THE ROUND TOWERS OF IRELAND

Author of “The Round Towers of Ireland.”

THE ROUND TOWERS
OF IRELAND

OR

THE HISTORY OF THE TUATH-DE-DANAANS

BY
HENRY O’BRIEN

A NEW EDITION

WITH INTRODUCTION, SYNOPSIS, INDEX, ETC.

London: W. THACKER & CO., 2 Creed Lane, E.C.
Calcutta: THACKER, SPINK & CO.
1898

[All Rights Reserved]

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

[Pg vii]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One portion at least of the good Father’s prophecy was amply fulfilled. In Irish Graves in England, by Michael M‘Donagh (Evening Telegraph Reprints: Dublin, 1888), a chapter on O’Brien contains these words:—

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

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

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

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

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

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

W. H. C.

London, 1897.

[Pg xxxvii]

CHAPTER I

(Pp. 1-15)

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

CHAPTER II

(Pp. 16-32)

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

 [Pg xxxix]

CHAPTER III

(Pp. 33-47)

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

 [Pg xl]

CHAPTER IV

(Pp. 48-62)

In tracing the origin and purpose of the round towers, our author is led to consider the names given them in ancient records and Irish folk-lore. The stunted ruin of Bally-Carbery Round Tower, near his own birthplace, was, he found, known to the peasantry as the “Cathoir ghall,” i.e. “the temple of brightness or delight,” whilst both in the Annals of the Four Masters, the Ulster Annals, and the Annals of Innisfallen these towers are included in the generic name Fiadh-Neimhedh, as contrasted with the names Cloic teacha and Erdam applied to “belfries,” thus showing that the two kinds of structures are perfectly distinct. He finds that Fiadh-Nemeadth in all preceding writers on the subject is held to apply specifically to the round towers, though some of these writers (e.g. Colgan and O’Connor) have wrested its meaning to support their own particular views, and the true import of this term he subsequently explains to be “consecrated Lingams” (p. 105), or phallic temples. The “belfry” and the gnomon, or “celestial index,” theories are thus exploded. From historical evidence he is further led to assume that Ireland is identical with the Insula Hyperboreorum of the ancients, and that the legendary mission of the Boreadan Abaris[27] to Delos took place during the Scythian occupation of Ireland. This friendly communication between the ancient Irish and the Greeks he attributes to their having sprung from a common stock—the Pelasgi and the Tuath-de-danaans belonging to “the same time as the Indo-Scythæ, or Chaldean Magi.” He traces briefly the relations between the Tuath-de-danaan settlers in Ireland and their Scythian (or Milesian) conquerors, and shows that to the former is due the high state of civilisation and learning for which ancient Ireland was distinguished, and which degenerated under Scythian[Pg xli] rule; and concludes with a general statement as to the prevalence of Sabaic worship therein, and the phallic configuration of the round towers.

CHAPTER V

(Pp. 63-76)

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

CHAPTER VI

(Pp. 77-90)

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

CHAPTER VIII

(Pp. 91-106)

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

CHAPTER IX

(Pp. 107-126)

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

CHAPTER X

(Pp. 127-141)

Developing this last argument, our author shows that, while Iran (or “the sacred land”) was a name applied to both Persia and Ireland, the form Irin (Sacred Island) is exclusively applied to Ireland, and that Irc, Eri, Ere, and Erin are but modifications of the latter. The Greeks commuted this name of Irin into Ierne, which is merely a translation (ἱερός + νῆσος); and the Latins, by putting an H for the rough breathing of ἱερός, and interpolating a b for sound’s sake, transformed the latter into Hibernia, the meaning “Sacred Island” being preserved. But by its own inhabitants it continued to be known as Fuodhla, Fudh-Inis, and Inis-na-Bhfiodhbhadh, names associating the worship which prevailed therein with the profession of the worshippers, for they respectively denote the land or island of Fuodh or Budh and Budhism. The Budh here mentioned was identical with the phallic deity worshipped by the Tuath-de-danaans under the name of Buodh (known also as Moriagan and Fareagh or Phearagh), which name the Scythian invaders afterwards adopted as their war-cry (Boo or A-boo). The peculiar tenets of Irish Budhism were embodied in a mass of literature committed to the flames by Saint Patrick; but the history of pagan Ireland still survives in MSS. scattered over Europe, whilst an image of Buodh, or Fareagh, bearing a close resemblance to those of the Eastern Buddha, and to the idols of Matambo[Pg xlv] “whose priests are sorcerers or magicians” (afterwards shown to be the meaning of Tuath-de-danaans), has been unearthed at Roscommon, and is now in the Museum of Trinity College, Dublin.

CHAPTER XI

(Pp. 142-156)

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

CHAPTER XII

(Pp. 157-166)

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

CHAPTER XIII

(Pp. 167-176)

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

CHAPTER XIV

(Pp. 177-192)

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

CHAPTER XV

(Pp. 193-210)

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

CHAPTER XVI

(Pp. 211-226)

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

CHAPTER XVII

(Pp. 227-239)

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

CHAPTER XVIII

(Pp. 240-251)

The scriptural allegory of the “Fall of Man,” involving, as it does, the history of Cain, has an intimate bearing upon the ancestry of the Tuath-de-danaans. Cain had a son, Enoch, whose name connotes as usual a twofold meaning, signifying first, Initiation in sacred rites; secondly, an assembly of congregated multitudes. The son of Enoch was named Irad, i.e. consecrated to God (Budh); hence the region where he dwelt was called Iran, meaning the land of those so consecrated; from which it is argued that in that precise region the Budhists first established the insignia of their empire. Now, the Dabistan records declare that although Kaimours was generally regarded as the first king of Persia (Iran), he had many predecessors;[Pg l] and that long before the time of Zoroaster the Persians venerated a prophet called Mahabad or Maghabad (the Great, or Good, Abad), whom they considered as “the Father of men,” and who had thirteen successors of his own family, all styled Abad. This Abad, or Maghabadean, dynasty eventually became so corrupt that it was banished to the woods and mountains, when Kaimours was called to the throne. For various reasons the author is persuaded that the Maghabadeans were the direct descendants of Cain. Their name had the usual twofold signification: first, The unity of the Godhead; secondly, a sacerdotal institution; and Tuath-de-danaan is simply a translation or ampliative rendering of the latter—Tuath being a modification of Budh, and also signifying magic; De, the vernacular term for the Deity; and Danaan signifying Almoners—the whole thus meaning Magician-god-almoners, or the Almoner-magicians of the Deity.

CHAPTER XIX

(Pp. 252-263)

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

CHAPTER XX

(Pp. 264-284)

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

CHAPTER XXI

(Pp. 285-304)

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

CHAPTER XXII

(Pp. 305-324)

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

 [Pg liii]

CHAPTER XXIII

(Pp. 325-340)

A remarkable instance of this widely prevalent doctrine of the vicarious sacrifice of some incarnation of the Deity accomplished by a purely virginal conception is afforded in the Hindu Puranas, which recount the incarnation of Vishnu (or Crishna) in the White Island, and the subsequent crucifixion of the fruit of this conception, under the name of Sulivahana (cf. the Irish patronymic Sulivan), called also Dhanandhara, i.e. the Sacred Almoner (cf. Danaan and its meaning). Curiously enough, the mystic, or esoteric, name of ancient Ireland was Muc Inis, meaning White Island; and the details of a similar crucifixion are, with strictly pagan accompaniments, reproduced in the sculptures at Knockmoy, in Galway, which further closely resemble not only a sculptured portrayal on the temple of Kalabche, in Nubia, but a distinctly Eastern Buddhist group on the Tuath-de-danaan cross at Old Kilcullen, County Kildare.

CHAPTER XXIV

(Pp. 341-355)

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

 [Pg liv]

CHAPTER XXV

(Pp. 356-367)

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

CHAPTER XXVI

(Pp. 368-395)

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

CHAPTER XXVII

(Pp. 396-411)

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

 [Pg lvi]

CHAPTER XXVIII

(Pp. 412-431)

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

CHAPTER XXIX

(Pp. 432-444)

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

CHAPTER XXX

(Pp. 445-474)

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

CHAPTER XXXI

(Pp. 475-497)

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

CHAPTER XXXIII

(Pp. 498-524)

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

W. H. C.

[Pg lx]

[Pg lxi]

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

[Pg lxii]

[Pg lxiii]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This last advertisement was not published for some days after their friend had removed his work from the Council Board; so that there were no more than about three weeks remaining, for the inditing of new works upon a subject for which lives have been found inadequate,[Pg lxx] and for which their friend had already been allowed a period nearly approaching to two years!

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

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

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

Here are his words:—

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

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

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

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

It was as follows:—

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

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

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

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

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

They bestowed some days in consultation upon the above; meanwhile, the transmission of the Dublin Penny Journal to London was countermanded, and not a copy of it was allowed, for some months afterwards, to come within hundreds of miles of the place of my residence. In the interim the ingenious author of the Celtic Druids, and who had been partly in possession of my development of the “Towers” for some time previously, favoured me with a visit, during which we conversed principally on historical questions. The next day I addressed him a note, a copy of which, with its answer, I take leave to subjoin, for the sake of the terminating clause of the latter, being the self-convicting acknowledgment of the “Academy’s” disingenuousness.

Who, now, can pretend to think that the neutralising award of the “Council” was the effect of scepticism or legitimate doubt? Here Sir William Betham, the Ulster King-at-Arms! the Goliath of antiquaries!—as he is, undoubtedly, of pedigrees,—being himself a member of the “deciding tribunal,”—proclaims, in the midst of a venerable literary assembly, that my solution of the Round Tower enigma is accurate; and yet in the teeth of this confession, and of the conviction which extorted it, he joins[Pg lxxx] in voting away my medal to a compilation of errors, and in substituting thereinstead twenty pounds!

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

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

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

I have stated that the effect of my Letter No. 1 was to interrupt the transmission of the Dublin Penny Journal to London. I have now to point out the result of the menace conveyed in Letter 8 of my determining to expose—as I enclosed the proofs that I could refute—the antiquarian errors of their organ. It was that they instantly took the hint, and sold their interest in the concern! And its new proprietor, edified no doubt by a friendly lesson at their hands, very wisely intimates, in his opening number, that he shall forego antiquities, and make literary jobbing no part of it.

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

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

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

[Pg xc]

[Pg xci]

THE

ROUND TOWERS

OF

IRELAND;

OR

THE HISTORY OF THE TUATH-DE-DANAANS

FOR THE FIRST TIME UNVEILED.

By HENRY O’BRIEN, Esq., A.B.

SECOND EDITION.

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

[Pg xcii]

[Pg xciii]

TO

THE MOST NOBLE

THE MARQUIS OF LANSDOWNE,

Etc. Etc. Etc.

My Lord Marquis,

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

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

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

London, September 1834.

[Pg xcv]

[Pg 1]

THE ROUND TOWERS, &c.

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

Of all nations on the globe, the Irish, as a people, are universally admitted to possess, in a pre-eminent degree, those finer sensibilities of the human heart, which, were they but wisely controlled, would exalt man above the level of ordinary humanity, and make him, as it were, a being of another species. The numerous instances adduced in all periods of their history, of ardent and enterprising zeal, in every case wherein personal honour or national glory may be involved, are in themselves sufficient to establish this assertion. But while granting their pre-eminence as to the possession of those feelings, and the capability of the feelings themselves to be refined and sublimated to the very acme of cultivation, we may still doubt whether the mere possession of them be not less a blessing than a curse—whether, in fact, their[Pg 2] quick perception of disquietudes and pains be not more than a counterpoise to their keen enjoyment of delight or pleasure.

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

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

But it may be said that this is a day-dream of youth—the hereditary vanity of one of Iran’s sons, arrogating antiquity and renown for an inconsiderable little island, without a particle of proof to substantiate their assumption, or a shadow of authority to give colour to their claims. Why, sir, cast your eye over the fair face of the land itself, and does not the scene abound with the superfluity of its evidences? What are those high aspiring edifices which rise with towering elevation towards the canopy of the “Most High”?[42] What are those [Pg 3]stupendous and awful structures of another form—the study at once and admiration of the antiquarian and the philosopher, to be found on the summits of our various hills[43] as well as in the bowels[44] of the earth itself?—what are they but the historical monuments of splendour departed—surviving the ravages of time and decay, not as London’s column, to “lift their heads and lie,” but to give the lie and discomfiture to those, who, from the interested suggestions of an illiberal policy, or the more pardonable delusions of a beclouded judgment, would deny the authenticity of our historic records, and question the truth of our primeval civilisation?

It is true, the magnificence which those memorials demonstrate is but the unenviable grandeur of druidical, as it is called, idolatry and unenlightened paganism,—when man, relinquishing that supremacy consigned to him at his creation, or rather divested thereof in punishment for the transgression of his degenerate disposition, lost sight of that Being to whom he owed his safety and his life, and bent himself in homage before perishable creatures that crawl their ephemeral pilgrimage through the same scene with himself. Granted; yet that cannot well be objected to us as a disgrace, which, co-extensive in its adoption with the amplitude of the earth’s extension, equally characterised the illiterate and the sage; and if, amidst this lamentable prostration of the human understanding, anything like redemption or feature of superiority may be allowed, it must be, unquestionably, to the adherents of that system, which, excluding the objects of matter and clay, recognised, in its worship of the bright luminaries of the firmament, the purity[Pg 4] and omnipotence of that Spirit who brought all into existence, and who guides and preserves them in their respective spheres;—and when I shall have proved that the intent and application of those Sabian[45] Towers,—or, to speak more correctly, those primitive Budhist Temples,—which decorate our landscape and commemorate our past renown, appertained to this species of purified idolatry, which worshipped only the host of heaven, the moon and the solar body, which gives vigour to all things, I shall, methinks, have removed one obstacle from the elucidation of our antiquities, and facilitated the road to further adventure in this interesting inquiry.

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

To begin, therefore. The origins I have heard[Pg 5] assigned to those records of antiquity,—however invidious it may appear, at this the outset of my labours, to assume so self-sufficient a tone, yet can I not avoid saying that, whether I consider their multiplicity or their extravagance, they have not more frequently excited my ridicule than my commiseration. That specimens of architecture, so costly and so elegant, should be designed for the paltry purposes of purgatorial columns or penitential heights, to which criminals should be elevated for the ablution of their enormities—while the honest citizen, virtuous and unstained, should be content to grovel amongst lowly terrestrials ’mid the dense exhalations of forests and bogs, in a mud-wall hut, or at best a conglomeration of wattles and hurdles—is, I conceive, an outrage upon human reason too palpable to be listened to.

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

The belfry theory alone, unfounded in one sense though it really be, and when confined to that application equally contemptible with the others, is, notwithstanding, free from the objection that would lie against the place, as it is well known that the sound of bells which hang in plains and valleys is heard much farther than that of such as hang upon elevations or hills: for, air being the medium of sound, the higher the sonorous body is placed, the more rarefied is that medium, and consequently the less proper vehicle to convey the sound to a distance. The objection of situation, therefore, does not apply to this theory; and, accordingly, we shall find that[Pg 6] the exercising of bells—though in a way and for an object little contemplated by our theorists—constituted part of the machinery of the complicated ceremonial of those mysterious edifices.

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

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

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

Need I name the sum of money which Nelson’s monument has cost in modern times? or that imperfect testimonial in the Phœnix Park which commemorates the glories of the hero of Waterloo. No; but I will mention what Herodotus tells us was the[Pg 7] purport of an inscription upon one of the pyramids of Egypt, the form of some of which, be it known, was not very dissimilar to our Irish pyramids, while their intent and object were more congenial; viz. that no less a sum than 1600 talents of silver, or about £400,000 of our money, had been expended upon radishes, onions, and garlic alone, for 360,000 men, occupied for twenty years in bringing that stupendous fabric, that combined instrument of religion and science, to completion!

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

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

Ruins, it is true, of chapels and dilapidated cathedrals are frequently found in the vicinity of our Round Towers; but these betray in their materials and architecture the stamp of a later age, having been founded by missionaries of the early Christian Church, and purposely thus collocated—contiguous to edifices long before hallowed by a religious use—to at once conciliate the prejudices of those whom[Pg 8] they would fain persuade, and divert their adoration to a more purified worship.

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

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

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

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

[Pg 9]As I intend, however, to unravel this fallacy in its proper quarter, I shall resume, for the present, the thread of my discourse.

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

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

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

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

But what renders it demonstrative that those professional pirates had no manner of connection with the Irish Round Towers, is the glaring fact, that in the two cities of Wexford and Waterford—where their power was absolute, their influence[Pg 10] uncontrolled—there is not a solitary structure that could possibly be ascribed to the class of those which we now discuss!

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

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

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

The first bells of which we have any mention are those described by Moses, as attached to the[Pg 11] garments of the high-priest. From these, the Gentiles, as they affected to rival the Israelites in all their ceremonies, borrowed the idea, and introduced its exercise into the celebration of their own ritual. By “Israelites,” however, I deem it necessary to explain that I do not understand those who, in strictness of speech, are so denominated as the descendants of Israel, i.e. Jacob, who, in fact, were a comparatively modern people; but I particularise that old stock of patriarchal believers which existed from the Creation, and upon which the Israelites, rigidly so called, were afterwards engrafted.

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

From the Sabian ceremonial—succeeded by the Druidical—it unquestionably was that the Christian missionaries in Ireland first adopted the use of bells, wishing, wisely, therein to conform as much as possible to the prejudices of the natives, when they did not essentially interfere with the spirit of their divine mission. I shall hereafter relate the astonishment excited in England, at the appearance of one of those bells, brought there in the beginning of the sixth century by Gildas, who had just returned after finishing his education in Ireland; and this, in itself, should satisfy the most incredulous that the Britons, as well pagan as Christian, were ever before strangers to such a sight; and no wonder,[Pg 12] for they were strangers also to such things as Round Towers, to which I shall prove those implements properly and exclusively belonged.

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

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

[Pg 13]Both parties are, however, now appreciated as they ought; and though Vallancey, certainly, did not understand the purport of our Round Towers, his view of them, after all, was not far from being correct; and the laborious industry with which he prosecuted his inquiries, and the disinterested warmth with which he ushered them into light, should shield his memory from every ill-natured sneer, and make every child of Iran feel his grateful debtor.

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

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

“Harris, speaking of Donchad O’Brien, Abbot of[Pg 14] Clonmacnois, who shut himself up in one of these cells, adds, ‘I will not take upon me to affirm that it was in one of these towers of Clonmacnois he was enclosed.’ It must have been the strangest perversion of words and ideas to have attempted it. Is it not astonishing that a reverie thus destitute of truth, and founded on wilful mistakes of the plainest passages, should have been attended to, and even be, for some time, believed?”

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

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

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

To the former, I shall reply, that Stanihurst’s description of the “excubias in castelli vertice,” upon[Pg 15] which it would seem to have been founded, does not at all apply to the case; because, while the “castella” have vanished, the Round Towers—which never belonged to them—do, many of them still firmly, maintain their post; and as to the latter, the boldness with which it has been put forward, by its author before named,[47] requires a more lengthened examination than its utter instability could otherwise justify.

[Pg 16]

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

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

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

His object, then, being to affix the Round Towers to the Christian era, he begins by insisting that, as[Pg 17] “the architects of those buildings were consummate masters in masonic art,” it follows, that “a people so admirably skilled in masonry never could have experienced any impediments in building substantial dwellings, strong castles, palaces, or any other structures of public or private conveniency, some fragments of which, however partial and insignificant, would still be likely to appear, in despite of the corroding breath of time or the torch of devastation.”

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

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

His fourth premise is, that “wherever we chance to light upon a cromleach, we seldom fail to find near it one of those miserable caves”—and which he has described before as “surpassing in dreariness everything in the imagination of man”;—whereas in the vicinity of the Pillar Tower no such thing is seen, unless some natural or accidental excavation may[Pg 18] happen to exist unaccountably in that direction. His inference from which is, that “although the cromleach and the cave do claim, the first a Celtic, the second a Phœnician origin, and happen here to be united, the Pillar Tower, nevertheless, disavows even the most distant connection with either of them.”

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

“An edifice,” he resumes, “like the Pillar Tower, might easily serve for a belfry; and there are instances where it has been converted, in modern times, to that use; on the other hand, a temple, properly speaking, gives an idea of a spacious edifice, or of one calculated to accommodate, withinside its walls, a certain congregation of devout people, met to pray. Should the building, to answer any partial or private use, be constructed upon a diminutive scale, like the little round temple at Athens,[49] called Demosthenes’,[Pg 19] the edifice,” he continues, “in that case, obtains its appropriate shape, yet differing in plan, size, and elevation from the Irish Pillar Tower, to which it cannot, in any one respect, be assimilated.”

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

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

Now for Montmorency. As to the first, then, of those objections against the antiquity of our Round Towers, it is readily repelled by explaining that, in the early ages of the world, masonic edifices, of architectural precision, were exclusively appropriated, as a mark of deferential homage, to the worship of the Great Architect of the universe; and with this view it was that the science was, at first, studied as a[Pg 20] sort of religious mystery, of which there can be required no greater possible corroboration than the circumstance of that ancient and mysterious society who date the existence of their institution from Noah himself—and it is incomparably older—still retaining, amid the thousand changes which the world has since undergone, and the thousand attempts that have been made to explore and explode their secrets, the mystic denominational ligature of “Free and Accepted Masons.”[50]

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

But though this my reply is triumphantly subversive of the Colonel’s first position, I shall dwell upon it a little longer, to hold forth, with merited retaliation, either his disingenuousness or his forgetfulness; because the same inference which he deduced from the non-appearance of coeval architecture of any other class, would apply as well to the period which he wishes to establish as the era of the erection of the Towers,—and of which era, he admits, no other [Pg 21]architectural monuments do remain,—as to that which I shall incontrovertibly prove was their proper epoch.

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

Not less futile than the foregoing is his second objection, arising from what he represents as the silence of “the busy and fantastic bard.” Doubtless he reckoned upon this as his most impregnable battery; and I readily believe that most of his readers anticipate the same result: but this little book will soon shiver the fallacy of such calculations, and adduce, in its proper place, from the very head and principal of the bardic order—no less a personage[Pg 22] than Amergin himself—its towering refutation; as well as the final, incontrovertible appropriation of those structures to their actual founders.

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

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

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

[Pg 23]The industry and patience bestowed on such a course were not, however, without their reward. In a classical point of view this exhibited itself in the high estimation in which they were held—both amongst foreigners and natives—as poets, as prophets, and as philosophers; while the dignity and emolument attached to their situation, and the distinguished rank assigned them, at the general triennial assemblies of the state at Tara—with the endowments conferred upon them by the monarch and the several provincial kings—were sure to render it, at all times, an object of ambition and pursuit to members of the noblest families throughout the various parts of the realm.

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

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

That is—

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

In later times I admit there was a lamentable degeneracy in the bardic class,—or rather the innumerable pretenders to the assumption of the name; and the “fescennine licentiousness” with which they [Pg 24]violated the sanctity of domestic seclusion, in exposing the objects of their private spleen, tended not a little to bring their body into disrepute, and subject them additionally to the salutary restrictions of legislative severity. They were not less extravagant in the lavishment of their fulsome commendations; so that one can hardly avoid drawing a parallel between them and those poetasters, formerly, of Italy, whom Horace so happily describes in those remarkable hexameters, viz.:—

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

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

Rhyme was the vehicle in which their lucubrations were presented; verse the medium selected for their thoughts. To gain perfection in this accomplishment their fancies were ever on the stretch; while the varieties of metre which they invented for the purpose, and the facility with which they bent them to each[Pg 25] application and use, were not the least astonishing part of their arduous avocations, and leave the catalogue of modern measures far away in the shade.

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

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

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

The jealousy of the English Government at the martial feeling excited by their effusions, and the intrepid acts of heroism inculcated by their example, if not the actual cause of this national declension, [Pg 26]preponderated very largely amongst its component ingredients.

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

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

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

[Pg 27] “Now while our harps were hanged soe,
The men whose captives there we lay
Did on our griefs insulting goe,
And more to grieve us thus did say:
You that of musique make such show,
Come, sing us now a Zion lay.—
Oh no! we have nor voice nor hand
For such a song in such a land.”

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

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

As to the puny detractions, therefore, of either Greece or Rome, they might well have been spared, as they knew less than nothing of our real history.[Pg 28] When they were lowly and obscure, and immersed in the darkness of circumambient benightment, our high careering name, synonymous with civilisation, was wafted by the four winds of heaven to all the quarters of the world which that heaven irradiates. The commerce of the whole East pressed tumultuously to our shores—the courts of the polished universe (not including Greece or Rome amongst the number) sent us embassies of congratulation; while the indomitable ardour and public-spirited zeal of the “islanders” themselves launched them abroad over the bosom of the wide watery circumference; exploring in every region the gradations of civil institutes, as well as the master productions of Nature herself; civilising life with the results of their discoveries, and garnishing their houses, like so many museums, with the fruits of their research, for the benefit, at once, and entertainment of their less favoured, though not less ambitious brethren at home.

Think you that the testimony of Festus Avienus, who wrote before the Christian light, and who avowedly only compiled his treatise from other more ancient authorities—think you, I say, that his designation of this island as “sacred”—and which he says was the appropriate denomination by which the still greater ancients used to call it—was an idle sobriquet or an arbitrary adjective? Amongst the many discoveries which will develop themselves in succession, before I shall have done with this little book, I pledge myself to the public incontrovertibly to prove that the word “Hibernian”—so grossly abused and so malignantly vilified, and which Avienus has recorded as the name of the islanders at the period in which he wrote, as it is still to this day—signifies, in its [Pg 29]component essence, and according to the nicest scrutiny of etymological analysis, independently altogether of historical corroboration, an inhabitant of the sacred isle; and has nothing on earth to do with Heber or Heremon; or hiar, the west; or iberin, extremes; or any other such outlandish nonsense!

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

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

In accordance with the different views under which each people considered the bounties of those luminaries, so did their temples assume a corresponding shape; and it shall be my lot, in the progress of this litigated research, to show why the followers of one of those Baals, namely, Baal Phearagh, gave their temples this erect, narrow, and elevated roundness.

I have thus annihilated those visionary ramparts[Pg 30] which my opponent had flattered himself he had raised against the intrusion of long-suppressed truth; and by the help of which, as a military bastion, he had fondly hoped he might link together the Church and the sword in one cemented bond of anachronism. Let us see, however, how he would bring about the match, with the articles of intermarriage, and so forth.

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

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

But as it would be too lavish a display of knight-errantry to waste their time and strength without some ostensible purpose, he must, of course, find out for them a pretext, at least, for such; and so, in the eagerness of his milito-monastic zeal, he flies off, at a tangent, to the top of Mount Colzoum, near the desert of Gebel,—“a short day’s journey from the Red Sea,”—where he thinks he has got, in the monasteries[Pg 31] of the Egyptian monks, a direct, immediate, and indubitable prototype.

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

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

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

[Pg 32]“There are similar (square) towers attached to the three other monasteries in the desert, the doors of which, and of the convent of St. Macaire, are alike covered with iron plates,” etc.

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

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

[Pg 33]

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

But to reconcile this discrepancy in exterior outfit, he has recourse to a miracle, which he thus conjures up. “Doubtless, in the beginning, when first those Cœnobites settled in the desert, the convent-tower was round;” then, by a single word, præsto,—or[Pg 34] “doubtless,”—right-about face, takes place a metamorphosis, from round to square!—the more miraculous, in that the former round ones left behind them no vestiges! Upon which, again, a counter miracle is effected: “The square ones having subsequently fallen into disuse, the round tower, in after ages,” he says, “appears to have acquired a degree of increased celebrity, especially in Europe, during the preponderance of the feudal system, when every baronial castle in Great Britain, Ireland, Germany, France, etc., was furnished with one or more.” Now, has he not before told us, and told us truly, by chance, that the Pillar Tower scorns all kind of affinity with those “barbarians”; whereupon I shall merely observe with the poet, that

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

But, if intended as a place of shelter for either person or property, why build them of such an altitude? Above all things, why not build them of such internal capacity as to accommodate the whole number of inmates in each convent, in case of an attack,—as, in fact, those square towers in the desert used; whereas, “a dozen bulky persons” could not squeeze together into one of our Round Towers; and accordingly, with the inconsistency inseparable from error, our author himself proclaims that “it has frequently occurred that the barbarian, on finding that he had been foiled in his search after treasures, though he burned the abbey, and perpetrated all the mischief he was able, sooner than retire empty-handed, the pirate seized on the abbot, or most prominent member he found [Pg 35]belonging to the community, and hurried away the unfortunate individual on board his ship, holding him in durance, till, overcome by ill-usage, he besought his brethren to come to his relief with a heavy ransom for his freedom.” “It has also often happened,” he adds, “that, unable to comply with the tyrant’s exorbitant demands, the monks resigned the captive to his fate.”

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

I do not deny, however, but that the ecclesiastics of this time did possess some articles of value appertaining to the altar, and that these were objects of unholy cupidity to the Danes: nay, further, I admit that, to escape from the insatiability of those virulent marauders, they used to fly to the belfries, which—from that mistaken regard attached to the edifices, as these receptacles of those sonorous organs to which superstition has ever clung[56]—they had hoped would prove[Pg 36] an asylum from their pursuits,—but in vain—neither religion nor superstition opposed a barrier to the Northmen, while the frail materials whereof those belfries were constructed afforded a ready gratification to their appetite for destruction.

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

Now take notice that within those “belfries” a “multitude of persons” used to have been collected,[Pg 37] whereas the Round Towers could not accommodate above “a dozen” at one time. The belfries also are represented to have been reduced to ashes by the conflagration, which accords with the description given by both Ware and Colgan, of the wooden substance whereof they were composed; whereas the Round Towers are made of stone, and cemented by a bond of such indurated tenacity, that nothing short of lightning or earthquake has been known to disturb them:—and even though other violence may succeed in their overthrow, yet could it not be said with any accuracy that they were reduced by fire to cinders. But, above all, those very Annals which I have above quoted, when recording a greater and national calamity, place the belfries and the Round Towers in the same sentence, contradistinguished from one another,—the former characterised by their appropriate name of Cloicteach, as exhibited before, and the latter under the still more apposite denomination of Fidhnemeadh, as we shall explain elsewhere.

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

And yet, notwithstanding the absence of such defences, the monks still continued to make it their favourite abode; of which we have but too cogent an[Pg 38] evidence in the record of the Four Masters, under the year 985, stating that the abbot and fifteen of his brethren were slain by the Northmen on Christmas Day, just as they were preparing to celebrate the nativity of their Redeemer.

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

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

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

DEVENISH.

[Pg 39]Next remark that the Colonel keeps those 150 “volunteers” at work upon the Round Towers in the midst of a raging war;—after he had before affirmed that they could only be erected in a season of profound peace—for a complete century. During this whole time they must, of course, have availed themselves of the assistance of the inhabitants; and is it not marvellous that, during that long time “the ancient Irishman”—and “Pat’s nae stupid fellow,” as the Colonel himself avows—should not have been able to pick up a single insight into the arcana of the masonic art?—but that soon as ever the dear externs expired,—who at the period of their arrival must have been, at least, over twenty years of age each, and who, to accomplish Montmorency’s miracle, must have every one of them lived just one hundred years more, and then died, all in one day!—is it not petrifying, I say, that soon as ever this appalling catastrophe occurred, every vestige of those “fairy” masons should have vanished along with them?—and the country, in a paralysis, have forgotten to associate them with the Towers, as if stupefied with the incantation of a wizard or a talisman!

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

It so happens that the last of the MacCarthy Mores was my own maternal grandfather; and he, venerable and venerated old gentleman, apt as he was, in the[Pg 40] evening of his faded life, to revert to the mutability of worldly possessions, never for a moment bestowed a solitary thought upon the alienation of the property of those columnar masonries. Often used he to mention the Castles of Palace and of Blarney: Castlemain and Glenflesk used still oftener to grace his talk; but oftener still, and with more apparent delectation, would he dilate on the Castle of Macroom and the Abbey of Mucruss,—all, as the creation of immediate or collateral branches of his family; but never, in the catalogue of his patrimonial spoliations did he enumerate a Round Tower, or lay a shadow of claim to their construction.

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

The last assumption of this writer, and which I have purposely reserved until now is an affected parallel of the Irish Culdees with the Egyptian Cophtes. “Their great piety, austerity, and hospitality announce,” he says, “the existence of one kind of discipline and of kindred religions between the[Pg 41] Cophtes and the Irish Cœnobites.” That is, because they are both pious, austere, and hospitable, they must both necessarily correspond in religious opinions and in Church forms! The Indian Brahmins, say I, are also pious, austere, and hospitable; and why are they not incorporated in this holy identification? No, Colonel, it will not do; I see what you are at. You want to insinuate our obligation to the Greeks for the blessings of the Gospel. A false zeal for mental emancipation—subsequent to the dislodgment of spiritual encroachment—has forced into mushroom existence this spurious abortion. Aloof from the thraldom of Roman or other yoke, the Irish, within themselves, cultivated the principles of the Christian verity; but it is, in the extreme, erroneous to say that they derived their faith in that verity through emissaries of the Grecian Church, from whom they differed as substantially as light does from darkness.

I think it very probable indeed that the glad tidings of revelation were first imparted to Ireland by the lips of St. Paul himself.[57] We have the names of many Christians existing amongst us before the arrival of either Pelagius or Patrick. The very terms of the commission, which Pope Celestine gave to the former, being addressed “ad Scotos in Christum credentes,” to the Irish who believe in Christ,—prove the good seed had been laid in the soil before his pontificate. The nation, however, was yet too[Pg 42] much immersed in its old idolatries—and the fascinations of their former creed had so spellbound the inhabitants as a community—that those who singled themselves out as converts to the new faith were obliged, from persecution, to betake themselves to other countries. And yet this is the moment when paganism was omnipotent throughout this island, that Colonel de Montmorency has the modesty to tell us that the “Round Towers” were erected as magazines for the monks!

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

In the sequel of this volume it will be fully shown, that when St. Patrick entered upon his prescribed task,—towards the close of the fifth century,—the monarch and his court were celebrating their pagan festival, or preparing for it, on the hill of Tara. Can a nation be called Christian where the sovereign and court are pagan? Or will a few exceptions from the mass of the population be indulged with fortresses of imperishable architecture, while the nation at large took shelter within wattles and walls of clay?—and that, too, at a moment when Christianity was considered[Pg 43] a name of reproach, and its few solitary abettors constrained to exile or to degradation!

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

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

Every corner was now the scene of Christian zeal; and every neophyte strove to surpass his neighbour in evincing devotion to the newly-revealed religion. “Kills,” or little churches,—from the Latin cella, now for the first time introduced,—were built in the vicinity of every spot which had before been the theatre of pagan adoration—whether as cromleachs, as Mithratic caves, or as Round Towers. These were the memorials of three distinct species of paganism, and were, therefore, now singled out as appropriate sites for the erection of Christian “Kills,” the ruins[Pg 44] of which are still to be traced, contiguous to each of those idolatrous reminiscences,—disputing with the false divinities the very ground of their worship, and diverting the zeal of the worshippers from the creature to the Creator.

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

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

This variance, however, has afforded handle to some lovers of controversial doubt to maintain that Ireland was never beholden to Rome for the gospel. The[Pg 45] fallacy is disproved by the fact of all our early neophytes betaking themselves, for perfection in the mysteries of revelation, to the Roman capital. On one of which occasions it was that Montmorency himself brought over his hundred and fifty volunteers, to accompany back one of those converted students, who had gone there to learn the very minuteness of the doctrine which the Romans inculcated.

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

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

“Among the Ethiopians, there are still to be found some monks, called Coptics, who first flourished in Egypt, but, by no difficult sort of gradation, made their way into Ethiopia. They profess the utmost[Pg 46] contempt for all worldly things, and look upon themselves as a sort of terrestrial angels. They are obliged to part with all their possessions before they can enter upon a monastic life.”

Their discrepancy in doctrine is even still more notorious, agreeing with the Chaildees only in a single instance also; namely, in both denying the supremacy of the Pope. Here are the Doctor’s words: “They deny the papal supremacy, and, indeed, most parts of the popish doctrine, particularly transubstantiation, purgatory, auricular confession, celibacy of the clergy, and extreme unction;” all which, save the first, the Irish Chaildees maintained in common with the see of Rome.

And now, on the point of education, I will content myself with Montmorency’s own testimony, which is to this effect, viz.: “Only on the score of erudition it must be acknowledged that the Irish theologian, as history asserts, did not only excel the modern Greek and Egyptian, but his profound acquaintance with the sciences, arts, and laws of his country, gave him an unrivalled superiority in the literary and civilised world.”

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

[Pg 47]I have been thus hurried on by the train of my thoughts, without observing much of order or methodical arrangement. As my object is, however, the elucidation of truth,—not idle display, or vainglorious exhibition,—I am sure my readers will scarce murmur at the course by which I shall have led them to that end; in a question, moreover, where so many adventurers have so miserably miscarried.

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

[Pg 48]

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

The particular Tower to which this epithet had been assigned—and which it obtained, by way of eminence, for its colossal superiority—is not now standing.[61] It rose about half a mile distant from the old castle of Bally Carbery, in the barony of Iveragh, and county of Kerry; a place where one would hope that the true designation of such phenomena would be preserved most pure, being aloof from the influence of exotic refinements, and, thus[Pg 49] far, free from that maudlin scepticism and laboured doubt which a “little learning” too frequently superinduces.

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

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

Should it be asked, why did not Cambrensis, at the time, enter more fully into the minutiæ of their detail? I shall unhesitatingly answer, it was because he knew nothing more about them. The Irish had at that moment most lamentably dwindled into a [Pg 50]degenerate race. The noble spirit of their heroic ancestors, which had called forth those pyramids, for the twofold and mingled purpose of religion and science, had already evaporated; and all the historian could glean, in prosecuting his inquiries as to their era and cause, was that their antiquity was so remote, that some of them may be even seen immersed beneath the waters of Lough Neagh,[63] which had been occasioned many ages before by the overflowing of a fountain.[64]

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

The Ulster Annals have registered the same event in the following words:—“Tene diait do gabail Airdmaeha conafarcaibh Dertach, na Damliacc, na h Erdam, na Fidh-Nemead ann cen loscadh”; that is, Lightning seized upon Armagh, to so violent a degree, as to leave neither mansion, nor cathedral, nor belfry, nor Fiadh-Nemeadh, undemolished.

Here we find Fiadh-Nemeadh to occur in both accounts, while the belfries are represented in one place as Cloic teacha, and in the other as Erdam, and in both are opposed to, and contradistinguished from,[Pg 51] the Fiadh-Nemeadh. Our business now is to investigate what this latter word conveys; and though I do not mean, for a while, to develop its true interpretation,—of which I am the sole and exclusive depositary,—yet must I make it apparent, that by it—whatever way it must be rendered—all before me have understood, were emphatically designated our Sabian Towers. Thus Colgan in his Acts, p. 297, referring to these words of the Four Masters, says: “Anno 995, Ardmaeha cum Basilicis, Turribus, aliisque omnibus edificiis, incendio ex fulmine generato, tota vastatur.”

O’Connor also, wishing to wrest its import to his favourite theory of there having been gnomons, while ignorant of its proper force, indulges in a conjecture of the most lunatic ostentation, and translates Fiadh-Nemeadh by celestial indexes.

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

These annals I look upon in three different lights as invaluable documents—firstly, as they prove the existence of those edifices at the date above assigned; secondly, as they show that they were distinct things from the belfries—whether cloicteach or erdam—which shared their disaster; and, thirdly, because that, even admitting of O’Connor’s mistranslation, it[Pg 52] gives us an insight into their character more fortuitous than he had anticipated. Celestial indexes![67] Could any one be so silly as for a moment to suppose that this was a mere allusion to the circumstance of their height? No; it was no such casual epithet, or witty effort of hyperbole; but it was, what Sallust has so truly said of the Syrtes, “nomen ex re inditum.”

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

Allow me then to draw your attention to an extract from Diodorus’s report thereof:—“They affirm also,” says he, “that the moon is so seen from this island, that it appears not so distant from the earth, and seems to present on its disk certain projections like the mountains of our world. Likewise that the God Apollo in person visits this island once in nineteen years, in which the stars complete their revolutions, and return into their old positions; and hence this cycle of nineteen years is called, by the Greeks, the great year.”

Who is it that collates this description with the “celestial indexes”[68] above produced, that is not, at once, struck with the felicity of the coincidence? On earth, what could celestial indexes mean but such as were appropriated to the contemplation of the heavenly bodies?—just as the name of “Zoroaster”—which, in the Persian language, signifies “cœlorum observator,” that is, star-gazer, or observer of the[Pg 53] heavens—was given to Zerdust, the great patriarch of the Magi, from his eminence and delight in astronomical pursuits.

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

But have we any evidence of having ever had amongst us, in those “olden times,” men who by their talents could support this character? Hear what Strabo says of Abaris, whom “Hecatæus and others mention” as having been sent by his fraternity from the “island of the Hyperboreans” to Delos, in Greece, in the capacity of a sacred ambassador, where he was equally admired for his knowledge, politeness, justice, and integrity. “He came,” says Strabo, “to Athens, not clad in skins like a Scythian, but with a bow in his hand, a quiver hanging on his shoulders, a plaid wrapt about his body, a gilded belt encircling his loins, and trousers reaching from the waist down to the soles of his feet. He was easy in his address, agreeable in his conversation, active in his despatch, and secret in his management of great affairs; quick in judging of present occurrences, and ready to take his part in any sudden emergency; provident withal in guarding against futurity; diligent in the quest of wisdom; fond of friendship; trusting very little to fortune, yet having the entire confidence of others,[Pg 54] and trusted with everything for his prudence. He spake Greek with a fluency, that you would have thought he had been bred up in the Lyceum, and conversed all his life with the Academy of Athens.”[69]

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

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

Such is the description of Ireland given by Donatus, bishop of Etruria, in 802; and I have selected it among a thousand other authorities of similar import, to show that Scotia or Scythia was one, and the last, of the ancient names of this country;[70][Pg 55] while the name of “Hyperborean” was the distinctive character assigned thereto, not only as descriptive of its locality towards the north, but as worshipping the wind Boreas.

Did I not apprehend it might be considered irrelevant to the scope of this work, I could easily prove that the amity, said by Hecatæus to have been cemented on the occasion of the visit above alluded to, was not that of a mere return of courteous civilities for a casual intercourse, but one of a far more tender and familiar nature, viz. the recognition on both sides of their mutual descent from one common origin: the same people who had settled in this country, and imported the mysteries of their magic priesthood, being akin to the first settlers on the coasts of Greece, which they impregnated with similar initiation. I am anticipated, of course, to have meant the Pelasgi, who, under another name, belonged to the same hive as the Indo-Scythæ, or Chaldean Magi, or Tuath-de-danaan,—as the head tribe thereof were called,—who, having effected an establishment on this happy isle, aloof from the intrusion of external invasion or internal butcheries, were allowed to cultivate the study of their favourite rites, the fame and eminence of which had obtained for its theatre, of all nations, the designation of “sacred.” But I fear it would be encroaching upon the patience of my readers, and[Pg 56] besides anticipating, in point of order, what may by and by follow.

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

But though the Scythians, from state policy, had suppressed the temple-worship when they deposed from the throne their antecedent Hyperboreans, they were but too sensible of their literary value not to profit by their services in the department of education. Hence it came to pass, that the Boreades were still indulged with their favourite costume, while the inferior communities were obliged to conform to the rules and the fashions of the ascendant dynasty. In a short time, however, the Scythian Druids superseded the Danaan Boreades, by the influence of their own instruction; and the consequence was that of that graceful garb, in the folds of which our ancient high priests officiated at the altar, or exhibited in the senate, not a single vestige is now to be traced except in the word God, Phearagh, whom I shall anon introduce, and in the highlands of Scotland, where a remnant of those Hyperborean or Danaan priests took shelter from the ruthless Picts, resigning to those[Pg 57] remorseless and intolerant persecutors the ground of the only two temples which they were able there to raise, as the last resort of their hopes, and the solace of their exile.[71]

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

Cæsar, in his Commentaries, bears direct testimony to their astronomical research, saying: “Multa præterea de sideribus atque eorum motu, de mundi ac terrarum magnitudine, de rerum naturâ ac deorum immortalium vi ac potestate disputant ac juventuti transdunt.”—De Bel. Gal. lib. 1-6, c. xiv. Pomponius Mela, also confirming the fact, says: “Hi terræ mundique magnitudinem ac forman, motus cœli ac siderum, ac quid Dii velint scire, profitentur.”—De Situ Orbis, lib. 3, c. ii. These two latter authorities, I admit, were more immediately directed to the Druids of Britain; but as it is agreed on all[Pg 58] hands that that body of religionists had received the seeds of their instruction from the Irish Magi, who were infinitely their superiors in all literary accomplishments, I think we may be warranted in extending the commendation to Ireland also, as the writers indubitably included it under the general name of Britain.

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

“The Irish language,” says Davies, an intelligent and respectable Welsh writer, “appears to have arrived at maturity amongst the Iapetidæ, while they were yet in contact with Aramæan families, and formed a powerful tribe in Asia Minor and in Thrace. It may, therefore, in particular instances, have more similitude or analogy to the Asiatic dialects than what appears in those branches of the Celtic that were matured in the west of Europe. Those who used this language consisted partly of Titans, of Celto-Scythians,[Pg 59] or of those Iapetidæ who assisted in building the city of Babel, and must have been habituated, after the dispersion, to the dialects of the nations through which they passed, before they joined the society of their brethren.” We thank this learned author for the flattering notice which he has been pleased to take of us; and though, in his subsequent remarks, he steers far wide of our true pedigree, yet a concession so important as that even here adduced, must command at least our becoming acknowledgments.

The splendid examples which we have had of primitive teachers of Christianity in this kingdom, and whom Ledwich himself, reluctant as he was to afford ordinary justice to Irish merit, is obliged to praise, were not more remarkable for the sanctified zeal and enthusiastic devotion with which they propagated the Gospel, than they were for the diversified range of their literary acquirements, and the moral sublimity of their ideas and conceptions.[72] Speaking of a production belonging to one of these worthies, Ledwich remarks: “In this tract we can discover Cumman’s acquaintance with the doctrine of time, and the chronological characters. He is no stranger to the solar, lunar, and bissextile years, to the epactal days, and embolismal months, nor to the names of the Hebrew, Macedonian, and Egyptian months. To examine the various cyclical systems, and to point[Pg 60] out their construction and errors, required no mean abilities: a large portion of Greek and Latin literature was also necessary.”[73]

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

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

It thus appears manifest that the Irish must, at one[Pg 61] time, have not only possessed, but excelled in, the science of astronomy. How did they acquire it? is the next question. “Ad illa mihi pro se quisque acriter intendat animum.” In that passage of Diodorus, to which I have already referred, we find the following appropriate characteristic:—“It is affirmed that Latona was born there, and that, therefore, the worship of Apollo is preferred to that of any other God; and as they daily celebrate this deity with songs of praise, and worship him with the highest honours, they are considered as peculiarly the priests of Apollo, whose sacred grove and singular temple of round form, endowed with many gifts, are there.”

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

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

Let me here again recall to the reader’s mind the name of Cathaoir Ghall, or temple of brightness, which I have before adduced, and when we compare all with the celestial indexes recorded in our annals, the conclusion is inevitable, that the Round Towers of Ireland were specifically constructed for the two-fold[Pg 62] purpose of worshipping the Sun and Moon—as the authors of generation and vegetative heat—and, from the nearer converse which their elevation afforded, of studying the revolutions and properties of the planetary orbs. Let me, however, before elucidating the era of their actual erection, with their Phallic form and their further use, revert to the Mosaic history for the groundwork of my development.

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

[Pg 63]

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

In Babel, the city thus agreed upon to be built, as the anchor of their stability and the basis of their renown,—we find a “Tower” mentioned, “whose top may reach,” says our version (but should it not rather be point?) towards heaven.

What was the object of this architectural elevation?

[Pg 64]Not certainly, as some have supposed, as a place of refuge in apprehension of a second deluge; for in that case, it is probable, they would have built it on an eminence, rather than on a plain, whereas the Bible expressly tells us they had selected the latter.

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

What, then, was it intended for?

Undoubted as an acknowledgment, however vitiated and depraved, of dependence upon that Being, whose acts shine forth in universal love, but whose spiritual adoration was now partially lost sight of, or merged in the homage thus primarily tendered to the lucid offspring of his omnipotent fiat.

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

[Pg 65]Shinaar, in Mesopotamia, was the theatre of this dread occurrence—this appalling spectacle at once of man’s weakness and God’s omnipotence:—Here the Noachidæ had been then fixed; and the name by which this innovation upon their previous usages is transmitted, viz. Ba-Bel, corroborates the destination above assigned.[80]

The word “Baal,” in itself an appellative, at first served to denote the true God amongst those who adhered to the true religion; though, when it became common amongst the idolatrous nations, and applied to idols, He rejected it. “And it shall be in that day that you shall call me Ishi, and shall call me no more Baali.”[81] Another name by which the Godhead was recognised was Moloch. The latter, indeed, in accuracy of speech was the name assigned him by the Ammonites and Moabites—both terms, however, corresponded in sense, “Moloch” signifying king, and “Baal” Lord, that is, of the heavens; whence transferring the appellation to the Sun, as the source and dispenser of all earthly favours, he was also called Bolati, i.e., “Baal the bestower,” as was the moon, Baaltis, from the same consideration: whilst the direct object of their internal regard was not, undoubtedly,[Pg 66] that globe of fire which illumines the firmament and vivifies terrestrials, but, physically considered, nature at large, the fructifying germ of universal generativeness.

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

“Father of all, in every age,
In every clime adored,
By saint, by savage, and by sage,
Jehovah, Jove, or Lord”—

who sent it forth on its beneficent errand.

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

The degeneracy of man, however, became manifest in the sequel, and, from the frequency of the act, the[Pg 67] type was substituted in room of the thing typified. “Solum in cœlis deum putabant solem,” says Philobibliensis, in his interpretation of Sanchoniathon. Nor did it stop here, but, proceeding in its progress of melancholy decay, swept before it the barriers of reason and moral light; and, from the bright monarch of the stars, who rules the day, the seasons, and the year, with perpetual change, yet uniform and identical, bowed before the grosser element of material fire, as his symbol or corporeal representative.

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

Indeed we find that God Himself had appeared to Moses in a “flame of fire in the midst of a bush” (Ex. iii. 2), and in presence of the whole Israelitish host (Ex. xix. 18). “The Lord descended upon Mount Sinai, as the smoke of a furnace;” while in Ex. xiii. 21, it is declared that “the Lord went[Pg 68] before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light.” So accordingly we find Elijah, 1 Kings xviii. 24, when challenging the priests of the false divinities, propose a decision by fiery ordeal. “Call you on the name of your gods,” he says, “and I will call upon the name of the Lord: and the God that answereth by fire, let him be God; and all the people answered, it is well spoken.”

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

In “Ur” of the Chaldees, a name which literally signifies “fire,” the worship of that element first originated. Thence it travelled in its contaminating course, until all the regions of the earth got impregnated[Pg 69] therewith. In Persia, a country with which this island had, of old, the most direct communication, we also find a city denominated “Ur”; and who does not know that the Persians, having borrowed the custom from the Chaldean priests, regarded fire with the utmost veneration? Numerous as were the deities which that nation worshipped, “fire,” on every occasion, in every sacrifice—like the Janus of the Romans—was invoked the first. Their Pyrea, in which they not only preserved it ever burning, but worshipped it as a deity, have been noticed by Brisson—but without the necessary adjunct of their being an innovation.

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

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

[Pg 70]But do I mean to say that the Round Towers of Ireland were intended for the preservation of the sacred fire? Far, very far indeed, from it. That some few of them were therewith connected—I say connected, not appropriated—may, I think, be well allowed; nay, it is my candid belief, so far as belief is compatible with a matter so unauthenticated. But having all through maintained that they were not all intended for one and the same object, I must have been understood, of course, by the numerous supporters of that fashionable proposition as including fire-worship within the compass of my several views. I put it, however, frankly to the most ardent supporter of that theory, who for a moment considers the different bearings and peculiarities of those several structures, comparing them first with one another, and then with the description of fire-receptacles which we read of elsewhere, whether he can dispassionately bring himself to say that all our Round Towers, or indeed above two of those at present remaining, could have been even calculated for that purpose?

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

But I am answered that the tower of Ardmore, which has within it no vestiges of divisional compartments, could offer no hindrance to the ascent of the smoke, or its consequent discharge through the [Pg 71]four cardinal openings. To which I rejoin, that if there had ever been a fire lighted within that edifice, and continued for any length of time, as the sacred fire is known to have been kept perpetually burning, it would have been impossible for the inner surface of that stately structure to preserve the beautiful and white coating which it still displays through the mystic revolutions of so many ages. The same conclusion applies to the tower of Devenish, which, though it has no inside coating, yet must its elegant polish have been certainly deteriorated, if subjected to the action of a perpetual smoke.

ARDMORE.

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

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

Whenever a deviation from this occurred, it was in favour of a low stone-built structure, all over-arched,[Pg 72] such as that which Hanway met with at Baku, and corresponding in every particular with the edifices of this description to be seen at Smerwick, county Kerry, and elsewhere throughout Ireland.[84]

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

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

When, therefore, we are told[85] that at the city of Zezd in Persia—which is distinguished by the apellation of Darub Abadat, or seat of religion—the Ghebres are permitted to have an Atush Kidi, or fire-temple, which they assert had the sacred fire in it since the days of Zoroaster, we must be prepared to understand it as corresponding in architectural proportion with one or other of the instances just now[Pg 73] detailed; and in truth, from recent discovery, I have ascertained—since the above was composed—that it is nothing more than a sorry hut.

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

To this ascription of this learned traveller I most fully, most heartily respond. Pagoda is a name invented by the Portuguese, from the Persian “Peutgheda,” meaning a temple of idols, in which they supposed them to abound, but which in reality were only so many figures or symbols of the “principle of truth,” the “spirit of wisdom,” the “supreme essence,” and other attributes of the Godhead, which, I believe, they in a great measure spiritually recognised. Those structures, therefore, as the very word implies, had no manner of relation to the sacred fire, but they had to the sun and moon, the supposed authors of generation and nutrition, of which fire was only the corrupt emblem; and the different forms of their constructural terminations, similar to those elsewhere described by Maundrell, some being pointed, and some being truncated, harmonises most aptly with the radial and hemispherical representations[Pg 74] of the two celestial luminaries, as well as with that organ of human procreation which we shall hereafter more particularly identify. These are the two Baals dwelt so largely upon in the Scriptures—Baal masculine, the sun, and Baal feminine, the moon, from both of which the Hindoos derive their fabulous origin. Indeed it was from their extreme veneration for the “queen of night” that they obtained their very name; Hindoo meaning, in the Sanscrit language, the moon; and accordingly we find among them Hindoo-buns, that is, children of the moon, as we do Surage-buns, children of the sun, the other parent of their fanciful extraction.

Here then, methinks, we have at once a clue to the character of those Round Towers so frequent throughout the East, of whose history, however, the Orientals are as ignorant as we are here of our “rotundities.” Caucasus abounds in those columnar fanes, and it must not be forgotten that Caucasus has been claimed as the residence of our ancestors. On Teric banks, hard by, there is a very beautiful and lofty one as like as possible to some of ours. The door is described as twelve feet from the ground, level and rather oblong in its form. Lord Valentia was so struck with the extraordinary similitude observable between some very elegant ones which he noticed in Hindostan and those in this country, that he could not avoid at once making the comparison. The inhabitants, he observes, paid no sort of regard to those venerable remains, but pilgrims from afar, and chiefly from Jynagaur, adhering to their old religion, used annually to resort to them as the shrines of their ancient worship. Yet in the ceremonies there performed we see no evidence of their appropriation to the sacred[Pg 75] fire—however tradition may have ascribed them as once belonging to the Ghebres! Franklin mentions some he has seen at Nandukan, as do other writers in other sites. In short, all through the East they are to be met with, and yet all about them is obscurity, doubt, and mystery, a proof at once of the antiquity of their date, and of their not being receptacles for fire, which, if the fact, could be there no secret.

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

In the sepulchral opinion I am not a little fortified by the circumstance of there being found at Benares pyramids corresponding in all respects, save that of size, to those in Egypt, having also subterranean[Pg 76] passages beneath them, which are said to extend even for miles together. A column also, besides a sphinx’s head, which has been discovered not long since in digging amid the ruins of an ancient and unknown city, on the banks of the Hypanis, bearing an inscription which was found to differ on being compared with Arabic, Persia, Turkish, Chinese, Tartar, Greek, and Roman letters; but bore “a manifest and close similarity with the characters observed by Denon on several of the mummies of Egypt,” gives strength to the idea of the identity of the Egyptian religion with that of the Indians, as it does to the identity of destination of their respective pyramids.

[Pg 77]

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

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

The Indians too have images of the elephant, horse, and other such animals, chiselled out with the most studious care, and to all intents and purposes appear to pay them homage; but, if questioned on the subject, they will tell you that in the sagacity of the[Pg 78] former, and the strength and swiftness of the latter, they only recognise the superior wisdom and might of the All-good and All-great One, and the rapidity with which his decrees are executed by his messengers.

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

These specimens, though brief, will prove that the spirit of the religion of ancient India and Egypt was not that farrago of mental prostration which some have imagined. No, the stars, as the abode, or immediate signal of the Deity, were their primary study; and even to this day, depressed and humiliated as the[Pg 79] Indians are, and aliens in their own country, they are not without some attention to their favourite pursuit, or something like an observatory to perpetuate its cultivation. In May, 1777, a letter from Sir Robert Baker to the President of the Royal Society of London was read before that body, which details a complete astronomical apparatus found at Benares, belonging to the Brahmins.

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

“The traveller was enabled to journey through this immense country with ease and safety; the public roads were shaded with trees to defend him from its scorching sun; at convenient distances buildings were erected for him to repose in, a friendly[Pg 80] Brahmin attended to supply his wants; and hospitality and the laws held out assistance and protection to all alike, without prejudice or partiality.... We afterwards see the empire overrun by a fierce race of men, who in the beginning of their furious conquests endeavoured, with their country, to subdue the minds of the Hindoos. They massacred the people, tortured the priests, threw down many of the temples, and, what was still more afflicting, converted some of them into places of worship for their prophet, till at length, tired with the exertion of cruelties which they found to be without effect, and guided by their interest, which led them to wish for tranquillity, they were constrained to let a religion and customs subsist which they found it impossible to destroy. But during these scenes of devastation and bloodshed, the sciences, being in the sole possession of the priests, who had more pressing cares to attend to, were neglected, and are now almost forgotten.”

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

As to their appropriation, then, to the sacred fire, though I do not deny that some of them may have been connected with it, yet unquestionably too much[Pg 81] importance has been attached to the vitrified appearance of Drumboe tower as if necessarily enforcing our acquiescence in the universality of that doctrine. “At some former time,” says the surveyor, “very strong fires have been burned within this building, and the inside surface towards the bottom has the appearance of vitrification.”

I do not at all dispute the accident, but while the vitrified aspect which this tower exhibits is proof irresistible that no fire ever entered those in which no such vitrification appears, I cannot but here too express more than a surmise that it was not the “sacred fire,” which, when religiously preserved, was not allowed to break forth in those volcanoes insinuated; but in a lambent, gentle flame, emblematic of that emanation of the spirit of the Divinity infused, as light from light, into the soul of man.

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

But to prove that they were not appropriated to the ritual of fire-worship, nay, that their history and occupation had been altogether forgotten when that ritual now prevailed, I turn to the glossary of Cormac, first bishop of Cashel, who, after his [Pg 82]conversion to Christianity, in the fifth century, by St. Patrick, thus declares his faith:—

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

That is—

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

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

Nay, when St. Bridget, who was originally a pagan vestal, and consequently well versed in all the solemnities of the sacred fire, wished, upon her conversion to Christianity, A.D. 467, to retain this favourite usage, now sublimated in its nature, and streaming in a more hallowed current, it was not in a “tower” that we find she preserved it, but in a cell or low building “like a vault,” “which,” says Holinshed, whose curiosity, excited by Cambrensis’s report,[88] had induced him to go and visit the spot, “to this day they call the fire-house.” It was a stone-roofed [Pg 83]edifice about twenty feet square, the ruins of which are still visible, and recognised by all around as once the preservative of the sacred element. When Cambrensis made mention of this miraculous fire of St. Bridget, why did he not connect it with the Round Towers, which he mentions elsewhere? He knew they had no connection, and should not be associated.

But, forsooth, the Venerable Bede has distinctly mentioned in the Life of St. Cuthbert that there were numerous fire receptacles, remnants of ancient paganism, still remaining in this island!—Admitted. But does it necessarily follow that they were the Round Towers?[89] No: here is the enigma solved—they were those low stone-roofed structures, similar to what the Persians call the “Atash-gah,” to be met with so commonly throughout all parts of this country, such as at Ardmore, Killaloe, Down, Kerry, Kells, etc. etc. The circumstance of St Columbe having for a time taken up his abode in this last-mentioned one, gave rise to the idea that he must have been its founder: but the delusion is dispelled by comparing its architecture with that of the churches which this distinguished champion of the early Christian Irish Church had erected in Iona,[90] whose ruins are still to be seen, and bear no sort of analogy with those ancient receptacles. Struck, no doubt, with some apprehensions like the foregoing, it is manifest that Miss Beaufort[Pg 84] herself, while combating most strenuously for the Round Towers as fire receptacles, had no small misgiving, nay, was evidently divided as to the security of her position. “From the foregoing statements,” she observes, “a well-grounded conclusion may be drawn that these low fabrics are seldom found but in connection with the towers, and were designed for the preservation of the sacred fire; in some cases the lofty tower may have served for both purposes.”[91] The lofty tower, I emphatically say, was a distinct edifice.

Again, when St. Patrick in person went round the different provinces to attend the pagan solemnities at the respective periods of their celebration, we find no mention made of any such thing as a “tower” occupying any part in the ritual of their religious exercises. When he first presented himself near the Court of Laogaire, not far from the hill of Tara, on the eve of the vernal equinox, and lit up a fire before his tent in defiance of the legal prohibition, the appeal which we are told his Druids addressed to the monarch on that occasion was couched in the following words:—“This fire which has to-night been kindled in our presence, before the flame was lit up in your palace, unless extinguished this very night, shall never be extinguished at all, but shall triumph over all the fires of our ancient rites, and the lighter of it shall scatter your kingdom.” In this notification, as I translate it from O’Connor’s Prolegomena, i. c. 35, there occur two terms to which I would fain bespeak the reader’s regard; one is the word kindled, which implies the lighting up of a fire where there was none before; the second is the word palace, which is more applicable to a kingly residence or private abode,[Pg 85] than to a columnar structure, which would seem to demand a characteristic denomination.

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

But who, let me ask, were those Etrurians? none others, most undoubtedly, than the Pelasgi or Tyrseni, another branch of our Tuath-de-danaan ancestors, who, as Myrsilus informs us, had erected the ancient wall around the Acropolis of Athens, which is therefore styled, by Callimachus, as quoted in the Scholia to the Birds of Aristophanes, “the Pelasgic Wall[Pg 86] of the Tyrseni.” It is now a point well ascertained by historians that what are termed by ancient writers Cyclopean walls—as if intimating the work of a race of giants, while the true exposition of the name is to be found in the fact of their having been constructed by a caste of miners, otherwise called arimaspi, whose lamp, which perhaps they had fastened to their foreheads, may be considered as their only eye—were actually the creation of those ancient Pelasgi, and, as will shortly appear, should properly be called Irish.[92] Mycenæ, Argos, and Tiryns, in Greece, as well as Etruria and other places in Italy, the early residences of this lettered tribe, abound in relics of this ancient masonry. In all respects, in all points, and in all particulars it corresponds with that of those above-mentioned low, stone-roofed, fire-receptacles, so common in this island; which must satisfactorily and for ever do away with the doubt as to why such features of similarity should be observed to exist between our antiquities and those of ancient Greece and Rome; not less perceptible in the circumstance of those edificial remains than in the collateral evidences of language and manners.

The sacred fire, once observed with such religious awe by every class, and in every quarter of this island, was imported from Greece into Italy by the same people who had introduced it here. Let me not be supposed to insinuate that the people of the latter country, modernly considered, adopted the usage from those of the former country, moderns also; no, there was no intercourse between these parties for many years after the foundation of the western capital.[Pg 87] Indeed it was not until the time of Pyrrhus that they knew anything of their respective existences, whereas we find that the vestal fire was instituted by Numa, A.U.C. 41. What I meant therefore to say was, that the same early people, viz. the Pelasgi, who had introduced it into Greece, had, upon their expulsion from Thessaly by the Hellenes, betaken themselves to Latium, afterwards so called, and there disseminated their doctrines not less prosperously than their dominion.

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

I now address myself to another obstacle which has been advanced by an Irish lady, and of the most deserved antiquarian repute, whose classic and elaborate treatise on this identical subject, though somewhat differently moulded, has already won her the applause of that society whose discriminating verdict I now[Pg 88] respectfully await. But as my object is truth, divested as much as possible of worldly considerations, and unshackled by systems or literary codes, I conceive that object will be more effectually attained by setting inquiry on foot, than by tamely acquiescing in dubious asservations or abiding by verbal ambiguities.

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

With great submission I conceive that the error here incurred originated on the lady’s part, from mistaking as authority the comment in the Statistical Survey, vol. iii. p. 320, which runs thus:—“It is quite evident from sundry authentic records, that these round towers were appropriated to the preservation of the Baal-thinne, or sacred fire of Baal: first at the solemn convention at Tara, in the year of Christ 79, in the reign of Tuathal Teachmar, it was enacted, that on the 31st of October annually, the sacred fire[Pg 89] should be publicly exhibited from the stately tower of Tlactga, in Munster, from whence all the other repositories of the Baal-thinne were to be rekindled, in case they were by any accident allowed to go out. It was also enacted, that a particular tower should be erected for that purpose in each of the other four provinces, Meath being then a distinct province. For this purpose the tax called Scraball, of threepence per head on all adults, was imposed.”

Well, for this is quoted Psalter of Tara, by Comerford, p. 51; on referring to which I find the text as thus: “He (Tuathal) also erected a stately palace in each of these proportions, viz. in that of Munster, the palace of Tlactga, where the fire of Tlactga was ordained to be kindled on the 31st of October, to summon the priests and augurs to consume the sacrifices offered to their gods; and it was also ordained that no other fire should be kindled in the kingdom that night, so that the fire to be used in the country was to be derived from this fire; for which privilege the people were to pay a scraball, which amounts to threepence every year, as an acknowledgment to the King of Munster. The second palace was in that of Connaught, where the inhabitants assembled once a year, upon the 1st of May, to offer sacrifices to the principal deity of the island under the name of Beul, which was called the Convocation of Usneagh; and on account of this meeting the King of Connaught had from every lord of a manor, or chieftain of lands, a horse and arms. The third was at Tailtean, in the portion of Ulster, where the inhabitants of the kingdom brought their children when of age, and treated with one another about their marriage. From this custom the King of Ulster[Pg 90] demanded an ounce of silver from every couple married here. The fourth was the palace of Teamor or Tara, which originally belonged to the province of Leinster, and where the States of the kingdom met in a parliamentary way.”

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

[Pg 91]

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

Then be it known that the Round Towers of Ireland were temples constructed by the early Indian colonists of the country, in honour of that fructifying principle of nature, emanating, as was supposed, from the sun, under the denomination of Sol, Phœbus, Apollo, Abad or Budh, etc. etc.; and from the moon, under the epithet of Luna, Diana, Juno, Astarte, Venus, Babia or Butsee, etc. etc. Astronomy was inseparably interwoven with this planetary religion; while the religion itself was characterised by enforcing almost as strict a regard to the body after[Pg 92] death, as the body was expected to pay to a Supreme Essence before its mortal dissolution. Under this double sense then of funereal or posthumous regard, as well as active and living devotion, must I be understood to have used the expression, when previously declaring that our Sabian rotundities were erected with the twofold view of religious culture and the practice of that science with which it was so amalgamated.

To be explicit, I must recall to the reader’s mind the destination which the Brahmins assigned to the Egyptian pyramids, on hearing Wilford’s description of them—viz. that they were places appropriated to the worship of Padma-devi.[95] Before I proceed, however, I must state that I do not intend to make this the basis of what I shall designate my disclosures. It would be very foolish of me, if hoping to dislodge a world of long-established prejudice, to use, as my lever, a ray shot transversely from a volume which has been tarnished by forgery. I need no such aid, as the sequel will show; and yet were it requisite, no objection would be valid, as the “Pundit” could have had no motive, either of interest or of vanity, such as influenced his transcriptions, here to mislead his victim. It was the mere utterance of a casual opinion, without reference to any deduction. Besides it was not the statement of the knave at all, but that of a number of religious men of letters, who all agreed in the ascription above laid down. They spoke, no doubt, from some traditionary acquaintance with the use of those tall round buildings which so much baffle antiquarians, not more in Ireland than they do in Hindostan: but the explanation of this[Pg 93] their answer will be a happy inlet—and as such only do I mean to employ it—to the illustration of what we have been so long labouring at.

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

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

[Pg 94]In India this fervor was particularly encouraged: for “as the Hindoos depend on their children for performing those ceremonies to their names, which they believe tend to mitigate punishment in a future state, they consider the being deprived of them as a severe misfortune and the sign of an offended God.”[97] They accordingly had recourse to all the stratagems which ingenuity could devise to recommend this passion to the inner senses, and dignify its nature by the studied imagery of metaphor and grace. In conformity with this sentiment we are favoured by Sir William Jones with the copy of a hymn, which they were in the habit of addressing to the above-mentioned “Padma-devi,” or “Mollium mater sæva cupidinum,” which he thus prefaces with her figurative descent:—

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

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

“According to the Hindu mythology, he was the son of Maya, or the general attracting power;[99] that he was married to Ritty, or Affection; and that his[Pg 95] bosom friend is Vassant, or the Spring: that he is represented as a beautiful youth, sometimes conversing with his mother, or consort, in the midst of his gardens and temples; sometimes riding by moonlight on a parrot, and attended by dancing girls, or nymphs, the foremost of whom bears his colours, which are a fish on a red ground: that his favourite place of resort is a large tract of country round Agra, and principally the plain of Mathra, where Kreshen also, and the nine Gopia usually spend the night with music and dance: that his bow is of sugar-cane or flowers, the sting of bees, and his five arrows are each painted with an Indian blossom of an healing quality.” Tedious and diffuse as has been the dissertation already, I cannot resist the inclination of transcribing the hymn also.

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

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

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

Almighty Cama! or doth Smara bright,
Or proud Aranga, give thee more delight?
Whate’er thy seat, whate’er thy name,
Seas, earth, and air, thy reign proclaim;
All to thee their tribute bring,
And hail thee universal king.
[Pg 96]
Thy consort mild, Affection, ever true,
Graces thy side, her vest of glowing hue,
And in her train twelve blooming maids advance,
Touch golden strings and knit the mirthful dance.
Thy dreadful implements they bear,
And wave them in the scented air,
Each with pearls her neck adorning,
Brighter than the tears of morning.
Thy crimson ensign which before them flies,
Decks with new stars the sapphire skies.

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

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

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

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

[Pg 97]Amongst the fables that are told to account for the origin of this amorous devotion, Sir William tells us, is the following, viz.:—

“Certain devotees in a remote time had acquired great renown and respect; but the purity of the art was wanting; nor did their motives and secret thoughts correspond with their professions and exterior conduct. They affected poverty, but were attached to the things of this world, and the princes and nobles were constantly sending them offerings. They seemed to sequester themselves from the world; they lived retired from the towns; but their dwellings were commodious, and their women numerous and handsome. But nothing can be hid from the gods, and Sheevah resolved to expose them to shame. He desired Prakeety[100] to accompany him; and assumed the appearance of a Pandaram of a graceful form. Prakeety appeared as herself a damsel of matchless beauty. She went where the devotees were assembled with their disciples, waiting the rising sun to perform their ablutions[101] and religious ceremonies. As she advanced the refreshing breeze moved her flowing robe, showing the exquisite shape which it seemed intended to conceal. With eyes cast down, though sometimes opening with a timid but a tender look, she approached them, and with a low enchanting voice desired to be admitted to the sacrifice. The devotees gazed on her with astonishment. The sun appeared, but the purifications were forgotten; the things of the Poojah[102] lay neglected; nor[Pg 98] was any worship thought of but that to her. Quitting the gravity of their manners, they gathered round her as flies round the lamp at night, attracted by its splendour, but consumed by its flame. They asked from whence she came; whither she was going? ‘Be not offended with us for approaching thee; forgive us for our importunities. But thou art incapable of anger, thou who art made to convey bliss; to thee, who mayest kill by indifference, indignation and resentment are unknown. But whoever thou mayest be, whatever motive or accident may have brought thee amongst us, admit us into the number of thy slaves; let us at least have the comfort to behold thee.’

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

“Whilst the devotees were lost in their passions, and absent from their homes, Sheevah entered their village with a musical instrument in his hand, playing and singing like some of those who solicit charity. At the sound of his voice the women immediately quitted their occupations; they ran to see from whom it came. He was beautiful as Krishen on the plains of Matra.[103] Some dropped their jewels without turning to look for them; others let fall their garments without perceiving that they discovered those abodes of pleasure which jealousy as well as decency has ordered to be concealed. All pressed forward with their offerings; all wished to speak; all wished to be taken notice of; and bringing flowers and scattering them before him, said, ‘Askest thou alms![Pg 99] thou who art made to govern hearts! Thou whose countenance is fresh as the morning! whose voice is the voice of pleasure; and thy breath like that of Vassant[104] in the opening rose! Stay with us and we will serve thee; nor will we trouble thy repose, but only be jealous how to please thee.’

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

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

“But the people began to perceive that what the[Pg 100] devotees foretold came not to pass. Their disciples in consequence neglected to attend them, and the offerings from the princes and the nobles became less frequent than before. They then performed various penances; they sought for secret places among the woods unfrequented by man; and having at last shut their eyes from the things of this world, retired within themselves in deep meditation, that Sheevah was the author of their misfortunes. Their understanding being imperfect, instead of bowing the head with humility they were inflamed with anger; instead of contrition for their hypocrisy, they sought for vengeance. They performed new sacrifices and incantations, which were only allowed to have effect in the end to show the extreme folly of man in not submitting to the will of Heaven.

“Their incantations produced a tiger, whose mouth was like a cavern, and his voice like thunder among the mountains. They sent him against Sheevah, who, with Prakeety, was amusing himself in the vale. He smiled at their weakness, and killing the tiger at one blow with his club, he covered himself with his skin. Seeing themselves frustrated in this attempt, the devotees had recourse to another, and sent serpents against him of the most deadly kind; but on approaching him they became harmless, and he twisted them round his neck. They then sent their curses and imprecations against him, but they all recoiled upon themselves. Not yet disheartened by all these disappointments, they collected all their prayers, their penances, their charities, and other good works, the most acceptable of all sacrifices; and demanding in return only vengeance against Sheevah, they sent a consuming fire to destroy his genital parts. Sheevah, [Pg 101]incensed at this attempt, turned the fire with indignation against the human race; and mankind would have been soon destroyed, had not Vishnou, alarmed at the danger, implored him to suspend his wrath. At his entreaties Sheevah relented. But it was ordained that in his temples those parts should be worshipped which the false devotees had impiously attempted to destroy.”[106]

CLONDALKIN.

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

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

Astarte was the divinity with whose worship it was thus associated, and by that being understood[Pg 102] the moon,[109] it was natural to suppose that the study of the stars would essentially enter into the ceremonial of her worship. Another name by which this divinity was recognised, was Rimmon, which, signifying as it does pomegranate, was a very happy emblem of fecundity, as apples are known to be the most prolific species of fruit.

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

[Pg 103]Such was the origin and design of the most ancient Indian pagodas, which had no earthly connection with fire or fire-worshippers, as generally imagined. And that such, also, was the use and origin of the Irish pagodas is manifest from the name by which they are critically and accurately designated, viz. Budh, which, in the Irish language, signifies not only the Sun, as the source of generative vegetation, but also as the male organ of procreative generativeness, consecrated, according to their foolish ideas, to Baal-Phearagh or Deus-coitionis, by and by to be elucidated. This thoroughly explains the word “Cathoir-ghall,” or “temple of delight,” already mentioned as appropriated to one of those edifices, and is still further confirmed by the name of “Teaumpal na greine,” or “temple of the sun,” by which another of them is called; while the ornament that has been known to exist on the top of many of them represents the crescent of Sheevah, the matrimonial deity of the Indians, agreeably to what the Heetopades states, viz. “may he on whose diadem is a crescent cause prosperity to the people of the earth.”

But you will say that my designating these structures by the name of Budh is a gratuitous assumption, for which I have no authority other than what imagination may afford me; and that, therefore, however striking may be appearances, you will withhold your conviction until you hear my proofs. Sir, I advance nothing that I cannot support by arguments, and[Pg 104] should not value your adherence were it not earned by truth. This is too important an investigation to allow fancy any share therein. It is not the mere settlement of an antiquarian dispute of individual interest or isolated locality that is involved in its adjustment,—no, its bearings are as comprehensive as its interest should be universal; the opinions of mankind to a greater extent than you suppose will be affected by its determination; and I should despise myself if, by any silly effort of ingenuity, I should attempt to lead your reason captive, or pander to your credulity, rather than storm your judgment.

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

My authority for assigning to the Round Towers the above designation is nothing less than those annals before adduced.[112] Where is it there? you reply. I rejoin in Fidh-Nemphed; which, as it has heretofore puzzled all the world to develop, I shall unfold to the reader with an almost miraculous result. Fidh, then—as the Ulster Annals, or Fiadh, as those of the Four Masters spell it—is the plural of Budh,[Pg 105] i.e. Lingam; the initial F of the former being only the aspirate of the initial B of the latter, and commutable with it[113]; and Nemphed is an adjective, signifying divine or consecrated, from Nemph, the heavens: so that Fidh-Nemphed taken together will import the Consecrated Lingams, or the Budhist Consecrations.

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

The Egyptian history, then, of the origin of this deification is what will put this question beyond the possibility of denial, viz. that “Isis having recovered the mangled pieces of her husband’s body, the genitals excepted, which the murderers had thrown into the sea, resolving to render him all the honour which his humanity had merited, got made as many waxen statues as there were mangled pieces of his body. Each statue contained a piece of the flesh of the dead monarch. And Isis, after she had summoned in her presence, one by one, the priests of all the different deities in her dominions, gave them each a statue,[Pg 106] intimating that, in so doing, she had preferred them to all the other communities of Egypt; and she bound them by a solemn oath that they would keep secret that mark of her favour, and endeavour to prove their sense of it by establishing a form of worship, and paying divine honours to their prince. But that part of the body of Osiris which had not been discovered, was treated with more particular attention by Isis, and she ordered that it should receive honours more solemn, and at the same time more mysterious, than the other members.”[114]

Now as Isis[115] and Osiris—two deities, by the way, which comprehended all nature and all the gods of the ancients—only personated the Sun and Moon, the sources of nutrition and vegetative heat, it is very easy to remove the veil of this affectionate mythology, and see that it means nothing more than the mutual dependence and attraction of the sexes upon, and to, each other; while the fact of the Egyptian “Osiris,”[116] which in their language signifies the Sun, and the Irish “Budh,” which in our language signifies the same planet, being both represented by the same emblematic sign;[117] and the name of that sign in both languages signifying as well sign as thing signified, gives a stamp to my proof which I defy ingenuity to overthrow.

[Pg 107]

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

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

“There was, then,” adds Gentil, “in those parts of India, and principally on the coast of Choromandel and Ceylon, a sort of worship the precepts of which we are quite unacquainted with. The god Baouth, of whom[Pg 108] at present they know no more in India than the name, was the object of this worship; but it is now totally abolished, except that there may possibly yet be found some families of Indians who have remained faithful to Baouth, and do not acknowledge the religion of the Brahmins, and who are on that account separated from and despised by the other castes.... I made various inquiries concerning this singular figure, and the Zamulians one and all assured me that this was the god Baouth, who was now no longer regarded, for that his worship and his festivals had been abolished ever since the Brahmins had made themselves masters of the people’s faith.”

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

[Pg 109]“The real time,” say the Asiat. Res. viii. p. 505, “at which Budha propagated the doctrines ascribed to him, is a desideratum which the learned knowledge and indefatigable research of Sir W. Jones have still left to be satisfactorily ascertained.”

“If the Budhaic religion,” says the Westminster Review of January 1830, “really arrived at predominance in India, its rise in the first place, and more especially its extirpation, are not merely events of stupendous magnitude, but of impenetrable mystery.”

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

So far all have arrived at the discovery of this creed, and accordingly, if you look into any encyclopedia or depository of science for a definition of the word “Budhism,” you will be told that “it is the doctrine of solar worship as taught by Budha.” There never was such a person as Budha—I mean at the outset of the religion, when it first shot into life, and that was almost as early as the creation of man. In later times, however, several enthusiasts assumed the name, and personified in themselves the faith they[Pg 110] represented. But the origin of the religion was an abstract thought, which while Creuzer allows, yet he must acknowledge his ignorance of what that thought was.

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

The Eleusinian[121] rites themselves were essentially of this kind; for though the benefits of agriculture were said to be chiefly there commemorated, this after all resolves itself into the above: for as the process of the earth’s bearing is similar to that of our own species, and indeed of all creatures that rest[Pg 111] upon her,—no seed bringing forth fruit until, as the apostle has affirmed,[122] it first dies,—the representation of this miracle of nature’s vicissitudes led the mind to the contemplation of general fecundity. And hence the culture of the ground, and the propagation of human beings, being both viewed in the same light, and sometimes even named by the same epithet, viz. tillage, were inculcated no less as beneficial exercises than as religious ordinances. Did a doubt remain as to the accuracy of this connection between the worship of the ancients and their sexual correspondence, it would be more than removed by attending to the import of the terms by which they mystified those celebrations, and which, with the sanctity attached to the parts themselves, will come consecutively under our review. One of them, however, is too apposite to be omitted here, and that is the term by which they designated a certain ceremony still practised on the coast of Guinea, and which neither the blandishments of artifice nor the terrors of menace could ever prevail upon them to divulge. This ceremony they call Belli-Paaro. The meaning they assign to it is regeneration, or the act of reviving from death to a new state of existence; and when we see that the name itself is but an inflection of the Baal-Peor of the Scriptures, the Baal-Phearagh of our forefathers, and the Copulative deity of the amative universe, it will not be hard to dive into its character, though so shrouded in types.

But the Budhists, not content with this ordinary veneration, or with paying homage in secret to that[Pg 112] symbol of production which all other classes of idolators equally, though privately, worshipped,—I mean the Lingam,—thought they could never carry their zeal sufficiently far, unless they erected it into an idol of more than colossal magnitude—and those idols were the Round Towers. Hence the name Budhism, which I thus define, viz. that species of idolatry which worshipped Budh (i.e. the Lingam), as the emblem of Budh (i.e. the Sun)—Budh signifying, indiscriminately, Sun and Lingam.

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

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

2. Thou shalt not steal.

3. Thou shalt not commit adultery.

4. Thou shalt not tell anything false.

5. Thou shalt not drink any intoxicating liquor.

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

In this incessant alternation—which was to be one of[Pg 113] ascent or of descent, according to the merits of the body, which the spirit had last animated, and which was all considered as a sort of lustral crucible, for the refining of the vital spark against its reunion with the Godhead, whence it had originally derived—it is manifest that such tenderness for the entire animal creation arose from the apprehension of slaying some relation in that disguise.—Or, did we ascribe it to no higher motive than a sympathy with fellow-creatures, which, if not equally responsible, are at all events susceptible of anguish and of pain, this in itself should teach us to suppress all ebullitions of irreverent sarcasm, and, if we yield not our acquiescence, to extend to it at least our commiseration.

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

The good works which they were additionally enjoined to perform were classified under the two heads of Dana and Bavana. By “Dana” was meant the giving of alms, and hence the whole fraternity were called Danaans or Almoners.[124] By “Bavana” was understood the thoughtfully pronouncing[Pg 114] those three words, Anuzza, Docha, and Anatta: of which the first implies our liability to vicissitude; the second to misfortune, and the third our inability to exempt ourselves from either.[125]

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

[Pg 115]In the wide range of literary disquisition there is no one topic which has so engrossed the investigation of studious individuals as the origin of the word Hibernia. The great Bochart, the uncertain Vallancy, the spiteful Macpherson, the pompous O’Flaherty, and the “antiquary of antiquaries,” Camden himself,—with a thousand others unworthy of recognition,—have been all consecutively shipwrecked upon its unapproachable sand-banks. But the most miserable failure of all is that of a namesake of my own, the author of a dictionary upon the language of his country, who, in his mad zeal for an outlandish conceit, foists into his book a term with which our language owns no kindred, and then builds upon that a superstructure which “would make even the angels weep.”