadean dynasty, 246, 247;
    Iy-Affram and Iy-abad dynasties, 246, 247;
    Shah Kisleer and Mahabool, 247;
    the Yessan dynasty, 247;
    _Kaiomurs_, or Gilshah, 247;
    Cain’s descendants Mahabadeans, 247;
    distinct position among the Mahabadeans of the Tuath-de-danaans, 248;
    rule of the Tuath-de-danaans in, how terminated, 252-259;
    silence of Persian historians on this point accounted for, 252, 253;
    Vallancey’s error, 253-255;
    the _Pith_- (or _Pish_-) _de-danaan_ dynasty, 252-259;
    consequent respect for women in ancient Persia, 262, 263;
    affinity of the Ogham character to the “arrow-heads” of Persepolis,
        340;
    resemblance of the Irish and Persians in physique, customs, etc.,
        437-444;
    the trefoil reverenced in Persia as well as in Ireland, 439, 440;
    only the _first_ Tuath-de-danaan invasion of Ireland was from Persia,
        443.
    See FIRE-WORSHIP and IRAN.

  PHALLIC WORSHIP, connection of the round towers with, 61, 62, 91, 101,
        103, 371, 372, 511;
    religious character of, 93, 105, 213;
    as practised in India, 94;
    fable of devotees beguiled by Sheeva and Prakeety, 97-101;
    phallic form of round towers, 101, 248;
    also of pillars at Solomon’s temple, 101;
    of Astarte or Rimmon, 101, 102;
    meaning of _Toradh_, 102 _n._;
    fable of Gal and Noudabah, 102 _n._;
    the _lingam_ and its priesthood, 102, 112;
    Indian and Irish pagodas, devoted to, 103;
    meaning of _Budh_, 103, 228, 229;
      also of _Baal Phearagh_, 103;
      also of _Cathoir-ghall_ and _Teaumpal-na-greine_, 103;
    crescent of Sheeva symbolised on round towers, 103;
    phallic significance of _Fidh-Nemphed_, 105;
    identity of Sabianism with, 105;
    fable of _Isis_ and _Osiris_, 106;
    of the sun and moon, 75, 109, 110;
    extended to agriculture, 111;
    Belli-Paaro, 111;
    identity and antiquity of Buddhism, Phallism, and Sabaism, 213;
    what the “forbidden fruit” of Scripture signified, 227;
    Eve and the “tree of knowledge,” 228, 285, 501, 506;
    _Budh_, _Fiodh_, _Beth_, their common significance, 228, 229;
    the _Maypole_ ceremonial, 233 _et seq._;
    derivation and meaning of _lingam_ and _yoni_, 259, 260;
    their secondary meaning, also that of _Tuath_ and _Pish_ or _Pith_,
        256, 257;
    origin of _Lingajas_ and _Yonijas_, according to the Puranas, 260, 261;
    Chinese legend of Puzza and the lotus, 257, 258;
    significance of the sacred “crescent,” 261;
    introduction of crescent worship into Persia, 261, 262;
    Hebrew name for tower of Babel, phallic import of, 283, 284;
    significance of the triangle and the pyramid, 267-269;
    Pythagorean _triangle of ten_, 267, 268;
    phallic import of the name _Thebit_ for the “ark,” 270, 271;
    the “ark of bulrushes” and the doctrine of “virginal conception,” 271;
    “Come thou and all thy house into the ark” explained, 272;
    derivation of the symbolic “crescent” or lunar “boat,” 273;
    the Irish “crescent” brooches, 273, 274;
    Delphic and other personifications of _yoni_, 282 _n._;
    the temple of Belus at Babylon, 283 _n._;
    the Ogg sculpture in the British Museum, its phallic and Buddhistic
        significance, 229 _n._;
    Eve and the “Serpent,” 285 _et seq._, 505;
    origin of the two _Danaan_ sects, _i.e._ the _Tuaths_ and _Piths_, 286;
    legend of Apollo and the python, 291, 292;
    also of the Purana “_Snake_ giant,” 292;
    Proserpine and the “serpent,” 303;
    identity of _Budha-gaya_ and _Budh-gaye_, 310, 311;
    their common and their secondary meaning, 311;
    degradation of Phallicism, 311, 312;
    how evinced in the title _Heliogabalus_, 312;
    phallic character of the _Eleusinian_ mysteries, 349;
      also of those of the _Bona Dea_ and _Phiditia_, 349;
    _Phallus_ synonymous with _Budh_, also _Budh-gaye_ (Irish) with
        _Budha-gaya_ (Hindu), meaning of both, 311;
    phallic configuration of the round towers, 372, 511.

  PHARAOH, synonymous with Farragh and Phearagh, 142.

  PHEARAGH (Irish pagan deity). See FARRAGH.

  PHEELEA, its derivation, meaning, and use, 459-461;
    Irish specimen found at Ballymony, 461;
    also, as PHEELEAS, (an order of Irish priesthood), etymology of
        connected with the Greek oracular _Peleiai_ of Dodona, 459;
    oracular tube of this nature found at Ballymony, 460;
    its uses and symbolism explained, 461, 462.

  PHIDITIA, a form of phallic worship practised at Carthage, 349.

  PHILABEG (a portion of ancient Irish costume). See KILT.

  PHŒNICIANS, round towers not built by, 413, 414;
    their sole connection with Ireland, 414, 420;
    a mercantile, not a literary, people, 415;
    not connected with Irish letters, 420.

  PHRYGIANS, their reference to the _Insula Hyperboreorum_, 436;
    traces of their costume in the sculptures at Knockmoy, 437.

  PICTS, persecution of Tuath-de-danaans by, 57 _n._, 326, 431.

  PIRE-MONC (Coptic name for pyramid), its meaning, 148.

  PIROMIS (Egyptian high priest) and PIROMIA, as the origin of _Pyramid_,
        147.

  PISH, or PITH, its signification, 255-257.

  PISH-DE-DANAANS, or PITH-DE-DANAANS, meaning of the name, 257;
    how distinguished from the Tuath-de-danaans, 255-257, 282;
    origin of the war between the two sects, 258;
    victory of the Pish-de-danaans and consequent expulsion from Persia of
        their rivals, 259;
    Hindu version of a corresponding struggle between the _Lingajas_ and
        _Yonijas_, 260, 261;
    their political and moral code, and worship of the _Yoni_, or “sacred
        crescent,” 261, 262;
    their subsequent expulsion from _Iran_, or Persia, and retreat to
        Egypt, 281;
    known there as the _Uksi_, or shepherd kings, 281;
    builders of the pyramids, 282;
    dwelt in _Shinar_ (Mesopotamia) pending their arrival in Egypt, 282;
    communicated to Moses the legend of the Deluge, 283;
    known also as _Yavanas_, 273, 283.
    See TUATH-DE-DANAANS.

  POMEGRANATE ORNAMENT, mentioned in connection with bells in Scripture,
        171;
    the name _Rimmon_ expressive of, 102, 172;
    its significance, 102;
    depicted in the mouldings of the round towers, 172.

  POMPONIUS MELA on Druidic learning, 57.

  POPE, as to the alleged papal origin of the ancient Irish crosses,
        489-492.

  PRAKEETY and SHEEVA, Hindu legend of, 97-101.

  PRATYA-SHA (Brahminical), visible emanations from the Deity, 288.

  PROSERPINE and the Serpent, allegory of, 303.

  PRUTANEION (Greek), its nature, derivation, and applied meaning, 198 _n._

  PURANAS (Hindu sacred writings), cited, 260, 279 _n._, 325-329, 499.

  PUZZA and the LOTUS, Chinese legend of, 257, 258.

  PYRAMIDS, cost of building, 7;
    purpose for which they were intended, 77, 145, 157, 158, 248;
    whether used as sepulchres, 75, 76, 158, 159, 162;
    Brahminic theory respecting, 92, 161;
    origin of those at Ghiza, 144-156, 281, 282;
    marble casing of, 144;
    dimensions of the great pyramid, 145, 267;
    peculiar construction of the smaller ones, 145;
    derivation of the word “pyramid,” 145-149;
    images of the Pyromis, 147;
    not intended as granaries, 145;
    description of their general structure, 157;
    their astronomical character, 158;
    internal passage pointing to the polar star, 157;
    whether intended to be metrical standards, 158;
    or sepulchres, 158, 159, 162;
    sarcophagus in the Great Pyramid, 159;
    sarcophagus of Apis at Biban-el-Moluk, 159, 160;
    theory of Herodotus regarding, 160, 161;
    Brahminic theory from existence of wells under, 161, 162;
    probability of corresponding excavations under the round towers, 162,
        163;
    the Japanese _Peirum_, 147, 148;
    Coptic name for, 148;
    Indian origin of, 148;
    whether the Israelites were employed in constructing, 148-156;
    vicinity of Ghizeh to the land of Goshen, 153;
    ignorance of the Egyptians respecting their origin accounted for, 154;
    Buddhistic doctrine of their emblemism, 248;
    coincidence between dimensions of the Great Pyramid and those of the
        “ark,” 267;
    probably erected by the Uksos, or shepherd kings, _i.e._ by the
        Pish-de-danaans, 281, 282.

  PYRATHEIA (fire-temples), Strabo’s description of, opposed to the whole
        character of the round towers, 72.

  PYREA, or fire-temples of the Chaldeans, Persians, etc., 69.

  PYTHAGORAS and the triangle of ten, 267, 268;
    Tuath-de-danaan mission to, 449, 450;
    meaning of his name, 507, 508.

  PYTHIA, derivation and meaning of, 507;
    transmission to the oracle of the inspiring vapour through _pheeleas_,
        460, 507.

  PYTHON, allegory of Apollo and the, its origin and meaning, 291, 292,
        330;
    its representation at Knockmoy, 330.


  RAVEN (Noachian), sent forth from the ark, what it typified, 278.

  RIMMON (ASTARTE), its meaning and emblemism, 101, 102.

  RINKE-TEUMPOIL (temple dance), its connection with the round towers, 517.

  RITTY (wife of Camadeva), her place in the Hindu phallic mythology, 94.

  ROME, connection of the Irish _Chaildees_ with, 44;
    Montmorency’s theory on this point, 44, 45;
    academies of Ireland superior to those of, 45;
    nature and extent of the acknowledgment of Roman supremacy in Ireland,
        45;
    Dr. Hurd on the relation of the _Chaildees_ to, 46;
    Fenelon on the moral and religious status of, 46.

  ROUND TOWERS, to be regarded as _Sabian_ towers, 3, 4;
    or primitive Buddhist temples, 4;
    Buddhist origin claimed for them in common with Cromleachs and
        Mithratic caves, 2, 3;
    not designed for penitential or purgatorial purposes, 5;
    not specially intended as beacons or belfries, 5, 6, 10, 12, 13, 36,
        37;
    not limited to any special purpose, 6;
    durability, costliness, and complexity of their structure, 6, 7;
    inferior construction of churches in their vicinity, showing that the
        latter date from a subsequent period, 7, 514;
    instance of a R. T. without a church near it, 514;
    not of Danish origin, 9, 10;
    as to the alleged Christian origin of those at Brechin and Abernethy
        in Scotland, 8, 10, 431;
    how Scotch differ from Irish R. T., 10;
    the “cell” theory, 13, 14;
    the existence of R. T. in Scotland accounted for, 10;
    their being termed _Cloghads_ no proof of their being merely belfries,
        10-12;
    not intended as retreats or depositories in the case of a hostile
        invasion, or as places of seclusion for anchorites, 13-15, 35, 36;
    nor as “excubiæ” (Stanihurst’s theory), 14, 15;
    their connection with freemasonry, 19, 20;
    and with the _Bards_, 22, 23;
    their antiquity, 27, 28;
    erected by followers of _Baal Phearagh_, 29;
    inference from the peculiar position of their doors, 33;
    belfry at Slane not a R. T., 36, 37;
    not meant as monastic fortresses, 37, 38;
    that of Devenish, 38, 71;
    allegation that they were founded by the O’Rorkes and M’Carthys, 39,
        40;
    that of Ballycarberry, 48;
    described by Giraldus Cambrensis, 49;
    alleged to be submerged under Lough Neagh, 50;
    the “celestial index” theory, 52;
    twofold purpose of, 61, 62, 372;
    phallic significance of, 61, 62, 91, 101, 103, 112, 178, 372, 511;
    the “fire-temple” theory, 70, 71, 74, 82, 83, 91;
    Ardmore and Devenish R. T. considered with regard to the latter
        theory, 71;
    Eastern buildings similar to the R. T., especially in the Caucasus and
        Hindostan, 74, 75;
    Eastern R. T. not necessarily fire-temples, 75, 191;
    Drumboe R. T. and the “fire-temple” theory, 81;
    structural difference between R. T. and “fire-temples,” 83;
    Miss Beaufort’s arguments considered, 83-89;
    not “provincial palaces” elected under the enactment of Tara, 90;
    funeral and astronomic purposes of, 91, 92;
    that of Clondalkin, 101;
    the “crescent of Sheevah” sculpture on the latter, 103;
    symbolic of the _Lingam_, 112;
    possibility of subterranean passages under, 162-166;
    confirmatory evidence of this at Downpatrick, 164;
    comparative date of structures at Clonmacnoise, 163;
    must have existed before St. Patrick’s time, 164;
    the round pillars of Aradus (Tripoli), 165;
    the crocodile tanks of the Egyptian labyrinth, 166;
    the “sepulchre” theory, 162-166;
    subterranean passage of Hindu temple at Gwalior, 166;
    argument from water in vicinity of, 167;
    Lake of Astarte at Hieropolis, 168;
    Solomon’s “Molten Sea,” 172;
    confirmatory description by Lucian, 168;
    mode of ascending the R. T., 168, 169, 176;
    segregation of solitary worshippers on summit of R. T., 170;
    use of bells in R. T., 169, 175;
    corresponding usage in Indian and Jewish ceremonials, 169-175;
    similar conformity in respect of sacrifices, 170-173;
    pomegranate sculpture on, 171, 172;
    traces of bell apparatus on accounted for, 172, 173;
    corresponding bell usages in Ceylon, Burmah, and China, 173 _n._, 174
        _n._;
    traces of steps used for ascending R. T., 176;
    parallel instance at phallic temple of Serrowbee, 176;
    R. T. of Kilmalloch, 201-203;
    R. T. on Scattery Island, 206;
    common phallic symbolism of R. T., obelisks and other _lithoi_, 217,
        229 _n._;
    connection of the R. T. with the offence of Cain, 233;
    form of the R. T. significative of Divine unity, 248;
    reason why R. T. are seldom found in Persia, 253 _et seq._;
    pseudo-Christian symbols on R. T. of Brechin, 299-301;
    similar emblems on temple in Ceylon, 300;
    _Fidh-nemead_ as a designation of, 343;
    their analogy to certain _Nubian_ antiquities, 343;
    R. T. of Clonmacnoise, their vicinity to the churches accounted for,
        356, 357;
    Cormac’s testimony to their antiquity and Buddhist origin, 74, 368;
    their affinity to the Ceylonese _Dagobs_, 369-371;
    also to the _Gaur_ towers of India, 371;
    their twofold, _i.e._ phallic and sepulchral character, 372;
    analogy between them and the pillars Jachin and Boaz of Solomon’s
        temple, 372, 373;
    era of their construction, 373-395;
    proof in the annals of Ulster that they existed before the fifth
        century, 374;
    legend of their supposed architect, _Goban Saer_, 375, 383, 513;
    _St. Abhan_ could have had no share in their construction, 383, 384;
    not of Scythian origin, 386, 387;
    probability of their Tuath-de-danaan origin, 386-389, 513;
    as to the possibility of their Fomorian origin, 394, 395;
    Amergin’s evidence as to their antiquity, 387, 388;
    corresponding Boreadan temples of Apollo described by Hecatæus, 403;
    could not have been of Phœnician origin, 413, 414;
    why there are no R. T. in England, 425;
    their existence in Scotland accounted for, 431;
    not founded by _Ollamh Fodlah_, 430;
    their connection with the worship of Osiris, 437;
    their resemblance to the Treasury of Atreus (Greece), 455;
    also to _Dune of Donadella_ (Scotland), 455;
    certain projections from their surface accounted for, 456, 515;
    difference of their appropriation accounted for, 512;
    reason of their phallic shape, 511;
    significance of their apertures, 511;
    also of their crucificial emblems, 511;
    also of the absence or presence of internal compartments, 511;
    their varying height, 511;
    shape and fashioning of the apex, 511;
    also of their cornices, resembling those of Solomon’s pillars, 511,
        514;
    their tapering diameter, 511, 512;
    their doors, reason of height from the ground, 512;
    their exceptional architecture, 513-516;
    their material, evidence of a pre-Christian origin, 513, 514;
    similar evidence from their decorative character, 513, 514;
    occasional vitrification of their interior accounted for, 514;
    absence of floors in, how explicable, 514, 515;
    correspondence of their general construction with that of Solomon’s
        temple, 514, 515;
    their perpendicularity, 515;
    probable mode of their construction, 516;
    cohesiveness of their structure exemplified, 516;
    performance of dances (_Rinke-teumpoil_) round them, 517;
    peculiar penances (_Turrish_) observed in their vicinity, 517;
    the prevalent uncertainty as to their origin and uses explained, 519,
        520;
    their assignment to astronomical purposes after the Scythian conquest
        of Ireland, 521.


  SABAISM, 193-210, 503-510;
    not idolatry, 194;
    origin of, 194 _n._, 503;
    its objects of worship, 194;
    professed by the early Greeks, 194;
    its identity with Phallicism, 105;
    significance of Cyclops, _Sterope_, _Argues_, _Brontes_, _Hercules_,
        195, 196;
    names under which Hercules or the Sun was worshipped, 196;
    Herodotus on the old Greek theogony, 196;
    whence Greece derived Sabaism, 196, 197;
    how the latter degenerated into idolatry, 197;
    its affinity with the ancient religion of Ireland, 197-210;
    such affinity evident from Irish local names, 197-210;
    Sabaic origin of the names _Palatine_, _Aventine_, _Prytaneia_, 198
        _n._;
    _Aiche-Baal-tinne_ and _Aiche-Shamain_ explained, 199, 200;
    Irish customs and expressions indicative of, 199;
    existed among the Druids, 199, 200;
    significance of the Druidic “golden sickle,” its Indian equivalent,
        200;
    adoption of its institutions by the early Christian missionaries,
        200-202;
    _La-Beuil-tinne_ as a name for Christmas, 201;
    signified in architectural remains at Kilmalloch, 201, 203;
    Sabian origin of the names _Baltinglas_, _Athlone_, _Shannon_,
        _Lough Rea_, _Castlereagh_, _Deargart_, and _Lough Derg_, etc.,
        203-209;
    Scattery Island and its round tower, 206;
    Killeshandra, 207;
    Grian (the Sun), as a root name, 208, 209;
    Sabian affinity of the Irish with the Algan Kinese of N. America, 209;
    connection between Sabaism, Buddhism, and Phallism, 213;
    deification of the energies of nature alluded to in the _Book of
        Enoch_, 401, 402;
    derivation and origin of the name _Sabian_, 503;
    triple meaning of the Irish root, _Sabh_, 503;
    Hindu equivalent of the latter, 503 _n._;
    Sabaism indicated in Palencian remains, 503;
    _Ophiolatreia_ and the _Gadelian_ varieties of, 505;
    “know that ye are Sabians” (Arabic prophecy) explained, 503, 506;
    meaning of Τό ΣΑΒΟΕ in Bacchic rites, 505;
    Sabaic, or Phallic, import of _Sibyl_, _Delphi_, _Pythia_, and
        _Tripod_, 507;
    also of the name Pythagoras, 508;
    the sacred name “Immanuel,” and the medals of Christ, 503, 510;
    Sabaic character of the round towers, 510 _et seq._

  SABH, triple meaning of, 503;
    identity with Hindu Seva, 503 _n._

  SACARA (Brahminical), name for certain embodiments of the Deity, 288.

  SAER, triple meaning of, 20 _n._
    See GOBAN SAER.

  SAINT ABHAN, Montmorency’s view as to his having been the founder of the
        R. T. considered, 30, 383;
    not contemporary with the Goban Saer, 383, 384;
      and see GOBAN SAER.

  SAINT BRIDGET, originally a pagan vestal or fire-worshipper, 82;
    date of her conversion to Christianity, 82;
    how she continued to show a leaning to her former faith, 82;
    description of her “fire-house” by Cambrensis, 82, 83;
    unconnected with the R. T., 83.

  SAINT COLUMB, or COLUMB-KILL, and the isle of Hy, 37;
    not the founder of Kells R. T., 83.

  SAINT KEVIN, nature of his connection with Glendalough, 471;
    Ledwich’s fallacy respecting, 472.

  SAINT PATRICK, introduction of Christianity into Ireland not due to him,
        41;
    his share in the work of evangelisation, 42, 43, 364;
    meaning of _Nemph-Thur_, the name of his birthplace, 114 _n._;
    his holocaust of Irish literature, 135, 415, 416;
    his alleged “granary” at Down, 164;
    his pagan master, Milco Mac-Huanan, 203, 204;
    the only sense in which he can be regarded as having extirpated snakes
        from Ireland, 360-364;
    analogous legend in the _Puranas_, 362, 363;
    not the originator of the Irish alphabet, 416;
    nor of the national veneration for the shamrock, 439, 440.

  SAINT PAUL, as to the possibility of Ireland having been evangelised by,
        41.

  SALSETTE, subterranean temple at, 215, 216.

  SAMONA, a title for the priests and images of Buddha, 141.

  SANDWICK (Ross-shire), description of symbolic sculpture on obelisk at,
        305-9.

  SATI, or PARVATI (Hindu), and Mahadeva, parents of the _Lingajas_ and
        _Yonijas_, 260.

  SCAPEGOAT, corresponding observance connected with R. T., 170, 172;
    similar observance in upper India, 172 _n._

  SCATTERY ISLAND, its round tower and seven churches, 206.

  SCOTI and SCOTIA, the latter originally identical with _Scythia_, 54;
    SCOTI, a name for the Irish, 54 _n._, 429;
    the _Scoto-Brigantes_ and their invasion of Ireland, 426;
    distinct from the Scandinavian invasion, 426;
    connection of the Scoti with Spain, 426 _n._;
    their amalgamation with the Firbolgs, 428;
    change of the name _Irin_ into _Scotia_, 429;
    date at which the former name was resumed, 429;
    _Scotia Major_ and _Scotia Minor_, and substitution of the latter for
        _Albania_ as the name of Scotland, 429 _n._;
    retention of _Scoti_ as a name for the Irish, 429 _n._;
    friendship between the Picts and Scots, and adoption by the former of
        Scotia as a name for their country, 431;
    rupture of this friendship, 431;
    the _Scoto-Milesians_, 432.

  Scotland, exile of the Danaan Boreades to, 56;
    persecution of the latter by the Picts, 57 _n._;
    round towers in, 10, 431.

  SCOTUS (Johannes). See ERIGENA.

  SCRABALL (head-tax), as to its levy for the purpose of building palaces
        at Tara, 89, 90.

  SCYTHIANS, date of their conquest of Ireland, 297, 435;
    assisted by the Firbolgs to subjugate the Iranians (Tuath-de-danaans),
        297, 428;
    superseded the usages and dress of the latter, 297, 298;
    Strabo’s description of the Scythian attire, 53;
    why Abaris did not wear this dress, 56;
    their policy towards the Boreades, 56;
    their contempt for architecture, 383, 384;
    O’Morgan (Archbishop of Armagh), the first Scythian who built a stone
        house, 384;
    St. Abhan could not have done so, 384;
    _Goban Saer_ not a Scythian, 386;
    could not have built the R. T., 386, 387;
    spoke the language of the Tuath-de-danaans, 393;
    their religion Druidical, 428;
    name of Ireland changed to Scythia (_Scuitte_), 429;
    their occupation of the country responsible for the decay of its
        grandeur and piety, 520.

  SEANNEACBUS, mistake of, respecting the battle of Maytura, 448, 449.

  SEPOYS at Dendera, remarkable behaviour of, 143, 144.

  SEPULTURE, mystic significance of the form of the R. T. in reference to,
        372.

  SERAPIS, monogram of Christ found beneath foundation of temple to, 312.

  SERPENT-WORSHIP, general symbolism of the serpent, 221, 222;
    Purana legend of the snake giant killed by Christnah, 221, 292;
    antiquity of this worship and of its symbolism, 222, 223;
    symbol of circle and serpent explained, 222, 223, 506;
    ubiquity of serpent-worship and of its peculiar symbolism, 222, 223;
    the Vindolana stone and its symbolism, 223;
    identity of serpent, sun, and phallic worship, 223, 224;
    symbol of cross, crescent, and cockatrice explained, 224-226, 506;
    Egyptian notions regarding the basilisk, 225;
    relation of the latter to the _brazen serpent_ of Scripture, 225, 506;
    Eve and the serpent, 285 _et seq._, 505, 506;
    Apollo and the Python, 291, 292, 330;
    meaning of “Python,” 330 _n._;
    Proserpine and the serpent, 303;
    snake-symbolism on Irish crosses, 357-367;
    only sense in which St. Patrick can be allowed credit for the
        extirpation of snakes from Ireland, 361-363;
    scriptural allusions to snake-charming, 360;
    why snake-sculpture on crosses was revered by the Irish, 361;
    description of snake-sculpture on temple at Burwah Saugor, 363;
    snake symbolism at Glendalough, 473;
    the expression “generation of vipers” explained, 498-505;
    Purana legend of Deity assuming form of serpent, 499;
    Nagualism and its doctrines, 499 _et seq._;
    the Palencian _Culebra_ and the Irish _Gadelglas_, 502;
    serpent insignia of the Milesians, 502;
    _Gadel_, _Gadelglas_, and the “_Emerald Isle_” explained, 502, 503;
    Vishnu, the snake, and the White Island, 326.

  SERROWLEE (India), description of certain structures resembling R. T.
        at, 176.

  SHAMROCK, Irish national reverence for, derived from ancient Persia,
        and not introduced by Saint Patrick, 439, 440;
    imported by the Tuath-de-danaans, 440;
    reason for its veneration, 440;
    shamrock devices in Freemasonry, and upon the crowns of Irish and
        Persian kings, explained, 440.

  SHANNON, a Gangian name, 205, 206;
    its divinity _Derg_ (Durga), 206.

  SHEEVA, or SEVA, the originator of phallic worship, 100, 101;
    his “crescent” represented on the R. T., 103;
    his name identical with the Irish _Sabh_, 503;
    its Hindu signification, 503 _n._

  SHINAR (in Mesopotamia), the site of the tower of Babel, and of the
        origin of Sabaism, 64;
    settlement of the Noachidæ, 65;
    its previous occupation by the _Pish-de-danaans_ before they went
        to Egypt, 282.

  SIAMESE REGISTERS, their coincidence with the Irish as to the date of
        the Tuath-de-danaan invasion, 435.

  SIBYLS, why so called, 507.
    See PHEELEA and PYTHIA.

  SICKLE, as to the symbolism of the golden one used by the Druids, 200.

  SLANE, belfry at, not a R. T., 36, 37.

  SMERWICK, ancient fire-temple at, 72.

  SOLOMON’S TEMPLE, Phallic or Sabian pillars at, 101, 372, 511;
    consequent affinity between them and the R. T., 372, 514;
    anatomical significance in the construction of, 373;
    correspondence of its windows to the apertures of R. T., 514.
    See MOLTEN SEA.

  SPENSER, cited, 469.

  STANIHURST, his theory of the R. T. being “excubiæ,” 14, 15.

  STEROPES, Sabaic, import of the term, 195.

  STRABO on _Abaris_ and the _Insula Hyperboreorum_, 53-55;
    his description of _Pyratheia_, showing that R. T. could not have been
        the latter, 72.

  SUAD-DHA-DANA (father of Buddha), identical with Tuath-de-danaan, 264.

  SULLIVAN and O’SULLIVAN, connected with the Hindu name, _Sulivahana_,
        339;
    peculiar reverence accorded to families bearing this name in Ireland,
        339 _n._

  SUN-WORSHIP, Nimrod reputed to have introduced, 63, 64;
    _Baal_, _Moloch_, and _Bolati_ as names of the Sun, 65;
    its Sabian character, 64-66, 110;
    why it originated, 66;
    at first merely emblematical, 66;
    not conducted originally in temples, 66;
    its degeneration into _Materialism_, as fire-worship, 67;
    allusions to both in Scripture, 67, 68, 109;
    names for the Sun as representative of the _fructifying_ principle, 91;
    description of a Mexican fire-temple, 156 _n._;
    connection of the R. T. with, 75;
    connection of Ophiolatry (serpent-worship) with, 223, 224.
    See APOLLO and FIRE-WORSHIP.


  TACITUS (Agricola), his comparison of Ireland with England, 119.

  TAILTINE GAMES, described, 390-392;
    origin of the name, 392;
    recorded in sculptures on Irish crosses and obelisks, 392;
    corresponding observances in Egypt and Greece, 392, 393;
    Buddhist significance of, 392;
    analogy of _Tailtine_ with English _Tilt_, 392;
    Telltown, 389.

  TARA, triennial assemblies at, 23;
    pagan rites celebrated at in the time of St. Patrick, 42;
    Miss Beaufort on the enactment of, A.D. 79, by Tuathal Teachmar, in
        connection with the purpose of the R. T., 88, 89;
    Psalter of Tara quoted in refutation of her theory, 89, 90;
    a place for legislative deliberations, 389.
    See TEAMOR.

  TAUT (Egyptian), triple-cross emblem of, 291;
    its connection with Freemasonry, 291 _n._

  TEAMOR (or TARA), not a palace, but a R. T., 90, 389.

  TEAUMPAL-NA-GREINE (temple of the Sun), a name for R. T., 103.

  TEN (the number) the Pythagorean triangle of, 267, 268;
    its phallic significance, 268;
    its connection with the pyramids, 268, 269;
    how it came to be represented by a cross, 487-489;
    its connection with the Irish “finger-oath,” 489.

  TERCEIRA (Spanish historian of 16th cent.) on the decay of learning in
        Persia, 181.

  THEBIT, or THEBITH (name for the “Ark”), its phallic import, 270, 271.

  TIBHOLAS, or TIVOLAS, as a name of Ireland, its Sabaic origin and
        import, 507.

  TORADH (Irish), curious double meaning of, 102 _n._

  TOR-BOILEH (Indian local name), corresponding to Irish _Nemph-Thur_ and
        _Budh-Nemph_, 114 _n._

  TOTDANA (a religious name of Ireland), explained, 453.

  TREE, how each letter of the Irish alphabet denotes some kind of, 229,
        418.

  TREE of KNOWLEDGE, (scriptural), what it signified, 227-230.
    See EVE.

  TREFOIL. See SHAMROCK.

  TRIANGLE, sacred character and phallic import of its form, 267.
    See TEN.

  TRIPOD (Delphic), analogous symbolism of shape between it and the
        pyramid, 507.

  TUATH, corresponds to Buddhist _Suath_, and is resolvable with _Budh_,
        264;
    device of the cross significant of, 291.

  TUATH-DE-DANAANS, origin and meaning of the name, 55, 248, 249, 257;
    a sacerdotal caste of the Persian Magh-abadeans, 248, 249;
    derivation of _Tuath_ and _Tuatha_, 249, 257;
    of _de_ and _Danaans_, 249;
    meaning of the whole name, 249;
    distinct from the _Pish_- (or _Pith_)- de-danaans, 255-257;
    origin of their separation from the latter, 258;
    war of the two sects, and victory of the Pish-de-danaans, 259, 285;
    consequent expulsion of the Tuath-de-danaans from Persia, 259;
    discrepant Hindu account of the struggle, 260, 261;
    their settlement in Ireland, and its consequences, 259, 264-266, 393;
    their leaders, the sons of Miledh, the Fomorian, 393;
    their existence in Persia recognised by Eastern historians, 264;
    identical with _Suad-dha-dana_ (Buddhist), 264;
    Kaiomurs, or Yavana (Noah), the founder of their dynasty, 272;
    their garb described, 297;
    contrasted with that of the Celts, 297;
    their expulsion from Ireland, and persecution by the Picts in
        Scotland, 320;
    their battles with the Firbolgs, 386, 448, 449;
    were a sea-going people, 414;
    whether carried by the Phœnicians to their destination, 414;
    date of their arrival in Ireland, 435, 436;
    curious correspondence of same with that of expulsion of the
        Buddhists, _ib._;
    also with the diluvian period, 436;
    effected two distinct settlements in Ireland, 436, 443, 448, 449;
    their expulsion from India by the Brahmins, 443;
    harassed by the Firbolgs, 441, 442;
    their embassy to Greece, and contest with the Firbolgs on their
        return; consequent battle, 448, 449;
    their subsequent decadence both in religion and learning, 449;
    merging of their ritual with that of the Druids, 449;
    their practical introduction of the leading tenets of Christianity
        into Ireland, 493;
    Irish crosses, church festivals, and hagiology derived from, 492-494,
        513;
    prosperity of Ireland in their time, 517;
    effacement of their influence by the Scythian conquest, 520;
    subsequent accommodation between victors and vanquished, 520;
    analogous event in Roman history, 520, 521;
    their connection with the round towers, 386-389, 513.
    See BUDDHISM, ROUND TOWERS, PERSIA, IRELAND, etc.

  TURRISH, name for penitential gyration round the R. T., 517.


  UKSI, or HUKSOS (shepherd kings), Manetho’s account of, 142;
    called _Pali_ in Vedas, 143;
    their invasion of Egypt explains the dislike of the Egyptians to the
        Israelites, 143, 151;
    evidence of Herodotus, 143;
    were probably the founders of the Pyramids, 144, 153;
    the shepherd _Philitis_, 144, 146;
    their general influence on civilisation and science in Egypt, 144-156;
    were antecedent to the Israelites there, 151;
    were derived from the same stock as the _Tuath-de-danaans_, 155.

  ULSTER (annals of), record the destruction of fifty-seven R. T. by an
        earthquake in the 5th cent., 374.
    See ANNALS.

  UR, meaning of, 68;
    Chaldean and Persian cities of that name, the former the original seat
        of fire-worship, 68, 69.
    See NIMROD and FIRE-WORSHIP.


  VALENTIA (Lord) on certain edifices in the Caucasus resembling R. T., 74.

  VALLANCEY, his theories as to the R. T., 13, 254, 255;
    his confusion of the _Pish-de-danaans_ with the _Tuath-de-danaans_,
        253;
    also of _Airgiodlamh_ with _Zerdust_ (Zoroaster), 254;
    his merits and defects, 19, 254, 255.

  VASSANT (Hindu deity), companion of _Camadeva_, meaning of the name, 95,
        96.

  VEDAS (Sanskrit records), cited, 143.

  VENERABLE BEDE, evidence of, as to the existence of fire-temples in
        Ireland, not conclusive as to the character of the R. T., 83.

  VESTAL-FIRE, of Oriental origin, 87.

  VINDOLANA, remarkable Sabaic sculpture on stone found at, 223-226.

  VIPERS, their place in Sabaism, 498-505;
    import of the scriptural expression, “generation of vipers,” 498, 499.
    See SERPENT-WORSHIP.

  VIRGINAL CONCEPTION, a doctrine not confined to Christianity, 271, 288,
        291-304.

  VISHNU (Hindu deity), phallic worship of, identical with that of the
        _Yonijas_, 260 _n._


  WARE (Sir John), 37;
    on the chronology of the R. T., 373.

  WATERFORD and WEXFORD, argument from R. T. not being found there, 9.

  WELLS, existence of, under the pyramids, an argument against the theory
        that they were royal mausoleums, 162.

  WHITAKER on the derivation of the name _Britain_, 421, 422;
    on the Celtic origin of Irish, Scotch, and Welsh local names, 422;
    on a Belgic colonisation of Ireland, 423;
    his theories refuted, 423-428.

  WHITE ISLAND (_Muc-Inis_), a name of Ireland, 327;
    also the name given in the Puranas to the kingdom of Crishna, and the
        scene of Vishnu’s incarnation and the abode of the legendary
        snake-giant, 325-327;
    triple meaning of the Irish name, _Muc Inis_, 327;
    Keating’s theory of its origin, 328;
    its real meaning, 339.

  WOLF, representation on ancient Irish sculptures of the, 466, 467;
    meaning of the symbolism, 466-468;
    _Lycanthropy_, or wolf-madness, 468;
    its prevalence among the ancient Irish, 469;
    the Irish as wolf-tamers, 469;
    Irish and Indian wolf-dogs, 469;
    meaning of _Lyceus_, 469.

  WOMAN, the subject of deification in early times, 211, 212;
    typified by the Moon, 211;
    names under which she was worshipped, 211, 212;
    dual import of the Irish term _Astore_, 212, 213;
    nature of Eve’s fatal curiosity, 228, 229, 285;
    also how it led to Buddhism, 330;
    exalted position of woman in ancient Persia, 262, 263;
    the scriptural penalty imposed on Eve explains the nature of her
        offence, 285;
    the promise of virginal offspring to avert its consequences, 285, 286;
    immorality resulting from the wish to anticipate this promise, 287;
    Buddhist recognition of its fulfilment, 301;
    Artemidorus on the pre-Christian worship of the virgin in Ireland, 301;
    Greek perversion of the idea of virginal conception, 303;
    meaning of the expression, “the son of woman” in the Book of Enoch,
        475-477.


  YAVANA, its meaning, 259, 273;
    another name for _Pish-de-danaans_, 283.

  YESSAN (Persian dynasty), 247.

  YONIJAS, worshippers of the Yoni, or sacred emblem of female nature,
        259, 260, 282 _n._
    See also DEVIL’S YONIES.


  ZEZD (Persian), nature of fire-temple at, 72.

  ZOROASTER (or _Zerdust_), meaning of the name, 52;
    period at which he lived, 189;
    nature of his teaching, 188;
    anticipated by Hushang, 189, 190.


NOTE.--This edition of O’Brien’s work on the Round Towers being, as
regards the Author’s text, a _facsimile_ of that published in 1834, the
above Index will serve for both.


  PRINTED BY
  MORRISON AND GIBB LIMITED, EDINBURGH




FOOTNOTES:

[1] “Bryan O’Brien, of the county of Kerry, son of Teige, born 1740,
married, 17th November 1797, Ellen, daughter of Justin MacCarthy (by
Joanna Conway, his wife); and had: I. Richard, who died unmar. in Jan.
1861; II. Lucien, who also died unmar. in America, in Mar. 1865; III.
Turlogh Henry, author of _The Round Towers of Ireland_, who died unmar.
1835” (O’Hart’s _Irish Pedigrees_, p. 168). At pp. 39, 40, _post_, O’Brien
alludes to his maternal grandfather as “the last of the MacCarthy Mores.”

[2] At pp. 480, 481, _post_: thus, by the way, refuting a statement (in
the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for 1835) which has been adopted in the
_Dictionary of National Biography_, that he was utterly ignorant of
Celtic.

[3] It is not to be supposed that a University Professor of Greek would
have had any difficulty in explaining to the most ordinary intelligence an
idiom so frequently occurring in the New Testament as εἰς τὰ ἴδια, which
we meet with, not only in the passage referred to (John i. 11), but at
xvi. 32 and xix. 37 of the same Gospel, and at xxi. 6 of the Acts of the
Apostles. Nor is it likely that the exegetic difficulty connected with τὰ
ἴδια would have occurred to a boy of twelve. Further, Mr. Boyton did not
resign his connection with the University until 1833, whereas, in the
passage above cited, O’Brien evidently refers to some time about 1820.

[4] It is not even clear that he is identical with the “Henry O’Brien”
mentioned in the _Catalogue of the Graduates of the University of Dublin
from 1691 to 1868_, now in the British Museum. The entry is as
follows:--“Henry O’Brien, B.A. (_ad eundem, Cantab._), 1835.”

[5] This must have been the English Master of the Rolls, who at that time
was the Right Hon. Sir John Leach, a judge remarkable for the celerity of
his decisions, in marked contrast to those of his contemporary, Lord
Eldon, of whom it used to be said that he heard cases without determining
them, whereas Sir John Leach determined cases without hearing them.

[6] _Edinburgh Review_, vol. lix. pp. 148, 149.

[7] Mr. Marcus Keane, author of _The Temples and Round Towers of Ancient
Ireland_, states in his Preface to that work that he spent three years,
during which he had to travel more than five thousand miles, in the
performance of a task not much more exacting.

[8] From “TO THE PUBLIC,” a narrative prefixed to his translation of
Villanueva’s “_Ibernia Phœnicia_,” which preceded _The Round Towers_.

[9] _Ibid._ p. xxxii. “’Ερεμω” may, however, be an error of the printer,
and the fact that it was subsequently corrected lends colour to this view.

[10] It must be admitted that a letter alluded to at p. xix, _post_,
written by the Rev. Cæsar Otway, a member of the Council, lends some
colour to this assertion.

[11] P. xxiii of the introduction to _Phœnician Ireland_, inscribed “To
the Public.”

[12] This letter will be found at p. lxxi, _post_.

[13] Vol. 59 of the _Edinburgh Review_ for 1834.

[14] _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for March 1834, p. 288; for Oct, 1834, p. 365
f.; and for Nov. 1835, p. 553. At pp. 340 f. of the volume for 1833, pt.
ii., may be found a distinctly unfavourable review of O’Brien’s
translation of _Ibernia Phœnicia_.

[15] _Vide_ note 2, p. vii, _ante_.

[16] It may be remarked here that an Act for the protection of ancient
monuments is much needed in Ireland.

[17] At p. 4 of his work on the Round Towers (2nd ed.).

[18] Amusing instances of this autocratic method pervade Dr. Petrie’s work
on the Round Towers. Thus, at p. 109, he disposes of the Phallic Theory,
which had exercised so many noble minds, with the single remark: “It is,
happily, so absurd, and at the same time so utterly unsupported by
authority or evidence worthy of refutation, that I gladly pass it by
without further notice, even though it has found a zealous supporter in
the person of Sir “William Betham” (who, it may be observed, was not only
a member of the Academy, but one of the leading antiquarians of his day,
besides being Ulster-King-at Arms, etc. etc.) “since these pages were
originally written ... and _who was consequently not unacquainted with
their contents_.” (The italics are ours.) No further reference to this
much-debated theory occurs in his book; but there are many denunciations
of Sir W. Betham for presuming to differ from him. His way of dealing with
the evidences and arguments in support of the pagan origin of the Round
Towers adduced by O’Brien and Sir W. Betham is simply this: “I have not
thought them deserving of notice” (p. 359).

[19] At pp. 1, 2 of _The Towers and Temples of Ancient Ireland_, by Marcus
Keane, M.R.I.A. (Dublin: Hodges, Smith & Co.); a very beautiful and
interesting volume. A still more formidable champion of the revolt against
Dr. Petrie’s sway has since appeared, the Rev. Canon Bourke, M.R.I.A.,
author of _Pre-Christian Ireland_ (Brown & Nolan, Dublin, 1887).

[20] _The Migration of Symbols_: Archibald Constable & Co., Westminster,
1894.

[21] Introduction, pp. ix-xv.

[22] Preface, 3.

[23] P. 12.

[24] At p. 4 of his work on the Round Towers.

[25] General Vallancey’s literary remains are preserved in seven octavo
volumes, entitled _Collectanea de Rebus Hibernicis_, of which a complete
set is rather difficult to obtain. The portions specifically relating to
the round towers will be found in vols. ii., iii., and vii. As regards the
other source of plagiarism to which Moore refers in his article above
quoted,--“the remarkable work called _Nimrod_,”--it has been already
shown, without any attempt at contradiction, that the leading idea of
_Nimrod_ was that the round towers were _fire-altars_, and that (to quote
the writer’s words) “O’Brien’s theory is not to be found in any page of
it.”

[26] According to “Father Prout” (“Rogueries of Tom Moore”), it was
probably suggested to him by the study of Lucian. See p. 90 of Mr. Kent’s
edition of “The Works of Father Prout.”

[27] Alluded to in the _Charmides_ of Plato.

[28] This statement is subject to a qualification. Certain structures--one
at Peel in the Isle of Man, and another at Hythe in Kent--are supposed, on
grounds of which the validity is more or less questioned, to be round
towers.

[29] _Vide_ p. 514. General Vallancey had made a similar remark: “Nor are
they always annexed to churches. There are many in the fields, where no
traces of the foundations of any other buildings can be discovered around
them” (_Collect._ iii. 492, cited at p. 17 of Dr. Petrie’s work). Dr.
Lanigan avowed the same; but Dr. Petrie declares “they are, without a
single exception, found near old churches, or where churches are known to
have existed”; though, as Mr. Keane points out, he assumes buildings to be
“churches” which have no claim to that title.

[30] _Fraser’s Magazine_, November 1, 1833.

[31] The _characteristic architectural peculiarities_ belonging to each of
the towers was the omission required to be supplied, and for this alone
three months were extended. During that time I wrote my entire Essay, and
of course did not omit this requisite. But as these could give no interest
to the general reader, I have omitted them in the present enlarged form.
If called for, however, I shall cheerfully supply them, as an Appendix to
another work which may soon appear.

[32] _Dublin Penny Journal_, July 7, 1832.

[33] “Kilmallock has been a place of some distinction from a very remote
period, and, like most of our ancient towns, is of ecclesiastical origin,
a _monastery_ having been founded here by St. Maloch in the sixth century,
_of which the original Round Tower_ still remains.”--_Dublin Penny
Journal_, vol. i. p. 65.

“These (the Ruins of Swords) consist of a fine and lofty Round Tower,
coeval with the foundation of the original monastery.”--_Ibid._ vol. i. p.
177.

[34] If this appear over-sanguine, I trust it will be attributed to its
only cause--a strong sense of injustice expressed in the moment of warmth,
and without ever expecting that this expression should see the light.

[35] That this was not gratuitous I pledge myself to prove, even from
circumstances that have already transpired.

[36] It is true Mr. Higgins has told me this, and I listened with polite
silence to what I had read “in print” a thousand times before. But our
chronicles call the name Macha, and I abide by them. Enough, however, has
occurred between the date of this letter and the present to quiet the most
ardent disposition as to the pursuit of earthly éclat. Its author is no
more! He has reached that “bourne whence no traveller returns.” And the
warning, I confess, is to myself not a little pointed, from the
unremitting perseverance with which this inquiry has been prosecuted and
the vexatious opposition with which its truths have been met.

[37] I wish the reader to keep this in mind; its effects will be
manifested by and by.

[38] φωνη εν τη ερημω.

[39] See Letter No. 3.

[40] _Dublin Penny Journal_, August 3, 1833.

[41] Gibbon’s Memoirs.

[42] The Budhist temples.

[43] The Cromleachs.

[44] The Mithratic Caves.

[45] Job i.

[46] I say _accidentally_, because he foundered as well upon the _actual
colony_ who erected those temples, as upon the _nature_ of the _rites_ for
which they were erected.

[47] Colonel Montmorency.

[48] Pliny, lib. lxvi. cap. 12.

[49] This incomparably beautiful object, constructed of white marble, in
the days of Demosthenes, in the second year of the one hundred and
eleventh Olympiad, 335 years before Christ, and in the year 418 of Rome,
was erected in honour of some young men of the tribe of Archamantide,
victors at the public games, and dedicated, it is supposed, to Hercules.

[50] The first name ever given to this body was _Saer_, which has three
significations--firstly, _free_; secondly, _mason_; and thirdly, _Son of
God_. In no language could those several imports be united but in the
original one, viz. the Irish. The Hebrews express only one branch of it by
_aliben_; while the English join together the other two.

[51] Sallust, _Cat. Con._

[52] Lib. xi. epist. 11.

[53] 2 Kings xvii. 29, 30.

[54] Byron.

[55] Vol. iii. p. 78, note.

[56] The tolling of a bell was supposed to have had miraculous effects--to
keep the spirits of darkness from assaulting believers--to dispel thunder,
and prevent the devil from molesting either the church or congregation;
and hence they were always rung, in time of storm or other attack, to
paralyse the fiend, whether the elements or mortal man, by the hallowed
intonation. Each was dedicated to a particular saint,--duly baptized and
consecrated; and the inscriptions which still remain on the old ones that
have come down to us proclaim the virtue of their capabilities. The
following distich will be found to sum them up, viz.:--

  “Laudo Deum verum, plebem voco, congrego clerum,
  Defunctos plero, _pestem fugo_, festa decoro.”

And the very syllables of this which follows form a sort of _tuneful_
galloping, viz.:--

  “Sabbata pango, funera plango, solemnia clango.”

[57] νπερ τον Ωκεανον παρελθειν επὶ τας καλουμενας Βρετανικας νησους.
EUSEB. in _Præp. Ev._ 1. 3.

Egyptum et Libyam sortitus est alius Apostolorum, extremas vero oceani
regiones, et _Insulas Britannicas_ alius obtinuit. NICEPHOR. l. 2, c. 40.

[58] _Religious Rites and Ceremonies_, published under his name.

[59] Milton.

[60] This latter to be explained hereafter.

[61] The ruins, to the height of ten feet, still remain.

[62] Goldsmith.

[63] _Top. Dist._ ii. c. 9, p. 720.

[64] In the reign of Txiacha Labhruine, A.M. 3177; B.C. 827.

[65] This mark (7), in the Irish language, is an abbreviation for _agus_,
i.e. _and_.

[66] The _Annals of Inisfallen_, also, p. 148, call them by the same name
of _Fiadh-Nemeadh_.

[67] _Rer. Hib. Scrip. Vet._ iii. p. 527.

[68] _Fidh-Nemeadh_ certainly admits of this interpretation, but in a very
different sense from what its author had supposed.

[69] A German writer, contemporary with the Emperor Charles the Great,
says of another Irishman named Clement, at a much later period, “That
through his instructions the French might vie with the Romans and the
Athenians. John Erigena, whose surname denoted his country (Eri or Erina
being the proper name of Ireland), became soon (in the ninth century)
after famous for his learning and good parts, both in England and France.
Thus did most of the lights which, in those times of thick darkness, cast
their beams over Europe, proceed out of Ireland. The loss of the
manuscripts is much bewailed by the Irish who treat of the history and
antiquities of their country, and which may well be deemed a misfortune,
not only to them, but to the whole learned world.”

[70] Isidore of Seville, in the seventh century, says: “Scotia eadem et
Hibernia,” that is, Scotia and Ireland are one and the same--an identity,
however, of _locality_, not of _signification_. And Orosius of Tarracona,
still earlier in the fifth century, avers that, “In his own time, Ireland
was inhabited by the nations of the Scoti.” And were further evidence
required as to the point, it would be found in the fact of one of our
Christian luminaries, whose name was Shane, _i.e._ John, being called by
the Latin historians indifferently by the epithets of Johannes Scotus and
Johannes Erigena--the former signifying John the Irishman and the latter,
John the Scotchman.

[71] The Scots first drove them from Ireland to what is now called
Scotland, and the Picts afterwards chased them from the lowlands to the
highland fastnesses.

[72] Henricus Antisiodrensis, writing to Charles the Bald, says: “Why need
I mention all Ireland, with her crowd of philosophers?” “The philosophy
and logic,” says Mosheim, a German historian, “that were taught in the
European schools in the ninth century, scarcely deserved such honourable
titles, and were little better than an empty jargon. There were, however,
to be found in various places, _particularly among the Irish_, men of
acute parts and extensive knowledge, who were perfectly well entitled to
the appellation of philosophers.”

[73] _Antiq._ p. 108.

[74] Milton.

[75] I will show, however, that it was much older.

[76] _De Orig. et Progress. Idolat._ ii. 61.

[77] Gen. xi. 4.

[78] Gen. vi. 5.

[79] _On the top was an observatory, by the benefit of which_ it was that
the _Babylonians advanced their skill in astronomy so early_; when
Alexander took Babylon, Callisthenes the philosopher, who accompanied him
there, found they had _observations_ for 1903 years backward from that
time, which carries up the account as high as the hundred and fifteenth
year after the flood, _i.e._ within fifteen years after the tower of Babel
was built.

[80] I stop not to inquire whether or not this may have been the same with
that which stood in the midst of the temple of Belus, afterwards built
around it by Nebuchadnezzar. The intent I conceive similar in all, whether
the scriptural _Tower_, Birs Nimrod, or Mujellibah; and the rather, as
Captain Mignan tells us of the last, that on its summit there are still
considerable traces of erect building, and that at the western end is a
_circular_ mass of solid brick-work _sloping towards the top_, and rising
from a confused heap of rubbish; while Niebuhr states that Birs Nimrod is
also surmounted by a turret. My object is to show that the same
_emblematic design_ mingled in all those ancient edifices, though not
identical in its details.

[81] Hos. ii. 16.

[82] St. Stephen, the first martyr who suffered death for Christ, said
before the Jewish Sanhedrim, “God dwelleth not in temples made with hands”
(Acts vii. 48).

[83] _Asiatic Researches._

[84] It is most unaccountable how Hanway, after seeing this evidence of an
_actual_ fire-temple, should, notwithstanding, commit the egregious
blunder of calling the Round Towers--which differed from it as much as a
_maypole_ does from a rabbit-hole--fire-temples also. Yet has he been most
religiously followed by Vallancey, Beauford, Dalton, etc., who could not
open their eyes to the mistake.

[85] Pottinger’s _Belochistan_.

[86] Num. xxii. 41.

[87] Milton.

[88] _Top. Dist._ ii. c. 34.

[89] Had Bede even _asserted_ that the Round Towers were fire receptacles,
it would not obtain my assent, as they were as great an enigma in that
venerable writer’s day as they have been ever since, until now that their
_secret_ is about to be unveiled.

[90] The derivation of this word not being generally known, I may be
allowed to subjoin it. It is the Irish for _dove_, as _columba_ is the
Latin, and was assigned to the above place in honour of St. Columbe, who
was surnamed Kille, from the many churches which he had founded.

[91] _Trans. Roy. Ir. Acad._ vol. xv.

[92] This adjective is not here applied to our western _Irin_, _i.e._
Ireland, but to the eastern Iran, _i.e._ Persia.

[93] “Virginesque Vestæ legit, Albâ oriundum sacerdotium, et genti
conditoris haud alienum” (Livy, lib. i. cap. xx.).

[94] Horace.

[95] _Asiatic Researches_, Dissert. Up. Egypt and Nile.

[96] Literally, “the goddess of the lotos.”

[97] Craufurd’s _Sketches_.

[98] Milton.

[99] Maya also signifies _illusion_, of which as an operation of the
Deity, the following remark, extracted elsewhere from Sir William, may not
be unseasonable:--“The inextricable difficulties,” says he, “attending the
_vulgar notion of material substances_, concerning which ‘we know this
only, that we know nothing,’ induced many of the wisest among the
ancients, and some of the most enlightened among the moderns, to believe
that the whole creation was rather an _energy_ than a work, by which the
Infinite Being who is present at all times and in all places, exhibits to
the minds of his creatures a set of perceptions, like a wonderful picture
or piece of music, always varied, yet always uniform; so that all bodies
and their qualities exist, indeed, to every wise and useful purpose, but
exist only as far as they are _perceived_--a theory no less pious than
sublime, and as different _from_ any principle of atheism, as the
brightest sunshine differs from the blackest midnight.”

[100] Nature.

[101] The Hindoos never bathe nor perform their ablutions whilst the sun
is below the horizon.

[102] Poojah is properly worship.

[103] Krishen of Matra may be called the Apollo of the Hindoos.

[104] Vassant, the spring.

[105] Kama, the god of love.

[106] Translated from the Persic, and read before the Oriental Society in
India.

[107] The reason why the Egyptian Pyramids, though _comprehending_ the
same idea, did not _exhibit_ this form, will be assigned hereafter.

[108] In his treatise, _De Deâ Syriâ_.

[109]

  “Astarte, queen of heaven, with crescent horns,
  To whose bright image nightly by the moon,
  Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs.”--MILTON.

[110] “Les Indiens ont le Lingam qui ajoute encore quelque chose à
l’infamie du Phallus des Egyptiens et des Grecs: ils adorent le faux dieu
Isoir sous cette figure monstreuse, et qu’ils exposent en procession
insultant d’une manière horrible à la pudeur et à la crédulité de la
populace” (_La Croze_, p. 431).

[111] We can now see how it happened that the Irish word _Toradh_, _i.e._
“to go through the tower ceremony,” should signify also “to be pregnant”;
and we can equally unravel the _mythos_ of that elegant little tale which
Sir John Malcolm tells us from Ferdosi, in his _History of Persia_. “It is
related,” says he, “that Gal, when taking the amusement of the chase, came
to the foot of a _tower_, on one of the turrets of which he saw a young
_damsel_ of the most exquisite beauty. _They mutually gazed and loved_,
but there appeared no mode of ascending the battlement. After much
embarrassment, an _expedient_ occurred to the fair maiden. She loosened
her dark and beautiful _tresses_, which fell in ringlets to the _bottom_
of the _tower_, and enabled the _enamoured_ prince to _ascend_. The lady
proved to be Noudabah, the daughter of Merab, king of Cabul, a prince of
the race of Zohauk.”

[112] Chap. iv. p. 48.

[113] Syncellus accordingly spells Budh, even in the singular number, with
an _F_; and Josephus, from the Scriptures, additionally commutes the final
_d_ into _t_. We shall see more inflections anon.

“φουδ εξ ου τρωρλοδιται.”--Syncellus, p. 47.

“Fut was the founder of the nations in Libya (Africa), and the people were
from him called Futi” (Josephus, _Ant._ lib. i. c. 7).

[114] _Vide_ Plutarch, _de Isi et Osiri_.

[115] Eas, in Irish, also means the moon.

[116] Literally the Son of the Sun, and should properly be written
O’Siris, like any of our Irish names, such as O’Brien--and meaning _sprung
from_.

[117] These are the _indexes_ for which Mr. O’Connor could find no other
use than that of dials!

[118] “Les mystères de l’antiquité nous sont demeurés presqu’interdicts;
les vestiges de ses monuments manquent le plus souvent de sens pour nous,
parceque, de siècle en siècle, les savants ont voulu leur attribuer un
sens” (DE SACY).

[119] To this declaration of Mr. Heeren, as I cannot _now_ bestow upon it
a separate inquiry, I must be allowed briefly to intimate that if such be
all that he “knows with certainty” on the topic, he had better not know it
at all, for, with the exception of that part which avows the general
_ignorance_ concerning its rise and progress, as well as its expulsion by
the Brahmins from the East, _all the rest is inaccurate_. In the first
place it does not “_flourish_” at present in Ceylon. It has sunk and
degenerated there into an unmeaning tissue of hideous demonology, _if we
may judge by a reference to a large work published here some time ago_, by
Mr. Upham, which is as opposite from real _Budhism_ as truth is from
falsehood. In the second place its tenets were _not_ “in direct opposition
to those of the Brahmins,” any more than those of the Catholics are from
the tenets of the Protestants; yet have the latter contrived to oust the
Catholics, their predecessors, as the Brahmins did the still more
antecedent Budhists. And this will be sufficient to neutralise that
insinuation which would imply that Budha was an _innovator_ and a
_sectarian_, until I show by and by that the reverse was the fact.

[120] The Jews themselves, so early as the time of Moses, adopted the
practice as an act of _thanksgiving_.

“And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her
hand; and all the women went out after her, with timbrels, and with
dances.

“And Miriam answered them, Sing ye to the LORD, for He hath triumphed
gloriously; the horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea” (Exod.
xv. 20, 21).

[121] The origin of this word shall be explained hereafter.

[122] “Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a _corn_ of _wheat_ fall
into the ground and _die_, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth
forth much fruit” (John xii. 24).

[123] We are told--says Sir John Malcolm, in a Persian work of celebrity,
the _Attash Kuddah_--that a person dreamt he saw Ferdosi composing, and an
angel was guiding his pen: he looked near, and discovered that he had just
written the above couplet, in which he so emphatically pleads for humanity
to the smallest insect of the creation.

[124] _Another Almoner_ was an epithet they assigned to God, which even
the Brahmins retained after they had seceded from them, as may be seen in
Wilkins’ translation of a Sanscrit inscription on a pillar near _Buddal_,
published in the first volume of the _Asiatic Researches_. This
inscription, I must observe, as it escaped that learned Orientalist to
perceive it, as it equally did the acumen of the president, his annotator,
is, with the column on which it appears, nothing else than a record of the
triumphs obtained by a hero of the Brahminical party in exterminating the
Budhists. The frequent allusion to the “lustful elephants,”--such as
“whose piles of rocks reek with the juice exuding from the heads of
intoxicated elephants,”--and “Although the prospect hidden by the dust
arising from the multitude of marching force was rendered clear from the
earth being watered by constant and abundant streams flowing from the
heads of lustful elephants of various breeds,”--and still more that
beautiful and pathetic sentiment which occurs in the original of the
preceding paper, omitted by Mr. Wilkins, but supplied by the president,
viz. “by whom having conquered the earth as far as the _ocean_, it was
left as being unprofitably seized--so he declared; and his _elephants
weeping_ saw again _in the forests their kindred whose eyes were full of
tears_,”--make this a demonstration: yet would the beauty of the image be
lost to some of my readers, were I not to explain that the Budhists
treated with a sort of deified reverence the tribe of _elephants_, which
now bewailed their extermination as above described.

[125] From Bavana was named the village of Banaven, in Scotland, whither
some of the Tuath-de-danaans had repaired after their retreat from
Ireland--a very appropriate commemoration of their recent subversion; and
a particular locality within its district, where St. Patrick was born, was
called _Nemph-Thur_, that is, the _holy tower_, corresponding to
_Budh-Nemph_, _i.e._ the _holy Lingam_, from the circumstance of there
having been erected on it one of those temples which time has since
effaced. _Tor-Boileh_ upon the Indus, which means the _Tower of Baal_, is
in exact consonance with _Nemph-Thur_ and with _Budh-Nemph_; and there can
be no question but that _there_ also stood one of those edifices, as the
ruins even of a city are perceptible in the neighbourhood. Mr. Wilford,
however, would translate this last name, Tor-Boileh, by _Black Beilam_:
and, to keep this _colour_ in countenance, he invents a new name for a
place called Peleiam, “which,” he says, “_appears_ to have been transposed
from Ac Beilam, or the _White Beilam_, sands or shores and now called
‘Hazren.’” I am not surprised at the _discredit_ brought upon etymology.

[126] And this, too, after he had admitted that “the name is certainly of
the pure Iberno-Celtic dialect, and must have had some meaning founded in
the nature of things in its original and radical formation.”

[127] All our ancient swords were made of brass.

[128] Gibbon, vol. ii. p. 527, 4to, 1781.

[129] _Histoire d’Irelande_, vol. i. cap. 7.

[130] Avienus lived in the fourth century.

[131] “Melius (Hiberniæ quam Britanniæ) aditus--portusque per commercia et
negociatores cogniti” (Tacit. _vit. Agricol._ 499).

[132] “Plus in metum quan in spem.”

[133] “ὥσπερ και των Βρεττανων τους οικοντας την ονομαζομενην Ιριν.” _Diod
Sic._ lib. v.

[134] In proof of this, I aver that I could go through the whole range of
their language, and prove that in its fabrication, so punctilious was
their regard to _euphony_, they scrupled not to _cancel_ or otherwise
_obnebulate_ the _essential_ and _significant_ letters of the primitive
words; so that, in a few generations, their descendants were unable to
trace the true _roots_ of their compounds. Hence that lamentable
imperfection which pervades all our lexicons and dictionaries, and which
can never be rectified but by the revisal of the whole system, and that by
a _thorough adept_ in the language of the Irish.

[135] I say strangled, because _Irin_ is a compound word embracing within
its compass _two distinct parts_, of which Iris could give but the spirit
of one.

[136] “Iren perrexit ut et aliorum Doctorum sententias in philosophicis
atque divinis litteris investigator curiosus exquireret” (_Vita Gildæ_,
cap. 6).

[137] Lib. x. Anno 1098.

[138] Modern writers upon Persia, who would _refine_ upon the matter, have
perverted this word to _Pehlivi_; but look you into the early numbers of
the _Asiatic Researches_, and there you will find it spelled as above.

[139] Besides, to speak _accurately_, this is not a _western_ country at
all, or only so relatively to Britain, Gaul, and that particular line.

[140] _Collect. de Reb. Hib._ vol. iv.

[141] _Antiq. Research. Pers._ vol. i. p. 137.

[142] If I have taken a wrong view of the professor’s phraseology, I shall
feel most happy to be set right; but I submit to the critic whether I am
not justified in understanding him as I do.

[143] To be met with at a place called Tauk-e-Bostan. Silvestre de Sacy, a
member of the Institute at Paris, had made the following translation of
it, which is divided into two parts.

The first:--“This figure is that of a worshipper of Hormuzd, or God; the
excellent Shahpoor; king of kings; of _Iran_ and _An-Iran_; a celestial
germ of a heavenly race; the son of the adorer of God; the excellent
Hormuzd; a king of kings; of _Iran_ and _An-Iran_; a celestial germ of a
heavenly race; grandson of the excellent Narses; king of kings.”

The second:--“This figure is that of a worshipper of Hormuzd, or God; the
excellent Varaham; king of kings; king of _Iran_ and _An-Iran_; a
celestial germ of a heavenly race; son of the adorer of God; the excellent
Shapoor; king of kings; of _Iran_ and _An-Iran_; a celestial germ of a
heavenly race; grandson of the excellent Hormuzd; king of kings.”

[144] This _An_, the original name for _country_, was modified afterwards,
according to clime and dialect, into _tan_, as in Aqui-_tan_-ia,
Brit-_tan_-ia, Mauri-_tan_-ia, etc.; and into _stan_, as in Curdi-_stan_,
Fardi-_stan_, Hindu-_stan_, etc.

[145] From this was formed the English word _tower_, the very idea
remaining unchanged. As was also the English word _bud_, meaning the
_first shoot of a plant_, a _germ_, from the Irish _budh_, _i.e._ the
_organ of male energy_.

[146] The present bleak and sterile aspect of this region militates
nothing against this view, when we consider the thousand alterations which
it has undergone, under the thousand different tribes that have
consecutively possessed it.

[147] From _Ir_ or _Eer_, sacred, and _an_, a _land_.

[148] From _Ir_ or _Eer_, sacred, and _in_, an _island_.

[149] Iran or Irin, _i.e._ Eeran or Eerin.

[150] Each of these three preceding words means _religion_ or
_revelation_. And from them _Era_, denoting a _period of_ time,--which
with the ancients was a _sacred_ reckoning,--has been so denominated; as
well as _Eric_, which, in law phraseology, indicates a certain penalty
attachable to certain crimes, and equivalent to _Deodand_, or a _religious
restitution_--all Irish.

[151] I mean the “_Græci vetustissimi_,” not the “_Græculi esurientes_.”

[152] Namely, _Ivernia_:--_u_, _v_, and _b_ are commutable.

[153] Should you hesitate as to this mode of accounting for the letter
_b_, I can show you that the Greeks spelled _Albion_ indifferently with or
without a _b_; as they indifferently used _b_ or _v_ in one of the above
names for Ireland; for instance--

Ἄι Βρετανιδες ειϛι δυο νησοι, Ουερνία και Αλουιον, ητοι Βερνια καὶ Αλβιων
Eustath. _ad Dion. Perieg._

[154] It is only the _date_, however, that I will share with any one. The
derivation of the word and its _true exposition_ are exclusively my own.

[155] “Quod nomen ob beati solum ingenium, in quo _nullum animal venenosum
vitale_, facile assentior attributum” (_Ogyg._ pt. i. c. 21). So
gratifying, however, has this been to the obsequious wisdom of subsequent
_historians_ (?), as to be echoed from one to the other with the most
commendable fidelity. “_O imitatores, servum pecus!_”

[156] Pronounced Fiodhvadh--copied _literally_ from the old manuscripts.

[157] This corresponds to _Ir-an_, the Sacred _Land_.

[158] This answers to _Ir-in_, the Sacred _Island_.

[159] The reader will see that, in quoting Dr. Keating, I do so from no
respect for his discrimination or sagacity. Whenever he has attempted to
exert either, in the way of comment or _deduction_, he has _invariably_
erred: fortunately he has offered none in this instance. Yet is his book a
most valuable compilation; and _I_ now cull out of it _those three names_,
as one would a casket of jewels from a lumber-room.

[160] This _Farragh_, otherwise _Phearragh_, is the _Peor_ of the
Scriptures, and the _Priapus_ of the Greeks.

[161] “Priapus, si _physice_ consideretur idem est ac _sol_; ejusque lux
primogenia unde _vis omnis seminatrix_” (_Diod. Sic._ lib. i.). See also
Num. xxv. 4, where you will see that “Peor” _remotely_ meant the sun.

[162] I shall not trouble myself in reciting the absurd _attempts_ that
have been heretofore made to expound this word: it is enough to say that
_they were all wrong_.

[163] The _motto_, also, of this family, viz., _Lamh laider a-Boo_, _i.e._
“The strong arm from Boo,” now changed to _Vigueur du dessus_, is in
keeping with the same idea.

[164] This is the _mere utterance_ of an historical transaction without
reference to _sect_, _creed_, _party_, or _politics_. No feelings of
bitterness mingle therein. The author disclaims all such, as much as he
would depreciate them in others.

[165] In the library of Trinity College, Dublin, are several such,
collected in the beginning of last century, by Lhuyd, author of the
_Archæologia_, and restored by Sir John Seabright, at the instigation of
Edmund Burke. I am credibly informed also, that there have been lately
discovered in the Library at Copenhagen certain documents relating to our
antiquities, taken away by the Danes after their memorable defeat at
Clontarf, by King Brian, A.D. 1014. Lombard has already asserted the same;
and that the King of Denmark entreated Queen Elizabeth to send him some
Irishman, who could transcribe them; that Donatus O’Daly, a learned
antiquarian, was selected for the purpose, but that his appointment was
afterwards countermanded, for political reasons.

There are, besides, in mostly all the public libraries of Europe--without
adverting to those which are detained in the Tower of London--divers Irish
manuscripts, presented by the various emigrants, who from time to time
have been obliged to fly their country, to seek among strangers that
shelter which they were denied at home; taking with them, as religious
heirlooms, those hereditary relics of their pedigree and race.

One of the most beautiful and pathetic pieces of Irish poetry remaining,
written by Macleog, private secretary to Brian, after the demise of that
monarch, and beginning with this expression of his sorrow: “Oh! Cencoradh
(the name of his patron’s favourite palace), where is Brian?” was picked
up in the Netherlands, in 1650, by Fergar O’Gara, an Augustinian friar,
who fled from Ireland in the iron days of Cromwell.

[166] I rejoice to state, that the present administration, under the
benign direction of our patriot King, have resolved, so far as in them
lies, to atone for former depredators. There is now a vigorous revisal of
those documents going on, with a view, as I understand, to their immediate
publication.

[167] The antiquarian luminaries of the _Royal Irish Academy_ would fain
make out that this was a _Christian warrior_. Their _high priest_ has
lately proclaimed the fact, in their “collective wisdom.” It is
astonishing how fond they have _suddenly_ become for the memory of the
monks; they would now father everything like culture in the country upon
them. It used not to have been so!

[168] This image was found under the root of a tree dug up in Roscommon.
It is about the size of the drawing; is made of brass, once gilt; the
gilding, however, now almost worn off; and may be seen in the Museum of
Trinity College, Dublin.

[169] _Major Archer’s Travels in Upper India_, vol. i. pp. 383, 384. Lond.
1833.

[170] So the “collective wisdom,” in the true spirit of Christian
restitution and penitential contrition, have lately pronounced him! It is
delightful to see this solicitous zeal with which, when it suits a private
purpose, they cherish the memory of the monks, being _no longer_ in the
way of their _secular_ perquisites: but if the poor monks could speak, or
send a voice from the tomb, it would be to say that they did not choose to
be encumbered with such meretricious flattery; and that, having laid no
claim to those _relics_, or to the _towers_ which they decorated, during
their _lifetime_, they now in _death_ must repudiate the ascription.
“Timeo Danaas et dona ferentes,” would be their answer.

[171] _Asiatic Researches_, vol. vi.; where it will be observed that the
Doctor was not writing for me. He did not even _suspect_ the existence of
this figure. It is, like the preceding one, of bronze.

[172] The Egyptian sovereign assumed this _title_, as the highest that
_language_ and _imagination_ could bestow. It signifies literally the _act
of copulation_, of which it would represent him as _presiding genius_--the
source whence all pleasure and happiness can flow--and is but faintly
re-echoed in the Macedo-Syriac regal epithet of Ευεργετης, “Benefactor,”
or even that by which we designate our king as the _fountain_ of
_goodness_. There being no such letter as _ph_ in the ancient alphabets,
all those words, viz. _Pheor_, _Pharaoh_, and _Pharagh_, should properly
be spelled _Feor_, _Faraoh_, and _Faragh_.

[173] Gen. xlvi. 34.

[174] “On the fifteenth day of the first month every year. Every person is
obliged, on the evening of that day, to set out a lantern before his door,
and these are of various sizes and prices, according to the different
circumstances of those to whom they belong. During this festival, they
have all sorts of entertainments, such as plays, balls, assemblies, music,
dancing, and the lanterns are filled with a vast number of wax candles,
and surrounded with bonfires.”

[175] Barker.--The same is mentioned by Captain Burr, in reference to the
Indian followers who had attended him to the temple of Isis.

[176] Mr. Greaves’s diagonal, in proportion to his base of 694 feet, is
991 feet nearly; the half of which is 495½ feet, for the height of the
Pyramid; for as the radius is to the tangent of 45°, so is half the
diameter to half the diagonal, or 7 to 10, or 706 to 1000. Say, 7 : 10 ::
694 : 991/2 = 495½.--_Dissertation upon the Pyramids._

[177] Schindl.

[178] Gen. xlvii.

[179] _Hist. Christ. des Indes_, p. 429.

[180] Lib. ii. p. 4.

[181] πυρ, generally rendered _fire_, is not so, however, in the true
import of the word, but the _Sun_; fire is only a secondary sense of it.

[182] Barker.

[183] _Ibid._

[184] Gen. xlvi. 34.

[185] Ex. vii. 11, etc., and 2 Tim. iii. 8.

[186] America also has had her ancient pageantry. Antonio de Solis gives
the following description of the Mexican shrine:--“The site of that temple
devoted to the worship of the Sun, and its altar for human sacrifices, was
a large square environed by walls, cloisters, and gates; in the centre was
raised a high tower of a pyramidical form, broad at the base, and narrowed
towards the top, having four equal sides in a sloping direction; in one of
which was a flight of one hundred and fifty steps to the top, covered with
the finest marble, with a square marble pavement, guarded with a
balustrade: in the centre stood a large black stone, in manner of an
altar, placed near the idol. In the front of this tower, and at a
convenient distance from its base, stood a high altar of solid masonry,
ascended by thirty steps: in the middle of it was placed a large stone, on
which they slaughtered the numerous human victims devoted for sacrifice;
the outside being set with stakes and bars, on which were fixed human
sculls.”

[187] The regular pyramid is a section of the cube, whose altitude is
equal to half the diameter of the base, and is contained within a
semicircle. The great pyramid is not of this precise order; its height or
altitude being found more than half the diameter of its base. A second
order is that whose altitude is equal to half the diagonal of the base,
and is also bounded and contained within a semicircle; and consequently,
if the diagonal be given at 1000, the altitude will be 500: but the true
height of the Egyptian pyramid being determined at less than half its
diagonal, is therefore found to be not exactly of this order, but nearly
approaching to it, and probably aimed at in the original design, though
failing in the execution.--_Dissertation upon the Pyramids._

[188] Astronomy began very early to be cultivated among the Egyptians; and
to them is attributed the discovery of the magnitude of the solar year,
or, as it is distinguished, _the Egyptian year_ of 365 days; which
discovery appears to be noticeable, and memorialised in the construction
of their Great Pyramid. The ancient measure of length being the cubit, and
that measure being determined common with the Hebrews and Egyptians, as
nearly as Dr. Cumberland could determine it, and reduced to English
measure, a certain standard is obtained: but we find also another, called
the longer cubit, to have obtained, on which we may with equal propriety
calculate the measures of the Egyptian Pyramid, on which to infer the
number of days contained in the solar year; the measures of the base of
the Great Pyramid being found, if not exactly, yet nearly approximating to
it.--_Dissertation upon the Pyramids._

[189] I have not the least doubt but the ancient Egyptians measured by the
cubit, whatever it then was; that the number of cubits was designedly
fixed upon by them in laying the base of the Pyramid; and that if we
divide the ascertained sum of 752 feet by 2, the quotient will be 376,
which is a number exceeding 365 by 11: consequently, if we estimate their
ancient cubit at 2 feet 7/10 of an inch, that measure will be ascertained,
and found to approximate nearly to the longer Hebrew cubit; and so will
the measures of the Pyramid be found to agree with the number of days in
the solar year.--_Dissertation upon the Pyramids._

[190] Then Major Fitzclarence, March 2, 1818.

[191] _Asiatic Researches._

[192] _Scientific Tourist through Ireland_, p. 33.

[193] Usher’s _Primord_, c. xvii. p. 846.

[194] _Journal_, pp. 21, 23.

[195] Neither can I, with him, restrict their object to _Tombs alone_;
their Phallic shape bespeaks another allusion; as does the style of
architecture indicate an _affinity_ of _descent_, though not an _identity_
of _design_ with that of our _Towers_.

[196] In his treatise, _De Deâ Syriâ_.

[197] Of this distant adoration we may still see traces in the practice of
the Irish peasantry, almost preferring to say their prayers outside the
precincts of the chapel, or mass-house, than within it, unconsciously
derived from this service of the Afrion, or benediction-house, _i.e._ the
Round Towers.

[198] The Ghabres to this day chew a leaf of it in their mouths, while
performing their religious duties round the sacred fire.

[199] Those are what Montmorency would fain make out to have been _roses_
imported from the Vatican.

[200] A similar sacrifice is described by Major Archer as still practised
in the mountains of Upper India, which he himself witnessed. “An
unfortunate goat,” says he, “lean and emaciated, was brought as an
offering to the deities; but so poor in flesh was he that no crow would
have waited his death in hopes of a meal from his carcass.”

[201] “Round the _tie_ or umbrella at the top (of the Dagobs at Ceylon)
are suspended a number of small bells, which with these form _tees_ of a
great quantity of smaller pagodas that surround the quatine, being set in
motion by the wind, keep up a constant tinkling, but not unpleasing sound”
(COLEMAN).

The temples of Budh in the Burmese empire are also pyramidical, the top
always crowned with a gilt umbrella of iron filagree, hung round with
bells.--“The _tie_ or _umbrella_ is to be seen on every sacred building
that is of a spiral form; the rising and consecration of this last and
indispensable appendage is an act of high religious solemnity, and a
season of festivity and relaxation. The present king bestowed the _tie_
that covers Shoemadoo: it was made at the capital. Many of the principal
nobility came down from Ummerapoora to be present at the ceremony of its
elevation. The circumference of the tie is fifty-six feet; it rests on an
iron axis fixed in the building, and is further secured by large chains
strongly riveted to the spire. Round the lower rim of the tie are appended
a number of _bells_, which agitated by the wind make a continual jingling”
(SYMES).

[202] “It is remarked that in China they have no pyramids, but pagodas
raised by galleries, one above another, to the top: the most celebrated of
these is that called the Porcelain Tower, in Nankin, said to be two
hundred feet high, and forty feet at the base, built in an octagonal form.
These pagodas seem to have been designed for altars of incense, raised to
their aërial deities, with which to appease them; and their hanging bells,
_with their tintillations to drive away the demons_ lest they should, by
noxious and malignant winds and tempests, disturb their serene atmosphere
and afflict their country” (_Dissertations upon the Pyramids_).

[203] The reason of this will appear hereafter; while in the interim I
must observe that this new appropriation of them to Christian purposes was
what occasioned that error on the part of a writer some centuries after,
who _opined_ that it was _Sanctus Patricius_ who first presented one to
_Sancto Kierano_. I make no question of the _present_; but does
presentation imply invention?

[204] Cambrensis tells rather a curious story about St. Finnan’s
bell:--“There is,” says he, “in the district of Mactalewi, in Leinster, a
certain bell which, unless it is adjured by its possessor every night in a
particular form of exorcism shaped for the purpose, and tied with a cord
(no matter how slight), it would be found in the morning at the church of
St. Finnan, at Clunarech, in Meath, from whence it was brought; and,” adds
he, “this sometimes happened.”

[205] A communication from Mr. Hall himself, just imparted, assures me
that, _as far as he could judge_, the aperture was _coeval_ with the
instrument, and by no means accidental.

[206] “This word is generally supposed to be derived from Fars or Pars, a
division of the empire of Iran, and applied by Europeans to the whole of
that kingdom. It is certainly a word unknown, in the sense we use it, to
the present natives of Iran, though some Arabic writers contend that Pars
formerly meant the whole kingdom. In proof of this assertion, a passage of
the Koran is quoted, in which one of Mohammed’s companions who came from a
village near Isfahan is called Telman of Fars or Pars. We have also the
authority of the Scripture for the name of this kingdom being Paras or
Phars. The authors of the Universal History, on what authority I know not,
state that the word Iran is not a general name of Persia, but of a part of
the country. _This is certainly erroneous_: Iran has, from the most
ancient times to the present day, been the term by which the Persians call
their country; and it includes, in the sense they understand it, all the
provinces to the east of the Tigris; Assyria Proper, Media, Parthia,
Persia, and Hyrcania or Mazenderan” (SIR JOHN MALCOLM).

[207] These quotations from the professor’s book are not given
_consecutively_ as he wrote them, but _brought together_ from detached
sections and chapters.

[208] Pars is the Persian, Fars the Arabic, pronunciation of the word.

[209] I should have observed, that Plato also, speaking of those modern
Persians, says: “They were originally a nation of shepherds and herdsmen,
occupying a rude country, such as naturally fosters a hardy race of
people, capable of supporting both cold and watching, and when needful, of
enduring the toils of war” (Plato, _De Leg._ iii. op. ii. p. 695).

[210] Επεκτεινεται δε τ’ οὔνομα της Αριανης μεχρι μερους τινος καὶ Περσων
καὶ Μηδων και ετι των προσαρκτον Βακτριον και Σογδιανῶν. εισι γαρ τως και
ὁμωγλωττοι παρα μικρομ (STRABO, p. 1094).

[211] All the other variations are thus similarly accounted for; being but
offshoots of the same radix, such as I have already shown (p. 128) in
reference to Ireland--while the careful reader will of himself see that
the name of that lake in Persia, of which the Greeks and Romans conjointly
manufactured Aria Palus, corresponds to our Lough Erne, and must doubtless
have been so called in Persia also, for _palus_ is evidently but the
translation of lough.

[212] Zendavesta, i. 14.

[213] “And what would hardly appear possible, as we cannot discover what
purpose such a finished fable of idolatrous superstition would be meant to
answer” (Sir John Malcolm’s _History of Persia_, vol. i. p. 191).

[214] Yet in Hindoostan, also, as we learn from Major Archer, “an
_astrologer_ is a constituted authority in all the villages, and nothing
pertaining to life and its concerns is commenced without his sanction.”

[215] “Tout, dans le systême primitif de la religion des Grecs, atteste la
transposition des traditions comme des principes; tout y est vague, sombre
et confus” (DE SACY).

[216] “The Sabians themselves boasting the origin of their religion from
Seth, and pretending to have been denominated from a son of his called
Sabius, as also of having among them a book, which they called the _Book
of Seth_” (Prideaux, part i. book iii.).

[217] This is only a corruption from the Irish word _Ercol_, the sun.

[218] Wisdom of Solomon, xiv. 16, 17.

[219] To this exactly corresponds, as well in import as in appropriation,
the name of one of the hills upon which Rome was built, that is
_Palatinus_, which--no doubt, to the amazement of etymological
empirics--is nothing less than a compound of _Baal_ and _tinne_; that is
_Baal’s fire_--the initial _B_ and _P_ being always commutable. And
_Aven-tinus_, the epithet of another of the Seven Mounts, is derived from
_Avan_, a river; and _tinne_, fire, meaning the fire-hill, near the river.
And as the former was devoted to the _sun_, so the latter was to the
_moon_; in confirmation of which it got another name, namely, _Re-monius_,
of which the component parts are _Re_, the moon, and _moin_, an elevation.

The _Pru-taneion_, also amongst the Greeks, was what? A _fire_-hill.
Startle not, it is a literal truth. But the dictionaries and lexicons say
nothing about these matters? nay, offer other _explanations_?
mystifications, Sir, if you please, whereby they implicate, as well
themselves as their readers, in absurdities; which could not be expected
to be otherwise uninstructed, _as their authors necessarily were_, in the
elements of that language whence all those words have diverged.

_Pru-taneion_, then, is compounded of _Bri_, a mount, and _tinne_, fire;
the _B_, as before observed, being commutable with _P_, particularly
amongst the Greeks, who indifferently called Britain Βρετανικη and
Πρετανικη (νησος being understood). Every community had, of old, one of
those _Britennes_, or _fire mounts_, natural or artificial. The guardian
of the sacred element therein was called, _Bri-ses_; and the dwelling
assigned him, hard by, _Astu_. The number of those latter Cecrops reduced,
in Attica from one hundred and sixty, to twelve. Of these, Theseus
appointed the _principal station_ at _Cecropia_, the name of which he
changed, by _way of eminence_, to _Astu_; and hence this latter word,
which originally but represented the abode of the _Sacerdos_, came
ultimately to signify a _city_ at large; as _Prutaneion_ did a Common
Council Hall.

[220] To this day, the most kindly wish, and ordinary salutation, of the
Irish peasant, continues to be _Bal dhia duit, Bal dhia ort_, that is the
god Baal to you, or the god Baal upon you.

[221] The Irish mode of expressing it is _Slan fuar tu sin, agus slan
adfaga tu sin_. The Caffres who reside all round the Cape, pay their
adoration to the moon, by dancing to her honour when she changes, or when
she is at the full. They prostrate themselves on the ground, then rise up
again, and, gazing at her orb, with loud acclamations, make the following
address:--“We, thy servants, salute thee. Give us store of milk and honey;
increase our flocks and herds, and we will worship thee.”

[222] The word is more _mysterious_, as I shall explain elsewhere.

[223] Hannah More.

[224] Byron.

[225] “One superstition of the pagans never fails to assert its influence
upon spots like this--the _genius_ loci is always ascendant” (DEANE).

[226] _Ab-roch_ also, the official title of Joseph, when appointed regent
of Egypt, signifies father of the _king_.

[227] “The Himalaya are the peculiar abodes of the gods of the Hindoos;
the rivers, issuing from the eternal snows, are goddesses, and are sacred
in the eyes of all. Shrines, of the most holy and awful sanctity, are at
the fountain-heads of the Ganges and Jumna; and on the summit of Kedar
Nauth, Cali, that goddess of bloody rites, is supposed to have taken up
her residence. One among the numerous proceedings of her votaries, is to
scramble as high up the mountain as they can attain, taking with them a
_goat_ for an offering: the animal is turned loose with a _knife_ tied
round his neck; the belief is, that the goddess will find the victim, and
immolate it with her own hand” (ARCHER).

[228] This adjective I apply indiscriminately to Persia or to Ireland.

[229] It lies in the district of _Ins-oin_, which means the _abode_ of
_Magicians_; corrupted now to _Inis_-owen, which would import Eugene’s
_island_. An aggravated blunder--the place being in the _very centre_ of
the country, with which such an imaginary chevalier was never associated.

[230]

  “His tibi _Grynæi_ nemoris dicatur origo,
  Ne quis sit lucus, quâ se plus jactet _Apollo_.”
                                        Virg. _Ecl._ 6.

[231] “_Granem_ dixere priores.”--OVID.

Although those heaps are now but signals of accidental or violent death,
for which each passenger bespeaks his sorrow by _adding a small stone_,
yet we see that in their origin they were more religiously designed; and
while this _latter practice_ is observed also in India, it appears that
they have retained there more correctly the primitive idea, as may be
inferred from these words of Major Archer:--“On the right and left are
several cairns of stones, erected by parties of travellers as they cross,
in _acknowledgment to the deities or presiding spirits for their
protection_.”

[232] _Ogyg. seu Rer. Iber. Chron._ part i. p. 16.

[233] One of the ancient names of Ireland is _Inis Algan_, that is, the
_Noble Island_.

[234] “The children gathered the wood, the fathers kindled the fire, and
the women kneaded the dough to make cakes for the queen of heaven” (Jer.
vii. 18).

[235] _Lettres sur les Sciences_, p. 202.

[236] _Hist. du Calendrier_, Pref. p. 14.

[237] “Obeliscum Deo soli, speciali munere, dedicatum fuisse” (AMMIANUS).

[238] “Chinenses et Indi, præter imagines in pagodis et delubris,
prægrandes aliquando etiam _integras rupes_, presertim si naturâ in
_pyramidalem formam_ vergebant, in idola formari solebant” (HYDE).

[239] Is it not pitiable, therefore, to hear Mr. Deane, in the last volume
of the _Transactions of the Society of Antiquaries_, London, ascribe the
erection of those obelisks which he met in Britanny, to the following
text? namely, “Behold Saul lay sleeping within the trench, and his spear
stuck in the ground at his bolster” (1 Sam. xxvi. 7).

When Captain Pyke landed in the island of Elephanta, near Bombay, he found
in the midst of a Gentoo temple a low altar, on which was placed a large
polished stone, of a _cylindrical_ form, standing on its base, the top
_rounded_, or convex: they called it _Mahody_,--that the name of the
inconceivable God was placed under it aloof from profanation.

Launder, in his _Voyage to India_, p. 81, saw one _erected_ in a _tank_ of
water. Herodian tells us he saw a similar stone, round at the bottom,
diminishing towards the top in a conical form, at Emessa, in Phœnicia, and
that the name they gave it was Heliogabalus (VALLANCEY).

[240] _I.e._ the _Good_-Baal-Peor.

[241] Wilford, in like manner, after a more mature acquaintance with the
system, says, “I beg leave here to retract what I said in a former essay
on Egypt, concerning the followers of Buddha.”

[242] _Observations on Drakontia_, London, 1833.

[243] The Mexican hierogram is formed by the intersecting of two great
serpents, which describe the circle with their bodies, and have each a
human head in its mouth.

[244] Ovid.

[245] Gen. xi. 31.

[246] See pages 503-506 for the explication of the serpent and the rest of
the allegory.

[247] The Betula, or Birch tree.

[248] Were additional proof required that this is the true solution of the
Mosaic _myth_, respecting the forbidden _apple_, it is irresistibly
offered to anyone who will see that relic of Eastern idolatry, presented
by Lieutenant-Colonel Ogg to the Museum of the East India Company, London,
which consists of a tabular frame of white marble, furnished with a
fountain, and emblematically stored with religious devices; the most
extraordinary of which is a representation of the _Lingam_ and _Yoni_ in
_conjunction_, around the bottom of which, in symbolical suggestion, is
coiled a serpent; while the top of another Lingam, placed underneath, is
embossed towards the termination, which is _conical_ and _sunny_, with
four heads, facing the cardinal points, and _exactly corresponding with
those which grace the preputial apex_ of the Round _Tower_ of _Devenish_.
Those four heads represent the four gods of the Budhist theology, who have
appeared in the present world, and already obtained the perfect state of
Nirwana, viz. Charchasan, Gonagon, Gaspa, and Goutama. And the entire
coincidence between this Lingam and the characteristics of our Round
Towers is such as to convince the most obdurate sceptics, even had I not
put the question beyond dispute before, that they were _uniform_ in
design, and _identical_ in purpose.

[249] Venus preferred a _cestus_, or a talisman of her own sex, as we are
told in the fourteenth book of the _Iliad_, where it is said, that

                          “the Queen of Love
  Obeyed the sister and the wife of Jove,
  And from her fragrant breast the zone unbraced,
  With various skill and high embroidery graced.
  In this was every art, and every charm,
  To win the wisest, and the coldest warm:
  Fond love, the gentle vow, the gay desire,
  The kind deceit, the still reviving fire,
  Persuasive speech, and more persuasive sighs,
  Silence that spoke, and eloquence of eyes.”--HOMER.

[250] The offerings made at the present day are precisely of the same
kind. “Boiled rice, fruits, especially the cocoa-nut, flowers, natural,
and artificial, and a variety of curious figures made of paper, gold leaf,
and the cuttings of the cocoa-nut kernel, are the most common” (SYMES).

[251] Gen. iv. 7.

[252] Methinks I hear some wiseacre start up here and say this cannot be,
because man in an _uncivilised_ state occupies more space than when
restricted by social usages. Pray, sir, who told you that man was then
_uncivilised_? Then, in fact, it was that he may be called truly
civilised, as more recent from the converse of his Creator.

[253] In fig. 1, plate 33, of Mr. Coleman’s book, “is a four-headed Linga
of white marble, on a stand of the same, surrounded by Parvati, Durga,
Ganes, and the Bull Nandi, in adoration. The size of the stand or tablet
is about two feet square, and the whole is richly painted and gilt. On the
crown of the Linga is a refulgent sun.” In fig. 2 of same “is a Panch
Muckti, or five-headed Linga, of basalt, of which the fifth head rises
above the other four, surmounted by the hooded snake. Each of the heads
has also a snake wreathed around it, as well as around the Argha. The Bull
Nandi is kneeling in adoration before the spout of the Yoni.”

[254] And _Bacchus_, in reality, was but another name for one of the
various _Budhas_. Even under the name of _Dionysos_ we find him, to this
hour, amongst ourselves. “On _Sliabh Grian_, or the _Hill_ of the _Sun_”
says Tighe, “otherwise called Tory Hill, in the county Kilkenny, is a
circular space, sixty-four yards in circumference, covered with stones. In
this stands a very large one, and on the east side another, reared on
three supporters, and containing an inscription, which in Roman letter
would exhibit “Beli Dinose.”

[255] “There are in India (also) public women, called _women of the idol_,
and the origin of this custom is this: when a woman has made a vow for the
purpose of having children, if she brings into the world a pretty
daughter, she carries it to Bod,--so they call the idol which they adore,
and leaves it with him” (Renaudot’s _Anc. Rel._ p. 109).

[256] “It is generally known, that the religion of Boudhou is the religion
of the people of _Ceylon_, but no one is acquainted with its forms and
precepts” (JOINVILLE).

[257] Goldsmith.

[258] That is, “_above_ reason.”

[259] Gen. vi. 2.

[260] _Ibid._ iv. 26.

[261] Job xxxviii.

[262] “_In the beginning_ God created” (Gen. i. 1).

[263] Gen. vi. 4.

[264] Dr. Gill, very _innocently_, would account for it otherwise, viz.
“_either_ because they made their fear _fall_ upon men, _or_ men through
fear to _fall_ before them, because of their height and strength--or
rather because they fell and rushed on men with great violence, and
oppressed them in a cruel and tyrannical manner”!!!

[265] Philosophers will ultimately repose in the belief that Asia has been
the principal foundry of the human kind; and _Iran_ or _Persia_ will be
considered as one of the cradles from which the species took their
departure to people the various regions of the earth (Dr. Barton, _Trans
Phil. Soc. Philad._ vi. p. 1).

“It follows that Iran or Persia (I contend for the _meaning, not the
name_) was the central country which we sought” (Sir W. Jones, _Asiatic
Researches_).

[266] An edifice of this kind, in which the _relics_ of Budha were kept,
near Benares, is described by Wilford as about _fifty feet high, of a
cylindrical form, with its top shaped like a dome_.

[267]

  “Tuatha _Heren_ tarcaintais
  Dos nicfead sith laitaith nua.”

That is,

  The _magicians_ of Ireland prophesied
  That new times of peace would come.

I would point your attention to this stanza, not only as confirmatory of
the solution above given for the word _Tuatha_, but as furnishing another
link in that great chain of analogy which I have traced between the names
of Ireland and ancient Persia. _Haran_, in Mesopotamia, is but the
prefixing of an aspirate to _Eran_, the Pahlavi variation for _Iran_, the
original name for that _Sacred Land_.

[268] General Vallancey was equally ignorant as to the meaning of the
additional words _De-danaan_.

[269] The Lotos was the most sacred plant of the ancients, and typified
the _two_ principles of the earth’s fecundation combined--the germ
standing for the _Lingam_; the filaments and petals for the _Yoni_.

[270] This _Puzza_ is nothing more than our Irish _Pish_: and, what is
miraculously _coincident_, the title of the enthusiast who annually kills
somebody in honour of her, under the name of the goddess _Manepa_, at
Tancput, is _Phut_, or Buth; that is, the Budh of the Irish!

[271] “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall
cleave unto his wife; and they shall be one flesh” (Gen. xi. 24).

[272] “There is a sect of Hindus, by far the most numerous of any, who,
attempting to reconcile the two systems, tell us, in their allegorical
style, that Parvati and Mahadeva found their _concurrence_ essential to
the perfection of their offspring, and that Vishnu, at the request of the
goddess, effected a reconciliation between them; hence the _navel_ of
Vishnu, by which they mean the _os tincæ_, is worshipped as one and the
same with the sacred _Yoni_.”

[273] She “made use of the same artifice the old woman, called Baubo, did
to put Ceres in good humour, and showed him the prototype of the _Lotos_.
Mahadeva smiled and relented; but on the condition that they should
instantly leave the country.”

[274] “But such is the confusion and uncertainty of the Hindu records,
that one is really afraid of forming any opinion whatever” (WILFORD).

[275] Sir John Malcolm, vol. i. p. 270.

[276] Thomson.

[277] “When history fails in accounting for foreign extraction of any
people, or where it is manifestly mistaken, how can this extraction be
more rationally inferred and determined, or that mistake rectified, than
from the analogy of languages? And is not this at once sufficiently
conclusive, if nothing else was left them?” (_Eugene Aram_).

[278] “The merchants of Magadha formed not only a particular class, but
also a particular tribe. It seems that they were bold, enterprising, and,
at the same time, cautious and circumspect; hence they are said to be
merchants by the fathers’, and warriors by the mothers’ side, according to
Mr. Colebrook’s account of the Hindu classes” (_Asiat. Res._ ix. p. 79).

[279] See _A Dissertation on the Antiquity, Origin, and Design of the
principal Pyramids of Egypt_, etc. etc.

[280] Mersennus writes thus:--“I find that the cubit (upon which a learned
Jewish writer, which I received by the favour of the illustrious Hugenius,
Knight of the Order of St. Michael, supposes the dimensions of the temple
were formed) answers to 23¼ of our inches; so that it wants ¾ of an inch
of two of our feet, and contains two Roman feet and two digits, and a
grain, which is ¼ of a digit.” The Paris foot, with which Mersennus
compared this cubit, is equal to 1-68/1000 of the English foot, according
to Mr. Greaves; and consequently is to the Roman foot as 1068 to 967. In
the same proportion, reciprocally, are 23¼ and 25-68/100. That cubit,
therefore, is equal to 25-68/100 _unciæ_ of the Roman foot, and
consequently falls within the middle of the limits 25-57/100 and 79/100,
with which we have just circumscribed the sacred cubit: so that I suspect
this cubit was taken from some authentic model, preserved in a secret
manner from the knowledge of the Christians (SIR ISAAC NEWTON).

[281] “And he brought me to the door of the court; and when I looked,
behold a _hole_ in _the wall_. Then said he unto me, Son of man, dig now
in the wall; and when I had digged in the wall, behold a door: and he said
unto me, Go in and behold the wicked abominations that they do here. So I
went in, and saw; and, behold, every form of creeping things, and
abominable beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel, pourtrayed
upon the wall round about” (EZEKIEL).

[282] “Inter omnes eos, non constat à quibus factæ sint, justissimo casu
obliteratis tantæ vanitatis authoribus” (PLIN).

[283]

  קנים גפר עצי תבת לךעשה
  אתה וכפרת התבה את תעשה
  אשר וזה בכפר ומחוץ מבית
  אמה מאות שלש אתה תעשה
  אמה חמשים התבה ארך
  קומתה אמה ושלשים רחבה

_Gen._ vi. 14.

[284] Exod. ii. 3.

[285] The Septuagint translators, not perceiving any difference, rendered
all, similarly, by the word κιβωτός!

[286] As does also _Tha_, _To_, _Ti_, _Tho_, _Thu_, with their several
commutables, derivatives, formatives, etc.

[287] And the _Valley of To-phith_, in which human victims were
sacrificed, thus discloses, in the _symbolic secret of its shape_, that
the propitiation of this _instrument_ was the grand object of the
sacrificers.

[288] Virgil.

[289] Gen. vi. 9.

[290] Gen. vi. 12.

[291] Rom. i. 20-24.

[292] Gen. vi. 8.

[293] _The-bith._

[294] Gen. ix. 1.

[295] “This king is stated to have reclaimed his subjects from a _state_
of the _most savage barbarity_. He was, we are told by our author, the son
of Yussan-Ajum, while others call him the grandson of Noah; _all agree in
acknowledging him as the founder of a dynasty, which are known in history
as that of the Paishdadian_” (SIR JOHN MALCOLM).

[296] The Irish name for a _boat_ is _baudh_, which is only a formative of
_pith_.

[297] Gen. v. 29.

[298] If the reader will now turn to p. 223, will he not think it probable
that the _symbol_ contained on the broken-off portion of the stone, there
represented, must have been the phallus?

[299] Who can forget the fable in Ovid, _de jactibus lapidibus_?

[300] “But as his descendants gave him his right as to the title of Deva,
and decreed divine honours to be paid to him, we shall henceforth call him
Deva-cala-_Yavana_; or, according to the vulgar mode of pronouncing this
compound word, Deo-cal-_Yun_, which sounds exactly like _Deucalion_ in
Greek” (WILFORD).

[301] Fielding.

[302] Isa. viii. 7, 8.

[303] Gen. vii. 2.

[304] Gen. viii. 10, 11.

[305] The following is an abstract of the Hindoo version of this allegory,
as copied from their Puranas:--“Satyavrata, having built the _ark_, and
the flood increasing, it was made fast to the peak of Nau-baudha, with a
cable of a prodigious length. During the flood, Brahma, or the _creating
power_, was _asleep_ at the bottom of the abyss: the _generative powers of
nature_, both male and female, were reduced to their simplest elements,
the _Linga_ and the _Yoni_. The Yoni assumed the shape of the hull of a
_ship_, since typified by the Argha, whilst the Linga became the _mast_.
In this manner they were wafted over the deep, under the care and
protection of _Vishnu_. When the waters had retired, the _female power_ of
nature appeared immediately in the character of _Capoteswari_, or the
_dove_, and she was soon joined by her consort, in the shape of
_Capoteswara_.”

[306] See p. 63.

[307] Acts vii. 22.

[308] The _date_ of those Uksi was not the only misconception this
historian has committed. He was equally in the dark as to the _place_
whence they came, and, for want of a better name, called them, at a
venture, Arabians!

[309] See p. 64.

[310] Most of the _oracles_ in the ancient world were but
_personifications_ of this influence--the _goddess_ invariably being the
sacred Yoni. And the priestesses so far prevailed upon the credulous
worshippers as to make them believe that _she_ actually spoke! The oracle
of _Delphi_, the most venerable in all Greece, obtained its name from the
_very thing_--the first syllable _De_, signifying _divine_ or _sacred_;
and the second _phi_, _i.e._ phith, _yoni_: the letter _l_ having been
inserted only for euphony. Even in the _Greek_ language this import is not
yet lost.

[311] As _Noah_ was himself named from the _symbolical boat_, so was his
eldest son _Japheth_, from its sanctified _prototype_. _Ja-Phith_
signifies _consecrated to Pith_, or the _Yoni_. And again, _his_ son’s
name, _Ja-van_, means _consecrated to woman_.

[312] “In the city of Babylon there is a temple with brazen gates,
consecrated to Jupiter Belus, being four square; and each side being two
furlongs in length. In the midst of this holy place there is a solid
tower, of the thickness and height of a furlong; upon which there is
another tower placed, and upon that another; and so on, one upon another,
insomuch that there are eight in all. On the outside of these there are
steps or stairs placed, by which men go up from one tower to another. In
the middle of these steps there are resting-places; and rooms were made
for the purpose, that they who go to the top may have conveniences to sit
down and rest themselves” (HERODOTUS).

“’Tis a tower exactly round, in form of a cone, or round pyramid; the
diameter, or thickness at the base, being 81 feet; the circumference, or
way round, 254½ feet; the height perpendicular likewise 81 feet, equal to
the diameter; the height likewise, oblique, 90½ feet; and the angles of
the sides equal to those of the former design: the whole likewise a mass
of brick and bitumen work, amounting to 140,589 cubic feet, upon 5207
square” (MARK GREGORY).

[313] Gen. xi. 4.

[314] Spenser’s _Faërie Queene_.

[315] _Shiloh_ is an _Irish_ word, literally meaning _seed_, and
additionally showing that it was in our _sacred_ language all those
occurrences were _originally named_.

[316] Both words equally signify the _happy country_ or the _sacred land_.

[317] Gen. iii. 15.

[318] See chap. xvii. p. 229.

[319] Gen. iii. 15.

[320] Gen. xix. 31-34.

[321] _Asiatic Researches._

[322] Job xix. 25.

[323] John viii. 56.

[324] Rev. xiii. 8.

[325] _Appeal to Common Sense_, p. 45.

[326] See chap. xvi. p. 224.

[327] _De Morib. German._ xxiv.

[328] _Western Islands_, vol. i. p. 184, etc.

[329] _Highlands_, vol. iii. p. 236.

[330] “I inquired,” says Mr. Martin, “of the inhabitants, what tradition
they had concerning these stones; and they told me, it was a place
appointed for worship in the time of heathenism; and that the chief Druid
stood near the big stone in the centre, from whence he addressed himself
to the people that surrounded him.”

[331] United at the feet in this manner [Illustration]. The jewel in the
freemasons’ royal arch is thus formed. Noah was a freemason; and being the
inventor of that _mysterious_ and _sacredly-religious ceremony_, called
the _Deluge_, we may be satisfied that all the _secrets_ of that body bear
reference to my developments. I look upon their institution as most
_solemn_ and _majestically sublime_.

[332] In the accounts transmitted to us of the various _Buddhas_, no term
occurs more commonly as descriptive of their innocence and their meekness
than that of _lamb_.

[333] Gen. iii. 15.

[334] Luke iii. 39.

[335] See p. 132.

[336] _Indian Antiquities_, vol. ii. p. 361.

[337] See chap. xvi. p. 221.

[338] Matt. xxii. 29.

[339] Vol. i. p. 308, on the article “Fine Arts.”

[340] The initial subscribed to the article.

[341] See Appendix.

[342] Like the two former effigies, at pp. 138 and 140, it is made of
_bronze_, and found in Ireland after the Tuath-de-danaans. Those found
after their brethren in the East are made of the same metal. “Sometimes,”
says Archer, “the _images_ are of _wood_ or _stone_, but these, unless
possessing the rarity of some monkish legend, are not in such repute as
their brothers of _brass_.”

[343] This is the only _peculiar_ monogram of Jesus Christ--I. H. S.
belonging originally to Budha, though appropriated afterwards to _him_, Υ
Η Σ was its proper form, and it comprehended a mysterious number, as
follows:--

  Υ      400
  Η        8
  Σ      200
         ---
         608

Another monogram of Budha was Φ Ρ Η. It composed the same numerical
enigma, viz.--

  Φ      500
  Ρ      100
  Η        8
         ---
         608

  Salvo vera Deum facies, vultusque paternæ,
  Octo et sexcentis numeris, cui litera trina
  Conformet sacrum nomen, cognomen et omen.
                                    MARTIANUS CAPELLA.

[344] _Arch. Soc. Ant. Lond._ vol. ii. p. 83.

[345] _Asiatic Researches._

[346] “He has a separate apartment, shrouded from vulgar eyes by a black
velvet curtain, richly embossed with gold, in a splendid palace at
Ummerapoor: and his whole residence is as dazzling and sumptuous as gold
and silver can make it. He is furnished with a silk bed, adorned with gold
tapestry, hangings, and jewellery, and has his gold appurtenances. Foreign
ministers are introduced to his sacred person, and he ranks before every
member of the royal court except the king” (SYMES).

[347] It was only as an _epithet_ that the title _sacred_ could apply to
Samothrace: and as such, every other locality, wherein those mysteries
were commemorated, shared it in common. But in _this our island_, to which
Artemidorus above alludes, and where superior solemnity attended the
celebration, the name of _sacred_ was no adventitious clause, but, _par
excellence_, the _constituent essence_ of its _proper appellation_ (see
pp. 128, 129).

[348] Μυστηρια δε δυο τελειται του ενιαυτου; Δημητοι Κορη; τα μικρα και τα
μεγαλα· και εστι τα μικρα ωσπερ προκαθαρσις και πραγνέυσις των μεγαλων.

[349] Lib. x. p. 474.

[350] εις την Πολιτ. Πλατ. p. 380.

[351] See the article under her name in the _Classical Dictionary_, with
all the authorities there adduced.

[352] _Clem. Alex. Strom._ ii.

[353] Mihi cum multa eximia divinaque videntur Athenæ tuæ peperisse--tum
nihil melius illis mysteriis quibus agresti immanique vitâ exculti ad
humanitatem mitigati sumus: initiaque, ut appellantur, ita revera
principia vitæ cognovimus: neque solum cum lætitiâ vivendi rationem
accepimus, sed etiam cum spe meliori moriendi (_De Legibus_, 1. i. c. 24).

[354] Pope.

[355] Luke xix. 20.

[356] “The _Bulbul of Iran_ has a passion for the rose, and when he sees
any person pull a rose from the tree he laments and cries” (“Persian
Poem,” quoted in Ouseley’s _Oriental Collections_).

[357] Basnage, bk. iii. ch. xix. s. xix.

[358] That phenomenon in the heavens, called the “Southern Cross,” appears
to me so associated with the _mystery_ of redemption, in all ages, that I
cannot forbear drawing attention to the sign. The following is Captain
Basil Hall’s description of this curious constellation.

“Of all the antarctic constellations, the celebrated _Southern Cross_ is
by far the most remarkable; and must in every age continue to arrest the
attention of all voyagers and travellers who are fortunate enough to see
it. I think it would strike the imagination even of a person who had never
heard of the Christian religion; but of this it is difficult to judge,
seeing how inextricably our own ideas are mingled up with associations
linking this sacred symbol with almost every thought, word, and deed of
our lives.

“The three great stars which form the Cross, one at the top, one at the
left arm, and one, which is the chief star, called Alpha, at the foot, are
so placed as to suggest the idea of a crucifix, even without the help of a
small star, which completes the horizontal beam. When on the meridian, it
stands nearly upright; and as it sets, we observe it lean over to the
westward. I am not sure whether, upon the whole, this is not more striking
than its gradually becoming more and more erect, as it rises from the
east. In every position, however, it is beautiful to look at, and well
calculated, with a little prompting from the fancy, to stir up our
thoughts to solemn purposes.

“I know not how others are affected by such things, but for myself I can
say with truth, that during the many nights I have watched the Southern
Cross, I remember on two occasions, when the spectacle interested me
exactly in the same way, nor any one upon which I did not discover the
result to be somewhat different, and always more impressive than what I
had looked for. This constellation, being about thirty degrees from the
South Pole, is seen in its whole revolution, and accordingly, when off the
Cape of Good Hope, I have observed it in every stage; from its triumphant
erect position, between sixty and seventy degrees above the horizon, to
that of complete immersion, with the top beneath, and almost touching the
water. This position, by the way, always reminded me of the death of St.
Peter, who is said to have deemed it too great an honour to be crucified
with his head upwards. In short, I defy the stupidest mortal that ever
lived, to watch these changes in the aspect of this splendid
constellation, and not to be, in some degree, struck by them” (_Fragments
of Voyages_).

[359] Isa. liii. 4, 5.

[360] Isa. liii. 3.

[361] _Asiatic Researches._

[362] Matt. x. 26.

[363] This will explain a text in Scripture never before understood,
namely, “Son of Man, when the land sinneth against Me by tresspassing
grievously, then will I stretch out Mine hand upon it, and will break _the
staff of the bread thereof_, and will send famine upon it, and cut off man
and beast from it” (Ezek. xiv. 13). _Fogh_ is another term equivalent to
this.

[364] This will at once appear from Varro, who, in Nonus Marcellinus, is
made to say, “We are barbarians, because that we crucify (in gabalum
suffigimus) the innocent; are you not barbarians, when you acquit the
guilty?” Compare also Selden, _Syntagm._ ii. c. 1.

[365] Mithra signat illic in frontibus milites suos (Tertullian, _de
Præscrip._ cap. xi.).

[366] Ezek. ix. 4, 5, 6.

[367] John iii. 10. The omission of this _cross_ from the text of our
translation may afford some handle to the enemies of religion.

[368] Matt. vi. 27.

[369] _Cunni_ Diaboli.

[370] The _rosary_ was also anterior to Christianity.

[371] John i. 29.

[372] John i. 30.

[373] John i. 31.

[374] Isa. xlii. 9.

[375] Temora.

[376] “And this _stone_, which I have set for a _pillar_, shall be _God’s
house_” (Gen. xxviii. 22).

[377] It is fit I should advertise that Mr. Hamilton spoke of the
individual merely as a figure, without professing to identify him in name
or history either with _Thot_, _Budha_, or _anybody else_.

[378] Introduction, p. xciii.

[379] Cowper.

[380] From the Brahma-vawartta, section of the Crishna-janma--c’hand’a.

[381] Much, mugh, mughsaine tra ainm sain delias do dheadh (Cormac’s
_Glossary_).

[382] The _locale_ of that _boar_, as well as the _mystery_ of its
meaning, which Plutarch transmitted in his allegorical _war_ between
Osiris and Typhon, is now no longer ambiguous (see p. 327).

[383] I have before explained that the _serpent Pyth-on_ means the
_seduction_ of sensuality--_Pith_ itself signifying _yoni_, the _boat_, or
_serpent_, the final _on_ being nothing but a Greek termination.

[384] Isa. liii. 7.

[385] “The gods,” said the Budhist priest to the Catholic bishop before
alluded to, “who have appeared in the present world, and who have obtained
the perfect state, niebau, or _deliverance from all the evils of life_,
are four, Chanchasam, Gonagom, Gaspa, and Godama” (Syme’s _Embassy to the
Court of Ava_).

[386] I shall give you my _definition_ for this word by and by.

[387] 1 Cor. xv. 51.

[388] It will be perceived, that I do not mean this to be an exact _copy_
of the Knockmoy Crucifixion--or _vice versâ_.--The general idea is, what I
mean to substantiate, and the identity of design cannot well be gainsaid.
This remark applies also to the kings about to be introduced by and by.

[389] “We saw,” says Colonel Symes, alluding to the imperfect shell of a
_Budhist_ temple, in the Burman Empire, “several unfinished figures of
_animals_ and _men_ in _grotesque attitudes_, which were designed as
ornaments for different parts of the building” (_Embassy to the Court of
Ava_).

[390] 1 Cor. i. 12.

[391] _Asiatic Researches._

[392] The name of _Sulivan_ in Ireland, than which there is no one more
common, is unquestionably but the perpetuation of the above _Sulivahana_.
And I can give a proof of the fact, _independently of its derivation_,
which will scare ridicule into defiance. It is that a particular branch of
that family called the O’Sulivans, of Tomies, have been ever looked upon
with a feeling of _reverence_ by the natives, almost approaching to
veneration. I have in vain striven to ascertain from them the origin of
this indefinable sense of sanctity. It was like magic upon their minds:
they half-worshipped them, and knew not why. There were but _two
individuals_ of this stock remaining when I was a schoolboy, a few years
ago, at Killarney.

[393] “That is,” says Keating, “the neighbouring country”!!! as if a
country would call itself by such a name! Vallancey ridicules, but bungles
himself still more. And while reminded by this circumstance, I had best
note, that what this last-mentioned writer elsewhere translates as “the
_topographical_ names of Ireland” (_Ainim abberteach an n’ Eirean_),
should have been “the _appellative_ names of Ireland”: they are the
_titles_ of the _island_ itself, not _descriptions_ of the several
_localities_ within it.

[394] Gen. xlix. 10.

[395] _Asiatic Researches._

[396] _Asiatic Researches._

[397] Isa. xlii. 2, 3.

[398] Retiring into a still more solitary place, _Gautama_ and his
disciples sustained triumphantly an argument with two of their bitterest
enemies. But a severer trial exhibited his righteousness in a yet clearer
light. Four young and beautiful sisters, burning with unholy love,
presented themselves naked before him, and besought him to comply with
their desires. “Who, O Gautame!” said they, in the rage of their
disappointment, “who is the lying witness who dares attest that the
virtues of all the former saints are concentrated in thee?” “Behold my
witness,” said the sage, striking the ground with his hand, and at the
moment Okintôngu, the tutelar genius of the earth, appeared, proclaiming,
with a loud voice, “It is I who am the witness of the truth!” The young
women then fell upon their faces and adored Gautama, saying, “O _pure_ and
_perfect countenance_, wisdom more precious than gold! majesty
impenetrable! honour and adoration to thee, _thou source of the faith of
the three epochs of the world_!” (Abridged from KLAPROTH).

[399] _Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal_, October 12, 1833.

[400] This is the exact rendering of the name by which they called it:
viz. _nua vreith_, or _the being born anew_ by the operation of grace.

[401] It is still practised in the East.--“For the purpose of regeneration
it is directed to make an image of pure gold of the _female_ power of
_nature_, in the shape either of a woman or of a cow. In this statue the
person to be regenerated is inclosed, and dragged out through the usual
channel. As a statue of pure gold, and of proper dimensions, would be too
expensive, it is sufficient to make an image of the sacred _Yoni_, through
which the person to be regenerated is to pass” (WILFORD).

[402] See pp. 3-78 and 162.

[403] Be it remembered, that it was in consequence of his ignorance of the
principle of regeneration that our Saviour addressed Nicodemus in these
cutting words, viz. “Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these
things?” thereby recognising the existence of the doctrine before His own
manifestation to that people.

[404] “Enter ye in at the _strait gate_: for _wide_ is the gate, and broad
is the way, that leadeth to _destruction_, and _many_ there be which go
_in_ thereat, because _strait_ is the _gate_, and narrow is the way, which
leadeth unto _life_, and _few_ there be that find it” (Matt. vii. 13, 14).

[405] “The dome [of this, what he calls a cemetery] springs at various
unequal heights, from eight to nine and ten feet on different sides,
forming at first a coving of eight sides. At the height of fifteen or
sixteen feet, the north and south sides of this coving run to a point like
a gore, and the coving continues its spring with six sides; the east side
coming to a point next, it is reduced to five sides, the west next; and
the dome ends and closes with four sides; not tied with a key-stone, but
capped with a flag-stone of three feet ten inches, by three feet five. The
construction of this dome is not formed by key-stones, whose sides are the
radii of a circle, or of an ellipsis converging to a centre. It is
combined with great long flat stones, each of the upper stones projecting
a little beyond the end of that immediately beneath it; the part
projecting, and weight supported by it, bearing so small a proportion to
the weight which presses down the part supported; the greater the general
weight is which is laid upon such a cove, the firmer it is compacted in
all its parts” (POWNALL).

[406] “The eight sides of this polygon are thus formed: the aperture which
forms the entrance, and the three niches, or tabernacles, make four sides,
and the four imposts the other four” (POWNALL).

[407] This word I have already derived, after the example of other
writers, from _peutgeda_, or _house of idols_, so misnamed by Europeans. I
must state, however, that another explication is also assigned thereto,
and that is, a perversion of the term _bhaga-vati_, or _holy house_. But
with great respect to the gentlemen who incline to the latter opinion, I
have to observe that _bhaga-vati_, properly signifies the _sacred Yoni_;
and, therefore, that however applicable to a _subterraneous temple_, or
_cave_, it could by no means represent an _erect building_.

[408] “The entrance into this temple, which is entirely hewn out of a
stone resembling porphyry, is by a spacious front supported by two massy
pillars and two pilasters forming three openings, under a thick and steep
rock, overhung by brushwood and wild shrubs. The long ranges of columns
that appear closing in perspective on every side; the flat roof of solid
rock that seems to be prevented from falling only by the massy pillars,
whose capitals are pressed down and flattened as if by the superincumbent
weight; the darkness that obscures the interior of the temple, which is
dimly lighted only by the entrances; and the gloomy appearance of the
gigantic stone figures ranged along the wall, and hewn, like the whole
temple, out of the living rock,--joined to the strange uncertainty that
hangs over the history of this place,--carry the mind back to distant
periods, and impress it with that kind of uncertain and religious awe with
which the grander works of ages of darkness are generally contemplated”
(ERSKINE).

[409] “This appellation, Caucasus, at least in its present state, is not
Sanscrit; and as it is not of Grecian origin, it is probable that the
Greeks received it through their intercourse with the Persians” (WILFORD).

[410] Darwin.

[411] “If perfection in art consist in affording continued pleasure, its
achievements, when contemplating this column, must be deemed
insurpassable. A Corinthian capital of 10 feet is poised on a shaft of 67½
feet, the latter resting on a base of 21½ feet; the whole rises to a
height of nearly 100 feet” (HEAD).

[412] “Or the obelisks, commonly called Cleopatra’s Needles, one alone is
now standing; the other, lying down, measures seven feet square at the
base, and sixty-six feet in length. They are so well known, that it is not
necessary to give a very particular description of them” (CLARKE).

[413] In confirmation of this, you will find at p. 14 of Seguin’s
_Thessalonian Coins_, the impression of a man with a hammer, as above, in
one hand, and a key in the other, and the word _Cabeiros_ as the
inscription.

[414] On all public occasions displays of this kind are still indulged in
the East. The _floralia_ of the Romans were adopted from the Easterns.
“Every person, male and female, had _festoons_ depending from the top of
the cap down one side of the head. These were composed of the flowers of
the _wild rose_ and hawthorn, and other beautiful kinds, which, while they
set off the headpiece of the lieges, literally perfumed the air wherever
they went” (ARCHER).

[415] _Sketches of India Field Sports._ Dr. Shaw and Mr. Forbes are even
more conclusive.

[416] P. 338.

[417] If you examine the Tuath-de-danaan crosses with a minute eye, you
will find this exposition irrefutably verified. Though they all have the
traces of the Budhist sculpture, they have also the marks of
_obliteration_; and no one of them to a greater extent than this at
Finglas, where it is known that St. Patrick principally resided. Yet even
this retains indistinct evidence of snakes, etc.

“The body of the snake is not only capable of flexion, but of close and
intimate application to every rugged inequality of a tree on the earth;
and this faculty is the result of its minute subdivisions. The body of the
snake is never bent in acute angles, but always in flowing easy curves or
circles. From each of those distant bones, so multitudinous in their
number, which form the vertebral column (and in one species of Pythra we
have counted 256, exclusive of those composing the tail), a rib arises
from each side, and both together form a great portion of a circle, so as
to embrace nearly the whole circumference of the body. These ribs are
restricted to the vertebræ of the body only; they do not arise from those
of the tail.”

[418] _Travels in Northern India._

[419] Oliver Cromwell with his army of locusts.

[420] Byron.

[421] Some say he belonged to the _fifth_ century. All agree that it was
not later than the _ninth_.

[422] See p. 61.

[423] July 1833.--This gentleman’s name was Pareira.

[424] _Religious Rites and Ceremonies._

[425] The Gaurs themselves did not build those towers, but finding them to
their hand, and knowing them to have been formerly reverenced, they
converted them to this purpose.

[426] One called _Jachen_, that is, _he shall establish_; and the other
_Boaz_, or, _in it is strength_. This was all emblematical, which, without
giving Solomon any participation therein, may be accounted for on the
principle that the building was conducted under the superintendence of
Hiram, a Sidonian, who naturally had exercised the taste of his own
country in the discretion here allowed him. Nor will the circumstance of
those pillars having been made of _metal_ oppose any barrier--the _design_
is the thing to be considered, not the _material_. And besides, we find
them of metal elsewhere also.

“An iron pillar,” says Archer, “stands in a sort of courtyard, having the
remains of cloisters on the four sides. Its history is _veiled in darkest
night_. There is an inscription on it, which nobody can decipher: nor is
there any account, historical or traditional, except we may refer to the
latter class, a prevalent idea of all people, that the pillar is on the
most sacred spot of the old city, which spot was also its centre. It is
also said that as long as the pillar stood, so long would Hindustan
flourish. This was the united dictum of the Brahmins and astrologers of
the day. The pillar is fifteen or sixteen inches in diameter.”

[427] ανθρωπος εστι των παντων μετρον (PROTAGORAS).

[428] 1 Kings viii. 27.

[429] _Antiquities of Ireland_, vol. ii. p. 134.

[430] _Antiquities of Ireland_, vol. ii. p. 129.

[431] _Dublin Penny Journal_, 20th July 1833.

[432] _Dublin Penny Journal_, 10th June 1833.

[433] _Dublin Penny Journal_, 20th July 1833.

[434] _Ibid._ 5th October 1833.

[435] Colgan.

[436] _Melpomene_, ch. 46.

[437] “Oppidum vocant Britanni cum silvas impeditas vallo atque fossâ
munierunt. The Britons call a town an encumbered wood, fenced in with a
rampart and a ditch” (CÆSAR’S _Comment._ lib. 5).

[438] Of whom O’Flaherty gives this character from an Irish poem, writ by
one G. Comdeus O’Cormaic, which he thus translates into Latin:--

  “Primus Amerginus genu candidus anthor Jern
  Historicus, judex lege, poeta, sophus.”

That is,--

  Fair-limbed Amergin, venerable sage,
  First graced Ierne’s old historic page;
  Judge of the laws, for justice high approved,
  And loving wisdom by the muse beloved.

And he quotes this hemistich as another fragment of his poetry--

  “Eagna la heagluis aidir
  Agus feabtha la flaithibh.”

That is,--

  Let those, who o’er the sacred rites preside,
  Take wisdom for their guardian and their guide;
  Let those, whose power the multitude obey,
  Support by conduct their imperial sway.

[439] The above stanza, I should observe, belongs to that species of
poetry called in Irish _con-a-clon_, wherein the final word of each line
is the initial one of the following.

[440] Or “Tarah,” says the _Dinn Seanchas_, compiled by Amergen Mac
Amalgaid in the year 544, “was so called from its celebrity for melody.”

[441] “Once occupied by a celebrated queen!” (_Asiatic Researches_).

[442] “Heremon was the first of the _Scots_ who held the dominion over all
Ireland” (_Psalter of Narran_).

[443] “For, in the first place, the general tradition of the old Irish
handed down to us by all our historians and other writers, imports that
when the Scots arrived in Ireland, they spoke the same language with that
of the Tuath-de-danaans” (Preface to _O’Brien’s Irish Dictionary_).

[444] The Egyptian epithets are not very dissimilar: “Besides these first
inhabitants of Sancha-dwipa, who are described by the mythologists, as
_elephants_, _demons_, and _snakes_, we find a race called Shand-ha-yana,
who are the real Troglodites; they were the descendants of Abri, before
named, whose history being closely connected with that of the _Sacred
Isles in the West_, deserves peculiar attention” (_Asiatic Researches_).

[445] Nearly similar things, we find, have occurred in the East. “The
natives of the place (Mavalepuran, in Indian) declared to the writer of
this account, that the more aged people among them remembered to have seen
the tops of several pagodas far out in the sea; a statement which was
verified by the appearance of one on the brink of the sea, already nearly
swallowed up by that element” (_Asiatic Researches_).

[446] Αναθηματα,--things dedicated to the gods.

[447] In March.

[448] In September.

[449] See p. 120.

[450] _Trans. Roy. Ir. Acad._ vol. xvi. p. 166.

[451] Procopius calls them ανηκοι και αμελιτητοι, that is, heedless and
indifferent to all culture.

Bishop Cormac also says that he “cannot sufficiently express his
astonishment at the indifference which the Scottish nation evinced in his
day to literature.”

Strabo calls them, Αγριων τελεως ανθρωτων, while M’Pherson asserts of
their brethren, that “nothing is more certain than that the British Scots
were an illiterate people, and involved in barbarism, even after the
Patriarch’s mission to the Scots of Ireland.”

[452] In fact this writer had no other reason for this _mistake_ which he
has committed, in describing it as “scarce habitable for cold,” than his
knowledge of its Hyperborean situation. “The most remote navigation
northward from the Celtic coast in our days,” says he, “is said to be into
Ireland (Ierné), which being situated beyond Britain, is scarce habitable
for cold, so that what lies beyond that island is thought to be not at all
habitable” (_Geog._ lib. 2, ex vers. Gul. Xylandri).

[453] Orpheus also calls the sea dividing the north of Scotland from
Ireland, “Mare Cronium, idem quod mare saturninum et oceanus
septentrionalis” (VALLANCEY).

[454] Gerald. _Cambr. Hist._ i. cap. 19.

[455] A series of articles written under this head, in the columns of the
_Dublin Penny Journal_, by Mr. Pebrie, antiquarian high-priest to the
Royal Irish Academy!

[456] This Tubal-Cain was evidently the person from whom the Greeks
manufactured their mythological Vul-can.

[457] “The griffin,” says Shaw, copying Ctesias, “is a quadruped of India,
having the claws of a lion, and wings upon his back. His fore parts are
red, his wings white, his neck blue, his head and his beak resemble those
of the eagle; he makes his nest among the mountains, and haunts the
deserts, where he conceals his gold.”

[458] “The ignorance of the European Greeks in geography was extreme in
all respects during many ages. They do not even appear to have known the
discoveries made in more ancient voyages, which were not absolutely
unknown to Homer” (Mr. Gouget, _Origin of Arts and Sciences_, tom. 7, b.
3).

[459] “L’existence _de ce peuple antérieur_ est prouvée par le tableau qui
n’offre que des débris, astronomie oubliée, philosophie mêlée à des
absurdités, physique dégénérée en fables, religion épurée, mais cachée
dans une idolatrie grossière. Cet ancien peuple a eu des sciences
perfectionnées, une philosophie sublime et sage” (BAILLY).

[460] Amongst our antiquities also are found _nose-rings_ (nasc-srion),
which, stronger than any other demonstration, shows the orientalism of our
Tuath-de-danaan ancestors. Their ear-rings, also, are thus defined in
Comrac’s _Glossary_: “Arc nasc--vel, a-naisc, bid im cluas--aibh na
saoreland,” _i.e._ a ring worn in the ears of our gentry.

[461] _Dublin Penny Journal._

[462] “Si j’ai bien prouvé que Butta, Thoth, et Mercure ne sont également
que le même inventeur des sciences et des arts” (BAILLY).

“The Buddhists insist that the religion of Buddha existed from the
beginning” (_Asiatic Researches_).

[463] _Gentleman’s Magazine_, Nov. 1822.

[464] In the entire land of Phœnicia there was but one, and that
comparatively a modern one, erected no doubt after their intercourse with
the Tuath-de-danaans.

[465] The play above alluded to is that of the Pænulus, or Carthaginian,
in which Haono is introduced in quest of his two daughters, who, with
their nurse, had been stolen by pirates, and conveyed to Calydon, in
Ætolia. Thither the father repairs on receiving intelligence of the fact,
and addresses a supplication to the presiding deity of the country, to
restore to him his children unstained by pollution. He is made to speak in
his vernacular tongue, just as natives of France are represented in our
drama by Shakespeare: and so _interesting_ is the whole--independently of
the curiosity attaching to so rare a production--that I shall subjoin a
portion of it for the reader.

  1.

  “Nith al o nim, ua lonuth secorathessi ma com syth.
  An iath al a nim, uaillonac socruidd se me com sit.”
  O mighty splendour of the land, renowned, powerful; let him quiet me
        with repose.

  2.

  “Chin lach chunyth mumys tyal myethii barii imi schi.
  Cim laig cungan, muin is toil, mo iocd bearad iar mo sgil.”
  Help of the weary captive, instruct me according to thy will, to recover
        my children after my fatigue.

_N.B._--The first line in each of these triplets is Phœnician, the second
Irish, and the third, their import, in English.

[466] “How comes it then that they are so unlearned--still, being so old
scholars? for learning (as the poet saith) _emollit mores_ nec sinit esse
feros; whence, then, I pray you, could they have those letters?” He
answers, “It is hard to say, for whether they at the first coming into the
land, or afterwards by trading with other nations, learned them of them,
or devised them amongst themselves, is very doubtful, _but that they had
letters anciently is nothing doubtful, for the Saxons of England are said
to have their letters and learning, and learned men, from the Irish_. And
that also appeareth from the likeness of the character, for the Saxon’s
character is the same with the Irish” (SPENSER).

[467] “Having been always free and independent of the empire of the
Romans, they were unacquainted with the Roman language and its characters:
there were, therefore, but two courses to adopt; either to translate the
holy books into the language of the country, and celebrate the divine
mysteries in it, which would have been contrary to the custom of the
Church, or to teach the characters of the Roman language to those who were
to instruct others; the holy apostle adopted the latter course” (ABBÉ MAC
GEOHIGAN).

[468] Book of Cashel.

[469] Job viii. 8, and xix. 23.

[470] There is no Mohammedan of learning in Persia or India who is not an
astrologer: rare works upon that science are more valued than any other;
and it is remarkable that on the most trivial occasions, when calculating
nativities and foretelling events, they deem it essential to describe the
planets in terms _not unsuited to the account which the author of the
Dabistan has given of these deities_ (SIR JOHN MALCOLM).

[471] Job xix. 23, 24.

[472] Job viii. 8.

[473] Since I have commenced this work, a very ancient manuscript of the
abbey of Icolmkill has fallen into my hands; it was written by
Cairbre-Liffeachair, who lived _six generations before St. Patrick_, and
about the time of our Saviour; an exact account is given in it of Irish
kings, from whence I infer, that as the Irish had manuscripts at that
period, we must certainly have possessed them likewise.

[474] Æschylus would seem to refer to this, when he makes Prometheus say,
“I invented for them the array of letters, and fixed the memory, the
mother of knowledge, and the soul of life” (_Bloomfield’s edition_, v.
469).

[475] Τον Ἑρακλεα ὁι Κελτοι ΟΓΜΙΟΝ ονομαζουσι φωνη τη επιχωριῳ. LUCIAN.

[476] Whittaker’s, Manchester.

[477] See p. 332.

[478] An allegory, by the way, which I could explain satisfactorily, were
it not that it would detain me.

[479] O Richard of Cirencester, oh! what pleasure it affords me to see the
_moderns_ running after the chariot wheels of the _monks_, whenever they
can pick out amongst their lucubrations any stray sentences to support
their own fantasies!

[480] “Near the road (at a place called Margan) is an _old cross_, bearing
an _inscription_, which has been doomed to serve as a bridge for foot
passengers over a little rivulet; and in the village are fragments of a
_most beautiful cross richly decorated with fretwork_.”--CAMBRENSIS.

[481] Some copies read _Scoto_, the meaning, however, is the same; the
only difference being that the latter partakes of the modern enunciations
of the word, as _Scots_, instead of _Scuits_ or _Scythians_.

[482] In the anxiety with which my translation of “Phœnician Ireland” was
hurried through the press, it inadvertently escaped me that the Scythians
had only _touched at Spain_. The above will correct the oversight; to
which I shall add that, “as for entitling the _Spanish-Irish Scots_, there
wants no authority, the Irish authors having constantly called the Spanish
colony Kin-Scuit, or the Scottish nation.”--LHUYDH.

[483] “Every argument of the origin of emigrant nations must, after all,
be referred to language.”--CAMDEN.

[484] The derivation of those two terms is not exclusively mine. It is but
the repetition of the received interpretation of all men of letters.

[485] “For it is to be thought, that the use of all England was in the
raigne of Henry the Second, when Ireland was planted with English, very
rude and barbarous, so as if the same should be now used in England by
any, it would seem worthy of sharpe correction, and of new lawes for
reformation, for it is but even the other day since England grew civill”
(SPENSER).

[486] The name of _Arran_ was given to this island as expressive of _the
land of the unfaithful_, in opposition to our _Iran_, or _the land of the
faithful_: both corresponding to the _Iran_ and _An-Iran_ of the Persians.

[487] This, however, did not happen at first; for the name of Ireland was
not yet generally used among strangers, as Adam de Breme, who lived in the
eleventh century, and Nubigensis, in the twelfth, were the first who
mentioned it: the name of Scotland was by degrees appropriated to Albania,
which was for some time called Little Scotland, “Scotia Minor,” to
distinguish it from Ireland, which was called “Scotia Major,” whose
inhabitants did not lose all of a sudden the name of Scots: they are so
called in the eleventh century by Herman, in the first book of his
chronicle; by Marianus Scotus, Florentius Wigorniensis, in his annals, in
which, having inserted the chronicle of Marianus, in mentioning the year
1028, he says, “In this year was born Marianus, probably a Scot from
Ireland, by whose care this excellent chronicle has been compiled from
several histories.” We discover the same thing in a chronicle in the
Cottonian library (_Abbé Mac Geoghegan_).

[488] The Picts, confiding in the happy omen of future friendship from the
Scots, obtained wives from them, and thereby contracted so close an
alliance, that they seemed to form but one people; so that the passage
between the two countries being free, a number of Scots came and settled
amongst the Picts, who received them with joy (BUCHANAN).

Britannia post Britones et Pictos tertiam Scotorum nationem in Pictorum
parte, recepit, qui, duce Reuda, de Hibernia progressi, vel amicitiâ vel
ferro, sibimet inter eos sedes quas hactenus habent, vindicârunt, à quo
scilicet duce usque hodiè Dalreundini vocantur (Beda, _Hist. Eccles._ lib.
i. cap. 1).

Cambrensis says, that in the reign of Niall the Great in Ireland, the six
sons of Muredus, King of Ulster, with a considerable fleet, seized on the
northern part of Britain, and founded a nation, called Scotia (_Topog.
Hib._ dist. 3, cap. 16).

“It is certain,” says Camden, “that the Scots went from Ireland into
Britain. Orosius, Bede, and Eginard, bear indisputable testimony that
Ireland was inhabited by the Scots.” Elsewhere he calls the Irish the
ancestors of the Scotch. “Hiberni Scotorum atavi.”

[489] Author of the _New Analysis of Chronology_, and late Fellow of
Trinity College, Dublin.

[490] See p. 376.

[491] This should have been Scythians.

[492] “Origin and Purity of the Primitive Churches of the British Isles.”

[493] Various colonies of the Tuath-de-danaans had settled here: but I
talk now of the last one, immediately preceding the Scythians.

[494] See pp. 259, 264, 265.

[495] See pp. 385, 282, and 259.

[496] _Euseb. Præpar. Evang._ 1. ii. 4.

[497] Πανταχοῦ δὲ καὶ ἀνθρωπομορθον Οσιρίδος ἄγαλμαδεικνύουσιν ἐξορθιαζον
τῶ’ αἰδοιω, διὰ το γόνιμον καὶ τὸ τρόφιμον.--_Plut. de Isid. et Osirid._

[498] See p. 265.

[499] De facie in orbe lunæ. Slatyr, also, an English poet, in his “Pale
Albeone,” calls our island Ogygia. Rhodoganus explains the propriety of
the word when he says, “Ogygium appellant poetæ tanquam pervatis dixeres.”

[500] The original, in fact, of the _Feodal System_.

[501] An act of daring impiety (not requiring to be added) disgusted
Jemsheed’s subjects, and encouraged the Syrian prince, Zohauk, to invade
Persia. The unfortunate Jemsheed fled before a conqueror, who was deemed
by all, the instrument of divine vengeance. The wanderings of the exiled
monarch are wrought into a tale, which is among the most popular in
Persian romance. His first adventure was in the neighbouring province of
Seistan, where the only daughter of the ruling prince was led, by a
prophecy of her nurse, to fall in love with him, and to contract a secret
marriage; but the unfortunate Jemsheed was pursued through Seistan, India,
and China, by the agents of the implacable Zohauk, by whom he was at last
seized, and carried before his cruel enemy, like a common malefactor. Here
his miseries closed; for after enduring all that proud scorn could inflict
upon fallen greatness, he was placed between two boards, and sawn asunder
with a bone of a fish (SIR JOHN MALCOLM).

[502] _Clio_, chap. 130.

[503] “Now these _heathens_ in India, believe that an _atonement_ has been
made for their sins,” says Dr. Hurd, in his _Religious Rites and
Ceremonies_. Had the Doctor, or whoever he was that assumed his name,
known that this was their reliance upon the _expiation_ “of the Lamb slain
from the beginning of the world,” he would have spared his _heathens_, and
spoken less irreverently.

[504] _Clio_, chap. 193.

[505] Cambrensis, in the twelfth century, says, the Irish then musically
expressed their griefs; that is, they applied the musical art, in which
they excelled all others, to the ordinary celebration of funeral
obsequies, by dividing the mourners into two bodies, each alternately
singing their part, and the whole, at times, joining in full chorus.

“The body of the deceased, dressed in graveclothes, and ornamented with
flowers, was placed on a bier, or some elevated spot. The relations and
_keeners_ (singing mourners) then ranged themselves in two divisions, one
at the head, and the other at the foot of the corpse. The bards and
croteries had before prepared the funeral caoinan. The chief bard of the
head chorus began by singing the first stanza in a low doleful tone, which
was softly accompanied by the harp: at the conclusion, the foot semichorus
began the lamentation, or _ullaloo_, from the final note of the preceding
stanza, in which they were answered by the head semichorus; then both
united in one general chorus. The chorus of the first stanza being ended,
the chief bard of the foot semichorus began the second gol, or
lamentation, in which they were answered by that of the head, and, as
before, both united in the full chorus. Thus, alternately, were the song
and the choruses performed during the night. The genealogy, rank,
possessions, the virtues and vices of the dead were rehearsed, and a
number of interrogations were addressed to the deceased: as, Why did he
die? If married, whether his wife was faithful to him, his sons dutiful,
or good hunters or warriors? If a woman, whether her daughters were fair
or chaste? If a young man, whether he had been crossed in love? or if the
blue-eyed maids of Erin had treated him with scorn?” (_Transactions of the
Royal Irish Academy_, vol. iv. note 9).

[506] Baillie.

[507] A particular anecdote in the Persian history has such claims upon
the feelings, and is otherwise so interesting, _as being, in fact, the
elucidation of the origin and era of the Tyrrhenians, Etrurians, or
Tuscans, in Italy_, that I am forced to transcribe it here at full length.

“Feridoon was the son of Ablen, an immediate descendant of Tahamurs. He
had escaped, in almost a miraculous manner, from Zohauk, when that prince
had seized and murdered his father. At the age of sixteen he joined Kâwâh,
who had collected a large body of his countrymen: these fought with
enthusiasm under the standard of the blacksmith’s apron, which continually
reminded them of the just cause of their revolt; and the presence of their
young prince made them invincible. Zohauk, after numerous defeats, was
made prisoner, and put to a slow and painful death, as some punishment for
his great crimes.

“Feridoon’s first act was to convert the celebrated apron into the royal
standard of Persia. As such, it was richly ornamented with jewels, to
which every king, from Feridoon to the last of the Pehlivi monarchs added.
It was called the Derush-e-Kawanee, the Standard of Kawa, and continued to
be the royal standard of Persia, till the Mohammedan conquest, when it was
taken in battle by Saed-e-Wukass, and sent to the Caliph Omar.

“A Persian poet, alluding to the victories which the youthful Feridoon
obtained over Zohauk, and to those enchantments by which the latter was
guarded, and the manner in which they were overcome by his virtuous
antagonist, beautifully exclaims, ‘The happy Feridoon was not an angel; he
was not formed of musk or of amber; it was by his justice and mercy that
he gained good and great ends. Be then just and merciful, and thou shalt
be a Feridoon.’

“The crimes of his elder sons, which embittered the latter years of
Feridoon, have given rise to one of the most affecting tales in Persian
romance; and it is, indeed, only in that form that there remains any trace
of these events. This virtuous monarch had, we are told, three sons, Selm,
Toor, and Erii. The two former were by one mother, the daughter of Zohauk;
the latter by a princess of Persia. All these three princes had been
united in marriage to three daughters of a king of Arabia. Feridoon
determined to divide his wide dominions among them. To Selm he gave the
countries comprehended in modern Turkey; to Toor, Tartary and part of
China; and to Erii, Persia. The princes departed for their respective
governments, but the two elder were displeased that Persia, the fairest of
lands, and the seat of royalty, should have been given to their junior,
and they combined to effect the ruin of their envied brother. They first
sent to their father to reproach him with his partiality and injustice,
and to demand a revision of his act, threatening an immediate attack if
their request was refused. The old king was greatly distressed; he
represented to them that his days were drawing to a close, and entreated
that he might be allowed to depart in peace. Erii discovered what was
passing, and resolved to go to his brothers and to lay his crown at their
feet, rather than continue to be the cause of a dissension that afflicted
his father. He prevailed upon the old king to consent to this measure, and
carried a letter from their common parent to Selm and Toor, the purport of
which was, that they should live together in peace. This appeal had no
effect, and the unfortunate Erii was slain by his brothers who had the
hardihood to embalm his head and send it to Feridoon. The old man is said
to have fainted at the sight. When he recovered, he seized with frantic
grief the head of his beloved son, and, holding it in his raised hands, he
called upon heaven to punish the base perpetrators of so unnatural and
cruel a deed. ‘May they never more,’ he exclaimed, ‘enjoy one bright day!
May the demon remorse tear their savage bosoms, till they excite
compassion even in the wild beasts of the forest! As for me,’ said the
afflicted old man, ‘I only desire from the God that gave me life, that he
will continue it till a descendant shall arise from the race of Erii to
avenge his death: and then this head will repose with joy on any spot that
is appointed to receive it.’

“The daughter of Erii was married to the nephew of Feridoon, and their
young son, Manucheher, proved the image of his grandfather; this child
becoming the cherished hope of the aged monarch; and when the young prince
attained manhood he made every preparation to enable him to revenge the
blood of Erii. Selm and Toor trembled as they saw the day of retribution
approach; they sent ambassadors with rich presents to their father, and
entreated that Manucheher might be sent to them, that they might stand in
his presence like slaves, and wash away the remembrance of their crimes by
tears of contrition. Feridoon returned their presents; and in his reply to
their message expressed his indignation in glowing terms. ‘Tell the
merciless men,’ he exclaimed, ‘that they shall never see Manucheher, but
attended by armies, and clothed in steel.’

“A war commenced; and in the very first battle Toor was slain by the lance
of Manucheher. Selm retired to a fortress, from whence he was drawn by a
challenge from the youthful hero, who was victorious in this combat, and
the war restored tranquillity to the empire” (SIR JOHN MALCOLM).

[508] “Fifty-six years the Fir-Bolgs royal line were kings, and the
sceptre they resigned to the Tuath-de-danaans” (KEATING).

[509] We have as yet no accounts of the persecution and expulsion of the
Budhists from India; and this circumstance of itself would allow us to
infer, with great probability, that those events must have taken place at
a very remote period of antiquity.--_Asiatic Researches._

[510] Göttingen University.

[511] Vallancey, _Coll._ vol. iii. p. 163.

[512] Bryant’s _Anal._ vol. iii. 491-3.

[513] “The first origin of the _Danavas_” says Wilford, talking of the
primeval inhabitants of Egypt, “is as little known as that of the tribe
last mentioned. But they came into Egypt from the west of India, and are
frequently mentioned in the Puranas, amongst the inhabitants near Cali.”

Is it not manifest that they were a colony of our Danaans? And is not this
still more undeniable from the circumstance of a part of Egypt--doubtless
that wherein the Danaans resided--having been called of old, as you will
find by the same authority, by the name of _Eria_? See p. 68 of present
volume.

[514] This explains what Hecatæus records, as to the ancient attachment
between the Hyperboreans and the Grecians--“deducing their friendship from
remote times.” And the offerings which the latter are said to have brought
to the former were precisely of that nature (ανθηματα) which comports with
the spirit of our Budhist pentalogue. See p. 112.

[515] As to the actuality of the visit, it is past anything like doubt,
from Orpheus, or if you prefer Onomacretus’ poem called “Argonautica”; and
his conviction of this it was which made Adrianus Junius, quoted by Sir
John Ware, to characterise Ireland as an “insula _Jasoniæ_ puppis bene
cognita nautis.”

[516] “Abaris ex Hyperboreis, _ipse quoque theologus fuit; scripsit
oracula regionibus quas peragravit, quæ hodie extant; prædixit is quoque
terræ motus, pestes, et similia ac cætera. Ferunt eum cum Spartam
advenisset, Lacones monuisse de sacris mala avertentibus, quibus peractis
nulla, postmodum Lacedæmone pestis fuerit_” (Apollonius, _Histor.
Mirab._).

  “They thought them gods and not of mortal race,
  And gave them cities and adored their learning,
  And begged them to communicate their art.”
                    KEATING (from an old Irish poem).

Turn back also to pp. 328, 67, and 66, and see what is there stated!

  “An hundred and ninety-seven years complete
  The Tuath-de-danaans, a famous colony,
  The Irish sceptre swayed.”

[517] “A spiritual supremacy of this kind prevailed in several cities of
Asia Minor, as, for instance, at Pessinus, in Phrygia. The origin of such
constitutions is uncertain; but, according to tradition, was of very
ancient date. The same cities were also great resorts of commerce, lying
on the highway from Armenia to Asia Minor. The bond between commerce and
religion was very intimate. The festivals of their worship were also those
of their great fairs, frequented by a multitude of foreigners; all of whom
(certain classes of females not excepted), as well as everything which had
a reference to trade, were considered as under the immediate protection of
the temple and the divinity. The same fact may be remarked here, which has
obtained in several parts of Central Africa, namely, that the union of
commerce with some particular mode of worship gave occasion at a very
early period to certain political associations, and introduced a
sacerdotal government” (Heeren, vol. i. p. 121).

[518] “This word is of uncertain etymology--their early history is
uncertain. Diodorus (lib. v. 31) tells us that the Celts had bards who
sung to musical instruments; and Strabo (liv. iv.) testifies that they
were treated with respect approaching to veneration. The passage of
Tacitus (Germ. 7) is a doubtful reading” (_American Encyclopædia_).

[519] See Oriental Collections.

[520] Homer’s _Iliad_, π. v. 233.

[521] Hesiod, _apud Strabo_, 1. 7.

[522] See Miege’s _Present State of Ireland_.

[523] See p. 257.

[524] On the pillar at Buddall, before alluded to, are these words,
namely, “He had a womb, but it obstinately bore him no fruit. One like him
can have no relish for the enjoyments of life. He never was blessed with
that giver of delight, by obtaining which a man goes to _another
Almoner_.” Upon which the learned translator (Sir Charles Wiggins) very
correctly comments, that “he had no issue to perform _Sradh_ for the
release of his soul from the bonds of sin.” See p. 113 of this work. By
_another Almoner_ is meant the _Deity_.

[525] See p. 327.

[526] “Graiis, ingenium Graiis: dedit _ore rotundo_” (HORACE).

[527] This is still more evident by his making use of the word τηλοθι,
that is, _far off_, meaning _from_ Greece! And Hesiod applies this
identical topography to the _British Islands_, which he styles _sacred_,
describing them as μαλα τηλε, an immeasurable distance off, towards the
northern point of the ancient continent!

[528] See p. 71.

[529] Chap. xvii. 15.

[530] For _Dedan_, see last two pages; and for _D-Irin_, see p. 128. The
prefixing of _D_ to the last word arose from confounding it with the
former name; and thus it was embodied with it, as seen before in _L-Erne_.

[531] Or as the Rev. Cæsar Otway would say, in a similar
embarrassment,--“I will _give_ (_i.e._ invent) you a motto and a motive
for it.” Ha, ha, ha! (see _Dublin Penny Journal_, July 8, 1832).

[532] _Dublin Penny Journal_, April 6, 1833.

[533] “Elementorum omnium spiritus, utpote perennium corporum motu semper,
et ubique vigens, ex his quæ per disciplinas varias affectamus, participat
nobiscum munera divinandi, et substantiales potestates ritu diversa
placatæ, velut ex perpetuis fontium venis vaticina mortalitati suppeditant
verba” (Ammianus Marcellinus, lib. 21).

“They then took wives, each choosing for himself; whom they began to
approach, and with whom they cohabited; teaching them sorcery,
incantations, and the dividing of roots and trees” (Book of Enoch).

“I have collected fifty words in the Irish language relating to augury and
divination: every one of them are oriental, expressing the mode of
producing these abominable arts; they are, in fact, the very identical
oriental words written in Irish characters” (VALLANCEY).

[534] Danaus, the sire of fifty daughters, leaving those fruitful regions
watered by the Nile, came to Argos, and through Greece, ordained that
those who erst were called Pelasgi, should by the name of Danai be
distinguished (EURIPIDES).

[535] You will find in Bruce, the Abyssinian traveller’s writings, that
those boats are still called, in that country, _arghs_, as they were in
ours, and the people who man them are styled _Phut_, corresponding to our
_Fo-morians_.

[536] “I thank you,” says Symmachus to his brother Flavianus, “for the
present you made me of some _Irish dogs_ (_canes Scotici_), which were
there exhibited at the Circensian Games, to the great astonishment of the
people, who could not judge it possible to bring them to Rome otherwise
than in iron cages.”

[537] This is the meaning of the name _Glen-da-lough_, and a faithful
portraiture it is of the situation.

[538] Miniature of Budhism.

[539] “The _secret_, it was _lost_, but surely it was found” (_Freemason’s
Song_).

[540] This account is found in _Satdharmalankare_, a very popular Budhist
book, being a collection of histories, etc., from the writings of the
_Rahats_, in which the original _Paly_ (_Pahlavi_) texts are preserved
with the Singhalese (_Miniature of Budhism_).

[541] _Buddu_, the god of souls, is represented by several little images
made of silver, brass, stone, or white clay, and these are set up in
almost every corner, even in caverns and on rocks, to all which piles the
devotees carry a variety of provisions, every new and full moon throughout
the year; but it is in March they celebrate the grand festival of _Buddu_,
at which time they imagine the new year begins. At this festival they go
to worship in two different places, which have been made famous by their
legendary stories concerning them. One of them is the highest mountain in
the island, and called by the Christians _Adam’s Peak_; the other is in a
place where _Buddu_ reposed himself under a _tree_, which planted itself
there for the more commodious reception of the deity, who, _when he was on
earth, frequently amused himself under its agreeable shade_, and _under
that tree_ the pagans in Ceylon _adore_ their _Buddu_, whom they really
believe to be a god (DR. HURD).

Bodhesat receives a few handfuls of grass presented to him by Soitha (a
Brahmin), which grass, when strewed on the ground under the _Bo tree_,
there arise from the earth miraculously a throne of diamond fourteen
cubits high, covered externally with grass; on which Bodhesat takes his
seat, reclining his back against the _tree_, in order to accomplish his
last act of meditations. Buddha having ascended into the air, and
displayed his glory to all the worlds in rays of six different colours, in
order to afford the gods a proof of his perfection, stands seven days with
his eyes fixed on the _Bo tree_, enjoying the _Dhyanes_ (_Miniature,
etc._).

[542]

  “Yes, love indeed is light from heaven,
    A spark of that immortal fire,
  With angels shared, by Allah given,
    To lift from earth our low desire.
  Devotion wafts the mind above,
  But heaven itself descends in love,
  A feeling from the Godhead caught,
  To wean from self each sordid thought.”--BYRON.

[543] Book of Enoch, lxi. 8-10.

[544] Dr. Lawrence, present Archbishop of Cashel.

[545] Preface to translation of the Book of Enoch.

[546] “If this singular book be censured as abounding in some parts with
fable and fiction, still should we recollect that fable and fiction may,
occasionally, prove both amusing and instructive; and can then only be
deemed injurious when pressed into the service of vice and infidelity. Nor
should we forget that much, perhaps most, of what we censure, was grounded
upon rational tradition, the antiquity of which alone, independent of
other considerations, had rendered it respectable. _That the author was
uninspired will be scarcely now questioned._ But, although his production
was apocryphal, it ought not therefore to be necessarily stigmatised as
necessarily replete with error; although it be on that account incapable
of becoming a rule of faith, it may nevertheless contain much moral as
well as religious truth, and may be justly regarded as a correct standard
of the doctrine of the times in which it was composed. _Non omnia esse
concedenda antiquitati_ is, it is true, a maxim founded upon reason and
experience; but, in perusing the present relic of a remote age and
country, should the reader discover much to condemn, still, unless he be
too fastidious, he will find more to approve; if he sometimes frown, he
may oftener smile; nor seldom will he be disposed to admire the vivid
imagination of a writer who transports him far beyond the flaming
boundaries of the world--

                          ------‘Extra
  Processit longe flammantia mœnia mundi’;

displaying to him every secret of creation; the splendours of heaven, and
the terrors of hell; the mansions of departed souls, and the myriads of
the celestial hosts, the seraphim, cherubim, and ophanim, which surround
the blazing throne, and magnify the holy name of the great Lord of
Spirits, the Almighty Father of men and of angels” (ARCHBISHOP OF CASHEL).

[547] See p. 475.

[548] John i. 10, 11.

[549] John i. 14.

[550] P. 478.

[551] But cf. Acts (Gr.) xxiv. 23, τῶν ιδιων.

[552] John i. 12.

[553] John i. 13.

[554] See p. 242.

[555] See p. 243.

[556] Rom. xi. 33.

[557] John i. 31.

[558] John xii. 28.

[559] Namely, the _secret_ of an Antediluvian Incarnation.

[560] Matt. ii. 1, 2.

[561] This woodcut is copied from one of the early block-books.

[562] See p. 440.

[563] I need not repeat to the reader, that by _Irish_ I mean the
primitive _Persic_, indiscriminately common as well to _Iran_ as to
_Irin_.

[564] Virgil’s _Æneid_, vi. 724.

[565] John viii. 12.

[566] John i. 1.

[567] John i. 29. See also p. 315 of this volume.

[568] See p. 288.

[569] In the Tartar language, which is a dialect of the Irish, it still
retains this latter import, as appears from the following:--“Ce qu’il y a
de remarquable, c’est que le grand prêtre des Tartares port le nom de
_lama_, qui en langue Tartare signifie _la croix_; et les _Bogdoi_ qui
conquirent la Chine en 1644, et qui sont soûmis au _delae-lama_ dans les
choses de la religion, ont toujours des _croix_ sur eux, qu’ils appellent
aussi _lamas_” (_Voyage de la Chine_, par Avril, lib. iii. p. 194).

[570] The words _Irish_ and _sacred_ are synonymous. See p. 129.

[571] See pp. 267, 268, 269.

[572] “The peculiar office of the Irumarcalim it is difficult to find
out,” says Lewis, “only it is agreed that they carried the keys of the
seven gates of the court, and one could not open them without the rest.
Some add that there were seven rooms at the seven gates, where the holy
vessels were kept, and these seven men kept the keys, and had the charge
of them” (_Origines Hebrææ_, vol. i. p. 97).

[573] See p. 438, with the note thereon also.

[574] See _Dublin Penny Journal_, Nov. 10, 1833.

[575] Published by Berthoud, 65 Regent’s Quadrant, Piccadilly.

[576] See p. 361. At Monasterboice there are three very beautiful
specimens of those Tuath-de-danaan crosses still remaining, and covered,
as usual, with _hieroglyphic sculpture_. “The pillars in the Palencian
city,” I find, “are also decorated with serpents, lizards, etc.”

[577] See Borlase, p. 162.

[578] See p. 36. I must not omit to mention that the Tuath-de-danaan cross
at Armagh, noticed at p. 359, was pulled down some time back, to prevent
the _squabbles_ between the Catholics and the Orangemen, neither of whom
had any inheritance therein!

[579] _Vita prima S. Patricii_, Ap. Colgan.

[580] “Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which
shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day, in the city of
David, a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord” (Luke ii. 10,11).

[581] “And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly
host, praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth
peace, good will towards men” (Luke ii. 13, 14).

[582] Matt. ii. 9.

[583] Gen. xiv. 18, 19, 20.

[584] Heb. vii. 4, 1, 2, 3. “Rex idem hominum, Phœbique Sacerdos”
(VIRGIL).

[585] “Holy _mysteries_ must be studied with this caution, that the mind
for its module be dilated to the amplitude of the _mysteries_, and not the
mysteries be straitened and girt into the narrow compass of the mind”
(BACON).

[586] Isa. lii. 7.

[587] John xvi. 33.

[588] Luke xix. 42.

[589] John xiv. 27.

[590] Heb. vi. 19, 20.

[591] _Christmas Carols._

[592] _Freemasons’ Song._

[593] Matt. iii. 7.

[594] John vii. 41.

[595] See p. 229.

[596] Keating’s _History of Ireland_, folio, p. 143.

[597] Pronounced _Sauv_. This was the Seva of the Hindoos, by which
although they understood, indeed, as well _generation_ as _destruction_ to
be symbolised; yet it is clear that they must have long lost the method of
accounting for the _reason why_, otherwise than saying, that _death_ and
_life_ meant the same thing; that is, that the cessation of existence in
one form was but the commencement of existence in another.

[598] _Freemasons’ Song._

[599] Ashe’s _Masonic Manual_.

[600] See p. 282, note.

[601] See p. 268.

[602] Isa. vii. 14.

[603] “The countenance of Christ was placid, handsome, and ruddy, so
formed, however, as to inspire the beholders, not so much with love and
reverence as with terror; his locks were like the colour of a full ripe
filbert nut (auburn), straight, and entire down to the ears, from thence
somewhat curled down to the shoulders, but parted on the crown of the head
after the manner of the Nazarites; his forehead was smooth and shining,
his eyes blue and sparkling, his nose and mouth decorous, and absolutely
faultless; his beard, in colour like his locks, was forked, and not long”
(WASERUS, p. 63).

“At this time appeared a man, who is still living, a man endowed with
great power, his name Jesus Christ. The people say that he is a mighty
prophet; his disciples call him the Son of God. He quickens the dead, and
heals the sick of all manner of diseases and disorders. He is a man of
tall stature, well proportioned, and the aspect of his countenance
engaging, with serenity, and full of expression, so as to induce the
beholders to love and then to fear him. The locks of his hair are of the
colour of a vine-leaf, without curl, and straight to the bottom of his
ears, but from thence, down to his shoulders, curled and glossy, and
hanging below his shoulders. His hair on the crown of the head disposed
after the manner of the Nazarites. His forehead smooth and fair. His face
without spot, and adorned with a certain tempered ruddiness. His aspect
ingenuous and agreeable. His nose and his mouth in no wise reprehensible.
His beard thick and forked, of the same colour as the locks of his head.
His eyes blue and extremely bright. In reprehending and improving, awful;
in teaching and exhorting, courteous and engaging; a wonderful grace and
gravity of countenance; none saw him laugh, even once, but rather weep. In
speaking, accurate and impressive, but sparing of speech. In countenance,
the fairest among the children of men” (Attributed to Lentulus,
predecessor of Pilate in the government of Judea, recorded by Fabricius in
his _Codex Apocryphus Novi Testamenti_).

[604] The principal one I conceive to have been at the hill of _Tara_,
which means the hill of the _Saviour_, and synonymous with mount _Ida_,
which means the mount of the cross. See p. 453.

“The predominant style and character of the Pillar Tower,” says
Montmorency, “in a great measure discloses the _secret_ of its origin.” It
is astonishing how, after this, he and his pupils of the academy should
labour to assimilate that secret to a dungeon.

“L’obélisque que les Phéniciens dédièrent au Soleil dont le _sommet
sphérique_ et la matière étoient fort différens des obélisques d’Egypte”
(AMMIAN. MARCEL.).

[605] Ex. xx. 26. The word _altar_ does not mean what it is generally
taken to express, a _platform_, but a _high place_, or standing column,
what the Septuagint renders by the Greek word στηλη, a pillar. And this
was what the Israelites were forbid erecting to Jehovah, lest that their
nakedness should be discovered while ascending by steps or ladders to the
entrance overhead.

The Gaurs have _round towers_ erected of stone, and thither they carry
their dead on biers; within the tower is a staircase with deep steps made
in a winding form, and when the bearers are got within, the priests scale
the walls by the help of ladders; when they have dragged the corpse gently
up with ropes, they then let it slide down the staircase (Dr. Hurd’s
_Rites and Ceremonies, etc._).

[606] See pp. 7 and 8.

[607] 1 Kings vi. 4.

[608] 1 Kings vi. 6.

[609] 1 Kings vi. 29.

[610] The Tower of Pisa bears no comparison to this edifice.

[611] The holy wells also, with the practice of hanging pieces of cloth
upon the branches of an overhanging tree, all belonged to the
Tuath-de-danaan ceremonial. The early Christians took possession each of
them of one of these wells, and are now, by prescription, recognised as
their patron saints, and even supposed to have been their founders?

[612] Μοῖσα δ’ οἰκ ἀποδαμει τρόποις επι σφετέροσι, παντα δε χοροὶ παρθένων
λυρᾶν τε Βοαὶ καναχαί τ’ ανλων δονεονται δαφνᾳ τε χρυσεα κομος αναδησαντες
εἰλαπινα ξοινιν εν φρονως. νοσοι δ’ οντε γηρας ονλομενον κέκρατα ἱερᾶ
γενεᾶ· πονων δε καὶ μαχᾶν ἄτερ οικεοισι φυγοντες υπερδικον Νέμεσιν (Pyth
x. 59).

[613] Even among the vegetables, they abstained from _beans_, as did the
Pythagoreans after them, _ob similitudinem virilibus genitalibus_.

[614] See conditions of advertisement in Preface.

[615] “You may read in Lucian, in that sweet dialogue, which is entitled,
_Toxaris; or, of Friendship_, that the common oath of the Scythians was by
the _sword_, and by the _fire_, for that they accounted those two speciall
divine powers, which should worke vengeance on the perjurers. So doe the
Irish at this day, when they goe to battaile, say certaine prayers or
charmes to their swords, making a crosse therewith upon the earth, and
thrusting the points of their blades into the ground, thinking thereby to
have the better successe here in fight. Also they use commonly to swear by
their swords” (SPENSER).

[616] See pp. 81, 82.

[617] They were _afterwards_ degraded to every possible purpose they could
be made to subserve: but I speak above of the time _immediately_ after
their overthrow.

[618] “I had not been a week landed in Ireland from Gibraltar, where I had
studied Hebrew and Chaldaic, under Jews of various countries and
denominations, when I heard a peasant girl say to a boor standing by her,
_Féach an maddin nag_ (Behold the morning star), pointing to the planet
Venus, the _maddin nag_ of the Chaldean. Shortly after, being benighted
with a party in the mountains of the western parts of the county of Cork,
we lost the path, when an aged cottager undertook to be our guide. It was
a fine starry night. In our way, the peasant pointing to the constellation
_Orion_, he said that was _Caomai_, or the armed king; and he described
the three upright stars to be his spear or sceptre, and the three
horizontal stars, he said, were his sword-belt. I could not doubt of this
being the _Cimah_ of Job, which the learned Costard asserts to be the
constellation _Orion_” (VALLANCEY).

[619] At p. 305 of his work on the _Towers and Temples of Ancient
Ireland_, Mr. Keane observes: “Lists of Irish Round Towers have been made
to the number of one hundred and twenty; of these, the remains of about
sixty-six are traceable.” The list given here includes some towers of
which the site alone remains, as being possibly of interest to explorers.






End of Project Gutenberg's The Round Towers of Ireland, by Henry O'Brien