The Round Towers of Ireland

List of Irish Round Towers and Crosses619

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).

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 1⁶⁸⁄1000 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 25⁶⁸⁄100. That cubit, therefore, is equal to 25⁶⁸⁄100 unciæ of the Roman foot, and consequently falls within the middle of the limits 25⁵⁷⁄100 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 עשהלך תבת עצי גפר קנים
תעשה את התבה וכפרתאתה
מבית ומחוץ בכפר וזה אשר
תעשה אתה שלש מאות אמה
ארך התבה חמשים אמה
רחבה ושלשים אמה קומתה
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. 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.