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 “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 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, 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 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.”
[Illustration: 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 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 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 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 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]