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 Iran147 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 one152 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-Bhfiodhbhadh156—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, Budhland.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 them164—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
“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!
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