You ask me for the proofs of this early grandeur? I point you to the gold
crowns, the gold and silver ingots, the double-headed pateræ or censers,
the anklets, lunettes, bracelets, fibulæ, necklaces, etc., which have been
repeatedly found throughout all parts of Ireland, evidently the relics of
that “Sacred” colony who gave their name to this island, and who, to the
refined _taste_ which such possessions imply, united also the science
which appears in their workmanship.[460]
But these are scanty and insufficient memorials? Pray, what greater can
you produce of ancient Egypt? Her Pyramids? Our Round Towers are as _old_;
are likely to be as _permanent_; and are really more _beautiful_. What are
the vestiges of ancient Etruria? of Assyria? Troy? Chaldea? nay, of
Babylon the Great, the queen of the world? A few consolidations of stone
and mortar--disjointed rubbish--and incrusted pottery. All these _we_
retain, in addition to the thousand other evidences which crowd upon the
historian. And, while Britain can adduce no single vestige of the
Romans--who subjugated that country at their highest period of
civilisation--but what, in the words of my adversaries themselves, are
“only monuments of barbarism,” I answer--_no wonder_--for the Romans were
never to be compared to the Iranian Budhists, who brought all the
splendour of the East to the concentrated locality of this Hyperborean
Island.
“Infant colonies, forsooth, do not carry a knowledge of the ‘Fine Arts’
along with them; they are only to be found where wealth, luxury, and power
have fixed their abode.”[461] Most sapient remark! but unluckily out of
place; for the authors of our Round Towers were not “an infant colony” at
all; but the very _heads_ and _principals_ of the most polished and
refined people on the bosom of the habitable earth--the Budhists of Iran.
And, accordingly, in their train not only did “wealth, luxury, and power”
abound, but they seemed _exclusively_ to have taken up their abode amongst
them.[462]
Analogous to the above was the rhodomontade of another pillar of the same
order. “I, nevertheless,” says Montmorency, “am disinclined to believe
that those same persons, had they to choose a residence between Syria and
Ireland, would have taken the _wintry_ and _uncultivated wilds_ of
_Fidh-Inis_, in preference to the sunny plains which gave them
birth.”[463]
In both those cases, of which the former is but the _echo_, in all
opinions, of the latter, our eastern extraction is only objected to,
_considered as Phœnician_; and there, I admit that the Colonel and his
pupil may get an easy triumph over their adversaries. For had the
_Phœnicians_ been the erectors of those Round Towers, _what was to prevent
their raising similar structures in Cornwall_? where it is indisputable
that they had trafficked for tin. In Spain we are certain that they had
established _a home_; and _why does this appear as free from every
evidence of columnar architecture as does the former place_? The same may
be said of other countries whither this people resorted, Citium, Crete,
Cadiz, and all the islands in the Mediterranean. _In no one of them is
there to be found a single edifice approaching, either in design or form,
the idea of a Round Tower!_[464]
The Phœnicians, therefore, can have no pretensions to the honour of those
memorials; nor, indeed, can their connection with Ireland be at all
recognised, further than that, as having been, at one time, masters of the
sea, _it is merely possible_ that the Tuath-de-danaans may have availed
themselves of their geographical information, and even consigned
themselves to their pilotage for a secure retreat, aloof from the
persecution of intolerance.
But as we see from the stanza quoted at page 396, that the
Tuath-de-danaans were themselves possessed of a navy; and as it is
indisputable that, long before the Phœnicians, the dynasty of the Persians
had swept the ocean in its widest breadth, there is no need for our giving
the Phœnicians credit even _for this service_, which it now appears could
be dispensed with.
An effort, however, has been advanced to identify their language with
ours, by the analysis of the fragment of a speech which occurs in one of
the plays of Plautus.[465] The idea was ingenious, but totally unfounded.
_Affinity_, undoubtedly, there does appear,--as there does between all the
ancient languages,--but nothing like _identity_; and the very circumstance
of its having a _distinct_ denomination assigned to it in Ireland, viz.
_Bearla-na-Fene_, or dialect of the Phœnicians (who traded here, it is
admitted), proves it to be different from our _local_ phraseology--the
Iranian _Pahlavi_, the polished elocution of the Tuath-de-danaans.
The Phœnicians, besides being a mercantile people, never had any monuments
of literary value, whereas the Irish are known to have abounded in such
from the earliest era.[466]
It is true that we have been denied the possession of alphabetic
characters before the time of St. Patrick: but by whom? By Bolandus; on a
false deduction from the writings of Ward, Colgan, Nennius, etc., who
state that this apostle was the first who gave the “abjectoria,” or
alphabet to our nation. Who says otherwise? But what alphabet was here
meant? The Latin, certainly, and no other. Until then the Irish were
strangers to the _Roman_ letters;[467] but that they were not to _written
characters_, or the _cultivation of them in every variety of literature_,
is evident from the very fact of St. Patrick himself having committed to
the flames no less than one hundred and eighty volumes of our ancient
theology;[468] as well as from the recorded instance of his disciple,
Benignus,--his successor also in the See of Armagh,--having, according to
Ward, written a work on the virtues of the Saint, half Latin and half
Irish, and which Jocelyne afterwards availed himself of, when more fully
detailing his biography.
It has been the custom in all ages with those who would pass as the
luminaries of their respective generations, to maintain that _letters_ and
their application were but a _recent_ discovery! Their antiquity, however,
is an historical fact, than which there can be no other better
authenticated. The Bible makes frequent allusion to the cultivation of
alphabetic cyphers--thus in Ex. xxiv. 4, it is said, “And Moses _wrote_
all the words of the Lord”; and in Josh. xxiv. 26, “And Joshua _wrote_
these words in the book of the law of God.”
Nor is it only to the _elementary_ part of literature, but to the very
highest and noblest department of literary research that we find the
ancients had arrived. In the history of Job, an acquaintance with
astronomy is quite apparent. The names of Arcturus, Orion, and the
Pleiades,[469] are distinctly notified in that elaborate composition.[470]
Could this have been without the aid of written characters? Could the
abstruse calculations involved in that pursuit be possibly carried on
without an intimate knowledge of notation and of numbers? Or, if superior
memory may effect it in a few cases, without such characters or legible
marks, how could the _results_ arrived at, and the steps by which they had
been attained, be for any length of time preserved, and their value handed
down to successive experimentalists, unless by the instrumentality of
expressive signs?
We find, accordingly, in the same treatise,[471] the art of writing
expressly named: Thus, “Oh that my words were now written! oh that they
were printed in a book! that they were graven with an iron pen and lead in
the rock for ever!” And that it was of long-continued usage is evident
from a preceding chapter,[472] where it is said, “_Enquire_, I pray thee,
of the _former age_, and prepare thyself for the _search_ of their
fathers!”
The alphabet which we had here, before the Roman abjectorium, is still
preserved, and called _Beth-luis-nion_,[473] from the names of its first
three letters, just as the English is denominated _A B C_, from a similar
cause, and the Greek _Alpha-bet_ from a like consideration.
Irish. Latin. English.
1 B [Letter] Beithe, Betulla, Birch.
2 L [Letter] Luis, Ornus, Wild ash.
3 N [Letter] Nion, Fraxinus, Ash.
4 S [Letter] Suil, Salix, Willow.
5 F [Letter] Fearn, Alnus, Alder.
6 H [Letter] Huath, Oxiacanthus, White thorn.
7 D [Letter] Duir, Ilex, Oak
8 T [Letter] Timne, Genist. Spin. Furze.
9 C [Letter] Coll, Corylus, Hazel.
10 M [Letter] Muin, Vitis, Vine.
11 G [Letter] Gort, Hedera, Ivy.
12 P [Letter] Peth-bhog Beite, or B mollified,
13 R [Letter] Ruis, Sambucus, Elder.
14 A [Letter] Ailm, Abies, Fir tree.
15 O [Letter] Onn, Genista, Broom.
16 U [Letter] Ur, Erix, or Erica, Heath.
17 E [Letter] Eghadh, Tremula, Aspen.
18 I [Letter] Iodha, Taxus, Yew.
This, you perceive, _falls short, by eight letters, of the number of the
Latin cyphers_, which could not have occurred if borrowed from that
people, and will therefore _stand_, independently and everlastingly, a
self-evident proof of the reverse.
[Illustration]
It is well known, that long prior to the arrival of Cadmus the Greeks were
in possession of alphabetic writing.[474] Diodorus states so, but adds
that a _deluge_ had swept all away. One thousand five hundred and fifty
before the era we count by, is agreed upon as the year in which Cadmus
visited Greece; and you have the authority of Pausanias, that he himself
had read an inscription upon a monument at Megara, the date of which was
1678 before our epoch, that is, one hundred and twenty-eight years before
Cadmus’s time.
Besides those ordinary letters of the _Beth-luis-nion_, the Irish made use
of various other _occult_ and secret forms of writing, which they called
_ogham_,[475] and of which I insert some specimens.
Among these you perceive the _arrow-headed figures_ whereof I have already
advertised you; and the _mysterious import_ of which reminded the
_initiated_ of the _solemn purchase of salvation by the cross_.
These are all peculiar and totally separate from any Phœnician alliance.
Instead, therefore, of my being _adverse_ to the _moderns_ as to the
Phœnician _bubble_, I am their _auxiliary_. But, Mr. Montmorency, are
there not other places in the East besides Phœnicia? And may not a people
leave the “sunny plains that gave them birth,” from other motives than
those of “choice”? And may not “Fidh Inis,” instead of being a name of
reproach, such as you affected, by associating it with “wintry and
uncultivated wilds,” be one of distinction and of renown? And though to
you its _authors_, as well as the _mystery of its import_, were an
_impenetrable_ secret, may it not, notwithstanding _what you see verified_
now, be made one of the engines exercised in the recovery of truth, to
prove the splendour and the refinement of our venerable ancestors?
It is to be hoped, therefore, that after this explanation, we shall hear
no more sarcasms upon this _favoured_ spot. Nor would the anticipation be
too great, that the whole _infidel_ host, with the gallant colonel himself
at their head, _becoming_ alive to the injustice of their former
disbelief, would now slacken their virulence, and if they will not _join_
in the acclamations of regenerated history, at least decently _withdraw_,
and let the lovers of truth, in security and happiness, celebrate its
triumph.
“The appellation of Britain,” says another _goodly_ (?) champion of this
_order_, “has been tortured for ages by the antiquarians, in order to
force a confession of origin and import for it. And erudition, running
wild in the mazes of folly, has eagerly deduced it from every word of a
similar sound, almost in every known language of the globe. But the Celtic
is obviously the only one that can lay any competent claim to it--and the
meaning of it may as easily be ascertained as its origin.”--And so,
accordingly, he proceeds to show, that “Breatin, Brydain, or Britain,” is
derived from a “Celtic word,” which signifies “separation or
division!”[476]
It is more than probable that I should have left Mr. Whittaker to his
vagaries, or rather his _clerical_ recreations, if he had not been
propelled by his all-illuminating reforms, to glance a ray upon us, here,
across St. George’s Channel.--“This,” says he, “has _equally_ given
denomination to the _tribes_ of _Ireland_, the nations of Caledonia, and
two or three islands on our coasts!”
“The original world is still retained in the Welch, Britain; and the
Irish, Breact,--anything divided or striped; in the Irish Bricth, a
fraction; the Irish Brisead, a rupture; and the Welch brig, a breach. And
it was equally pronounced Brict, or Brit (as the Icitus of Cæsar, or the
Itium of Strabo), Bris and Brig; and appears with this variety of
terminations, in the usual appellation of the islanders, Britanni, in the
present denomination of the Armorican Britons, and their language, Brez
and Brezonic, and in the name of Brigantes. Brit is enlarged into Briton,
or Brit-an in the plural, and Britan-ec in the relative adjective. And so
forms the appellation Britones, Britani, and Britanici; as Brig is either
changed into Briges, in the plural, and makes Allobroges, or Allo-broges,
the name of a tribe on the continent, and of all the Belgæ in the island,
is altered into Brigan and Brigants, and forms the denomination of
Brigantes.” And again, “the original word appears to have been equally
pronounced Brict, Brits, and Bricth, Breact, Breac, and Brig; and appears
to be derived from the Gallic Bresche, a rupture, the Irish Bris, to
break, and Brisead, a breach. And the word occurs with all this variety of
termination in the Irish Breattain or Breatin, Bretam, and in Breathnach,
Briotnach, and Breagnach, a Briton; in the Armorican names of Breton,
Breiz, and Brezonnec, for an individual, the country, and the language of
Armorica; in the Welch Brython and Brythoneg, the Britons and their
language; and in the ancient synonymous appellations of Brigantes and
Britanni.”
Doubtless the reader has been highly edified by this Britannic
dissertation! He is, I am sure, as thorough master of the subject, now, as
Mr. Whittaker himself!--can tell how many fractures, cross-lines, and
diagonals have been made upon _Britain_ ever since Noah’s _flood_! And as
he cannot fail, in consequence, being in love with the Reverend Author, I
will indulge his fondness by another _spark_ of enlightenment.
“At this period,” he resumes (three hundred years before Christ), “many of
the natives relinquishing their ancient seats to the Belgæ, found all the
central and northern parts of England already occupied, and transported
themselves into _the uninhabited isle_ of Ireland!”
I will now be understood as to the promise made some while ago,[477] in
reference to a definition for the word _modern_. A _modern_ then, be it
known, _is a philosopher_ (?), who fancies that _until three hundred years
before Christ, the whole world was in darkness! physical as well as
metaphysical! that it was even in a great measure uninhabited! by other
than the brute creation!--but that suddenly when ever any mighty feat was
to be achieved_ (in other words, whenever a modern theory was to be
bolstered up) _innumerable myrmidons armed cap-à-pié! full accoutred,
booted and spurred! used to gush forth from some obscure corner of the
earth!_ A miracle of production, to which even _Cadmus’s soldiers_ can
bear no parallel; for while the latter are located to a particular
_place_, and stated to have been generated by regular _seed_, even though
that was nothing more than a _tooth_ of a _dragon_,[478] the former burst
forward, nobody knows _whence_, nor will their _machiners_ condescend to
tell even so much as what may have been the _elements_ of their
composition!
To whom, however, is Mr. Whittaker beholden for this intellectual idea?
Verily, to a half-senseless poor friar,[479] a few centuries deceased, who
was no more competent--and no blame to him from his resources--to analyse
this question, than he was to stop the revolutions of the celestial orbs!
Yet _jejune_ and abortive as were Cirencester’s cerebral conceptions, he
was not less dogmatic in the utterance of them than was his imitator. “_It
is most certain_,” says he, “that the Damnii, Voluntii, Brigantes, Cangi,
and other nations, were descended from the Britons, and passed over
thither after Divitiacus, or Claudius, or Ostorius, or other victorious
generals had invaded their original countries. Lastly, the ancient
language, which resembles the old British and Gallic tongues, affords
another argument, as is well known to persons skilled in both languages.”
Now, by what authority, may I ask, is all this “most certain?” And by
authority I do not mean any quotation from previous historians. That I
waive, and should not here require it, if either _proof_ or _probability_
were tendered of the _occurrence_. But as none such is vouchsafed--as all
is mere _assertion_--and as I can _prove the exact contrary to have been
the actual fact_, is not _dogmatism_ too _mild_ a name to apply to the
_scribbler_ who _propounds_ such nonsense? And is not _servility_ too
_dignified_ an epithet to brand upon the _copyist_, who takes such _ipse
dixit_ evidence upon so intricate a proposition as gospel truth? and that
too when he must have absolute _demonstration_, and canvas every other
statement, emanating from that fraternity, with _the very eye of a
Lynceus_!
In the first place, then, the name _Damnii_ (to begin with the beginning)
is but a monkish Latinisation for _Danaans_; and _these I have established
to have been_ an eastern race, totally and universally distinct from
Britain, until upon their overthrow in Ireland they fled for shelter to
Scotland, whither on their way some straggling parties, reduced and
humiliated, took up their residence in the northern parts of England;
where, accordingly, to this hour we find evidences of their worship, such
as sculptured _crosses_,[480] and other _emblematic devices_, but _never a
Round Tower_, their impoverished circumstances not being now adequate to
such an expense.
The Brigantes, again, is another Latin metamorphosis for the inhabitants
of _Breo-cean_, in Spain, where the Phœnicians had fixed a colony, and
whence they doubtless had brought some portion with them to work the mines
at Cornwall. This _Breo-cean_ the Romans, in conformity with the genius of
their language, changed into _Bri_-gantia, which, however, was a very
allowable commutation, the letters _c_ and _g_ being always convertible,
and _tia_ nothing more than an ordinary termination.
Seneca well knew that the _Brigantes_ thus imported were a very different
extraction from the native _Britons_.
“Illi _Britannos_ ultra noti littora ponti,
Et cœruleos _Scuto-Brigantes_ dare Romuleis,”
says he, in his satirical invective upon the death of Claudius. Here, you
will observe, that the _Britons_ and the _Brigantes_ are _opposed to one
another_, and marked out as _distinct_ races. And to specify still further
the origin of the Brigantes is the epithet _Scuto_[481] prefixed thereto,
from _Scuitte_, the ancient mode of spelling _Scythia_.
Those Scoto-Brigantes were the persons who, having been driven from Spain
by the conquests of Sesostris, poured in with multitudinous inundation
upon the quietude of our _Tuath-de-danaans_, and wrested from them an
island which, during their blissful reign, had eclipsed in sanctity even
their _former_ Iran.[482]
The language which they spoke differed in nothing from the
Tuath-de-danaan, but that it was not quite so refined; and this feature of
similarity silences at once the _conjectures_ of _Stillingfleet_, Innes,
and their followers, who would make those _Scythians_ to be
_Scandinavians_, merely because the letter S occurs as the _initial_ and
_final_ of either name!
Why, sir, when the _Scandinavians_ did _really_ invade Ireland, which was
not until the early centuries of the Christian era, the great obstruction
to their progress was their _ignorance_ of our tongue; whereas, when the
_Scythians_ arrived here, many ages earlier, our legends, our traditions,
our histories, and our annals, _unanimously_ and _universally_ attest,
that they used the same conversable articulation with that of the
established dynasty.[483]
Where is the wonder, then, that we should find all the ancient names in
the north of England, correspond to a nicety with those of the Irish? And
which made Lhuydh, the author of the _Archæologia_, himself an Englishman,
declare, “_how necessary the Irish language is to those who shall
undertake to write of the antiquity of the isle of Britain_.”
But if Lhuydh was thus _candid_ in the avowal of his conviction, he was
not equally _successful_ in the discovery of the relationship. From want
of the true _touchstone_, he went on _hypothesising_! and came at last to
the _supposition_--“that the Irish must at one time have been in
possession of those English localities, and thence removed themselves into
Ireland”--_the exact opposite having been the fact_.
To atone for my long digression from Mr. Whittaker, and his _breakages_, I
will supply to you the derivations, as well of Britain as of Brigantia.
The former is compounded of _Bruit_, _tin_; and _tan_, a country abounding
in that metal, and corresponding to _Cassiteris_, assigned to it by the
Greeks: and Brigantia, as before explained, being but a formative from
Breo-cean, is compounded of _Breo_, which signifies fire; and _cean_, a
head or promontory, meaning the _head-land of fires_; or that whereon such
used to have been lighted for the convenience of mariners lying out at
sea.[484]
Neither the Scythians, therefore, nor the Celts, had connection
whatsoever, either of them, with the once-envied celebrity of this
“island.”[485] The latter were the persons who, under the name of
Fir-Bolgs, erected all the cromleachs spread over the country, the
accomplishment of which bespeaks, it is true, an acquaintance with
_mechanics_, of which the present artisans are altogether ignorant. And as
the original of their denomination has never been elucidated, I embrace
this opportunity of supplying the omission. It comes from _bolog_, which,
in the Irish language signifies a _paunch_; and _fir_, a _man_; so that
Fir-Bolg means the _big-bellied man_, being an evident allusion to their
bodily configuration: and to this day Bolcaig is the epithet applied,
vernacularly, to individuals of large girth or corpulent robustness,
exactly corresponding to what we are told by Cæsar, when describing the
tripartite division of Gaul, viz. that the Belgæ, who, in fact, were of
the same stock as our Fir-Bolgs, were the _stoutest bodied_, and the
_bravest otherwise_ of all its inhabitants.
The Scythian religion, which was Druidical, accorded with that of the
Fir-Bolgs, which was Celtic--not less as to modes of worship, than in
mutual aversion to that of the Iranians; and, accordingly, we find, that
when both conspired for the recovery of this country from the Iranians,
who had themselves wrested it from the Fir-Bolgs, antecedently, these
latter branching out into the septs of Cauci and Menapii, corresponding
to the kindred and cognominal tribes on the continent; and who, during the
occupancy of the Iranians--the interval of Ireland’s Hyperborean
renown--had retired to Arran[486] and the northern isles, were restored to
a partnership in the possession of the island, in return for the
assistance they lent the Scythians for its conquest: and this accounts for
that diversity of races which Ptolemy records, but which antiquarian
luminaries, unable to comprehend, took upon them to reject as altogether a
chimera.
As to the Iranians, the real Hibernians--the true Hyperborean
Tuath-de-danaans, or Magic-god Almoners--they were hurled from the throne,
their sanctified ceremonials trampled in the dust, their sacred harps,
which before used to swell to the praises of their Divinity, were now
desecrated for the inspiration of the Scythian warriors; and their divine
_Boreades_, who ere now composed canticles in adoration of Apollo, were
degraded to the secular and half-military occupation of Scythian _bards_.
The name of the island itself, from “Irin,” or the “Sacred island,” was
changed into Scuitte, that is, Scotia or Scythia, or the land of the
_Scythians_. Nor was it until the eleventh century of the present era,
that, _to remove the ambiguity which arose from the circumstance of there
being another country also called by this name_, Ireland assumed its
former name, Irin, as its people did Irenses, instead of Scoti.[487]
Yet in the general transmutation which so great a revolution bespeaks, we
behold the strictest regard paid to the literary fame and the mental
acquirements of those sages who had been ejected. They were retained as
the _instructors_ of the new establishment; and their refined precepts
tending gradually to soften the warlike propensities of this ferocious
group, the amalgamation became so complete, and the aristocracy of
intellect so recognised, that when religious dissensions were all
cancelled in the grave, many of them were able to trace their steps
backwards to the forfeited monarchy.
Of this number was Connachar-mor-mac-Nessan, that is, Connor
the-great-son-of-Nessan, styled indifferently _Feidlimidh_ and _Ollamh
Fodlah_, i.e. the _erudite man_ (the _Budhist_) and the _Doctor of
Budland_; and Brien, who ascended the Irish throne, A.D. 1014; and who,
after a succession of two thousand two hundred years, was the lineal
descendant of Brien, head of the Tuath-de-danaans; and this very
extraction, in the confusion of the names, was the circumstance which
occasioned the popular belief, not yet exploded, of his having been the
founder, by magic creation, in one single night, of those Round Towers of
his inheritance! The mistake, however, is of value, as it is a collateral
evidence that those edifices have been attributed to their real authors;
and the anachronism will be excused, seeing that there is nothing more
common than to assign to one Hercules the exploits of another.
Others of this colony, who could not brook the yoke, betook themselves on
their downfall to Scotland, and built there the two round temples of
Brechin and Abernethy, besides others that have disappeared; from thence,
however, they were again dislodged by the barbarous Picts, and obliged to
fly for shelter to the Highland fastnesses. These are they whom Macculloch
and others have misrepresented as Celts. During their sway in that
country, they called it also by the name of Iran or Eran, as the Scotch
language is, to this day, called Irish, or Erse. The name of Scoitte,
_i.e._ Scotia, was given it afterwards by the Picts, in compliment to
_this_ island, which had furnished them with wives, and otherwise joined
their fraternity.[488]