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 visit514 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-inis525 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 Dedan530 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!
“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!
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 affection542—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.