From Professor Dr. John P. Mahaffy
As an authority in the field of Greek antiquities, as well as a scholar of wide learning in various other fields, Professor Mahaffy, of Dublin University, stands in high repute. Among his many published works, in proof of this, are his “Twelve Lectures on Primitive Civilization,” “Prolegomena to Ancient History,” “Social Life in Greece from Homer to Menander,” “Greek Antiquities,” “Rambles and Studies in Greece,” “Greek Life and Thought from Alexander to the Roman Conquest,” “The Greek World under Roman Sway,” and “The Empire of the Ptolemies.” Returning the proof-sheets of “The Threshold Covenant” to the author, he says generously: “Your learning is to me quite astonishing, and I could not venture to criticise you except in a passing way, as I read your proofs hastily. But you will find [on them] rough notes in pencil, only to show what I thought at the moment.”
In comment on the custom, in many lands, of carrying out the dead from a house or a city through a special door or gate, instead of over the threshold at the principal entrance,717 he says: “At present, in the farmhouses about Hoorn, in Holland, there is a state door opened only for marriages and funerals. The family use a side or back door only.”718 Again, “the ἱερὰ πύλη (hiera pule, ‘sacred gate’) at Athens seems to have been an accursed gate, through which criminals only were led out.”
In confirmation of the claim that human life, or blood, was deemed essential in the foundation, or the threshold laying of a city,719 Professor Mahaffy says: “Great Hellenistic cities, as, for instance, Antioch, had a girl sacrificed at their foundation. It was she, apparently, that afterwards appeared as the personification of the city, ἡ τύχη [hē tuchē, ’the fortune,’] as it was called.”
“The ‘red hand of the O’Neills’ is a famous coat-of-arms well known in Ireland. Lord O’Neill now bears it.”
As to my assumption that the first hearthstone must have been, in the nature of things, at the threshold of the cave or tent or hut, as it still is among primitive peoples, and that the first stone laid at the corner, or at the doorway, of a house or building, was, by the very fact of its first laying, the threshold of that structure, Professor Mahaffy says: “I don’t believe in the identification of (1) foundation stone, (2) threshold, (3) house corner, (4) hearthstone, without clear proof.”