The Round Towers of Ireland

"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 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 patri?," 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 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 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 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 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 Ph?nix Park which commemorates the glories of the hero of Waterloo. No; but I will mention what Herodotus tells us was the 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 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!

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 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 qu?ne 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 c?lo," 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 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, 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.

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 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 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.

* * *

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 "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 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 Ph?nician 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', 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 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 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 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.

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 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

P?naque lata malo qu? 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 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, 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 Tyrt?us 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-

"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. 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 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 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 C?nobites 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 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.

"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.

* * *

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 C?nobites settled in the desert, the convent-tower was round;" then, by a single word, pr?sto,-or "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 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 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 Ch?inechair 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 pr?lector, 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, 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 a?rial 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 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 a?rial 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.

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 C?nobites 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 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 Cophtes and the Irish C?nobites." 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 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 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 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 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 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."

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]

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