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position and size, the rites of sun-worship practised by its people, their Round Temple, their study of the heavens, and the skill of their musicians on the harp, might sufficiently warrant the assumption that Ireland was the island so characterized, did not the too fanciful colouring of the whole description rather disqualify it for the purposes of sober testimony, and incline us to rank this Hyperborean island of the historian along with his Isle of Panchæa and other such fabulous marvels. At the same time, nothing is more probable, than that the vague, glimmering knowledge which the Greeks caught up occasionally from Phoenician merchants, respecting the sun-worship and science of the Sacred Island, Ierne, should have furnished the writers referred to by Diodorus with the groundwork of this fanciful tale. The size attributed to the island, which is described as "not less than Sicily," is, among the many coincidences with Ireland, not the least striking; and, with respect to its position and name, we find, that so late as the time of the poet Claudian, the Scoti or Irish were represented as in the immediate neighbourhood of the Hyperborean Seas.*

But the fragment of antiquity the most valuable for the light it throws upon this point, is that extracted from an ancient geographer, by Strabo, in which we are told of an island near Britain, where sacrifices were offered to Ceres and Proserpine, in the same manner as at Samothrace. From time immemorial, the small Isle of Samothrace, in the Egean, was a favourite seat of idolatrous worship and resort; and on its shores the Cabiric Mysteries had been established by the Phoenicians. These rites were dedicated to the deities who presided over navigation; and it was usual for mariners to stop at this island on their way to distant seas, and offer up a prayer at its shrines for propitious winds and skies. From the words of the geographer quoted by Strabo, combined with all the other evidence adduced, it may be inferred that Ireland had become the Samothrace, as it were, of the western seas; that thither the ancient Cabiric gods had been wafted by the early colonizers of that region; and that, as the mariner used on his departure from the Mediterranean to breathe a prayer in the Sacred Island of the East, so, in the seas beyond the Pillars, he found another Sacred Island, where to the same tutelary deities of the deep his vows and thanks were offered on his safe arrival.

In addition to all this confluence of evidence from high authentic sources, we have likewise the traditions of Ireland herself,-pointing invariably in the same eastern direction,-her monuments, the names of her promontories and hills, her old usages and rites, all bearing indelibly the same oriental stamp. In speaking of traditions, I mean not the fables which may in later times have been grafted upon them; but those old, popular remembrances, transmitted from age to age, which, in all countries, furnish a track for the first footsteps of history, when cleared of those idle weeds of fiction by which in time they become overgrown.

According to Strabo, it was chiefly from Gades that the Phoenicians fitted out their expeditions to the British Isles; but the traditions of the Irish look to Gallicia as the quarter from whence their colonies sailed, and vestiges of intercourse between that part of Spain and Ireland may be traced far into past times. The traditionary history of the latter country gives an account of an ancient Pharos, or light-house, erected in the neighbourhood of the port now called Corunna, for the use of navigators on their passage between that coast and Ireland; and the names of the tribes marked by Ptolemy, as

Rowland insists it can be no other than his own Isle of Anglesea; while Toland fixes its site in the Western Isles of Scotland; and the great Swedish scholar Rudbeck, places it boldly in the peninsula of Scandinavia.

* Scotumque vago mucrone secutus

Fregit Hyperboreas remis audacibus undas.

De III. Cons. Honor. v. 55.

Marcianus Heracleota, too, describes Hibernia as bounded on the north by the Hyperborean Sea. † Φησιν είναι νησον προσ τη Βρεττανική, καθ' ην όμοια τοις εν Σαμοθρακη τερι την Δημητραν και την Κόρην ιεροποιείται, lib. iv.

L'ile de Samothrace acquit une grande célébrité chez toutes les nations maritimes, par la réputation qu'elle avoit d'être consacrées spécialement aux Divinités tutelaires des navigateurs. On alloit y prier les Dieux d'accorder des vents favourables, et solliciter des apparitions ou Epiphanies des Dioscurés."-Dupuis, Orig. de tous les Cultes, tom iv. première partie. See, for the appearance of these twin stars, or fires, to Orpheus and his Argonautic companions at Samothrace, Diodorus, lib. 4. In some of the old Irish traditions, those African sea-rovers, called Fomorians, who are said to have visited these shores in ancient times, are represented as worshipping certain stars, which had "derived a power from the God of the Sea."-See Keating, p. 87.

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That the Atlantian, or Cabiric, superstition prevailed in Ireland, there cannot be a doubt."—Rev. G. L. Faber, On the Cabiric Mysteries, vol. ii. There is a remarkable coincidence between this tradition and an account given by Ethicus, the cosmo. grapher, of a lofty Pharos, or light house, standing formerly on the sea coast of Gallicia, and serving as a beacon in the direction of Britain:-"Secundus angulus intendit, ubi Brigantia Civitas sita est Gallecæ, et altissimum Pharum, et inter pauca memorandi operis ad speculam Britanniæ." Whether the translation I have given of the last three words of this passage convey their real meaning, I know not; but they have been hitherto pronounced unintelligible. The passage is thus noticed by Casaubon, in a note on Strabo, lib. 3- Ethicus in Hispaniæ descriptione altissimi cujusdam Fari meminit."

inhabiting those parts of the Irish coast facing Gallicia, prove that there was a large infusion of Spanish population from that quarter.

So irresistible, indeed, is the force of tradition, in favour of a Spanish colonization, that every new propounder of an hypothesis on the subject is forced to admit this event as part of his scheme. Thus, Buchanan, in supposing colonies to have passed from Gaul to Ireland, contrives to carry them first to the west of Spain;* and the learned Welsh antiquary, Lhuyd, who traces the origin of the Irish to two distinct sources, admits one of those primitive sources to have been Spanish. In the same manner, a late writer,t who, on account of the remarkable similarity which exists between his country's Round Towers and the Pillar-temples of Mazanderan, deduces the origin of the Irish nation from the banks of the Caspian, yields so far to the current of ancient tradition, as, in conducting his colony from Iran to the West, to give it Spain for a resting-place. Even Innes, one of the most acute of those writers who have combated the Milesian pretensions of the Irish, yet bows to the universal voice of tradition in that country, which, as he says, peremptorily declares in favour of a colonization from Spain.

CHAPTER II.

ANTIQUITY OF THE IRISH PEOPLE.

In those parts of the Spanish coasts with which the Irish were early conversant, the Phoenicians became intermixed with the original race, or Celts; and it would appear, from the mixed character of her ancient religion, that Ireland was also peopled from the same compound source.

The religion the Celts brought with them to this island, was the same, we may take for granted, with that which their kindred tribes introduced into Spain, Britain, and Gaul. That corruption of the primitive modes of adoration into which the Canaanites early lapsed, by converting into idols the rude stones and pillars set up by their fathers but as sacred memorials, and transferring to inanimate symbols of the Deity the veneration due only to himself this most ancient superstition of which the annals of human faith bear record, is still traceable in the old traditions and monuments of Ireland. The sacred grove and well-the circle of erect stones surrounding either the altar or the judgmentseat-the unhewn pillars, adored, as symbols of the Sun, by the Phoenicians-the sacred heaps, or Carnes, dedicated to the same primitive worship-the tomb-altars, called Cromlech, supposed to have been places as well of sepulture as of sacrifice-and, lastly, those horrible rites in which children were the "burnt offerings," which the Jewish idolators perpetrated in a place called from thence the Valley of Shrieking, while, in Ireland, the scene of these frightful immolations bore the name of Magh-Sleacth, or the Place of

*The opinion of Buchanan on the point will be found worthy of attention. "It is," he says, "an unvarying tradition, and with many marks of truth to confirm it, that a multitude of Spaniards, whether driven from their homes by the more powerful among their fellow-countrymen, or, on account of the increase of population, emigrating of themselves, did pass over into Ireland, and take possession of the places neigh. bouring to that island." He adds farther: "It is not probable that the Spaniards, leaving Ireland at their backs, a country nearer to them, and of a milder temperature,-should have landed first in Albyn; but rather that, first making their descent on Hibernia, they should afterwards have sent colonies to Britain."Lib. ii. c. 17.

Preface to his Glossography.-In one of his letters to Mr. Rowland, Lhuyd says, in speaking of the Irish, "For, notwithstanding their histories (as those of the origin of other nations) be involved in fabulous accounts, yet that there came a Spanish colony into Ireland is very manifest." O'Brien, also, in the Preface to his Dictionary, follows the same views:-"The fact of the old Spanish language having been brought very anciently into Ireland is not the less certain, and that by a colony of the old Spaniards, who co-inha. bited with the Gadelians."

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Popular History of Ireland, by Mr. Whitty, part i.

Since the Irish tradition will absolutely have the inhabitants of that country come from Spain."— Critcal Essay, vol. ii. dissert. i. chap. 3. A no less determined opponent of the Milesian history, though far inferior to Innes in learning and sagacity, concedes, also, on this point to traditional authority. "At the same time, still farther be it from me to deny my assent to the tradition that a people, coming last from Spain, did settle here at a very early period."-—Cambell's Strictures on the Ecclesiastical and Literary History of Ireland, sect. 4.

Jeremiah, vii. 31, 32. This valley was also named Tophet, from the practice of beating the drums, during the ceremony, to drown the cries of the children sacrificed in the fire to Moloch.

Slaughter, of all these known and acknowledged features of the ancient Celtic worship, of that superstition which spread wherever the first races of men dispersed themselves, there remain, to this day, undoubted traces and testimonies, not only in the traditions and records of Ireland, but in those speaking monuments of antiquity which are still scattered over her hills and plains.

Combined with this old and primitive system of idolatry are to be found, also, a number of rites and usages belonging evidently to much later and less simple modes of worship. There may be traced, indeed, in the religious remains of the Irish, the marks of three distinct stages of superstition; namely, that first rude ritual which their Celtic progenitors brought with them from the East; next, the introduction of images somewhat approaching the human shape; and, thirdly, those monuments of a more refined system of fire-worship which still embellish this country. While some of their rites and names of deities are traceable directly to the Phoenicians, there are other religious customs which seem to have been derived, through the means of this people, from Persia. It was on the whole the description of religion likely to spring up in a country into which a variety of modes of devotion and doctrine had been imported; and it is well known that the Phoenicians, with that utter indifference to diversity of worship which forms one of the most striking differences between the Pagan and the Christian religionist, set no limit to the varieties of creed and ritual, with which, in their career over the globe, they furnished their colonies. Being in constant communication with Persia, for the sake of the Eastern trade, it was even a part of the commercial policy of this people to encourage an intercourse, on religious subjects, between their Eastern and Western customers, of which they themselves should be made the channel, and so convert it to their own advantage in the way of trade.

The mixed nature, indeed, of the creed of the ancient Irish seems to be intimated in their mode of designating their own priesthood, to whom they applied as well the Persian as the Celtic denominations; calling them indifferently either Magi, or Druids. Thus, those Magi described, in the Lives of St. Patrick, as warning the king against the consequences of the new faith, are, in the ancient Hymn of Fiech, on the same subject, denominated Druids.

The great object of Phoenician adoration, the Sun, was, under the same name of Baal, or Bel, the chief deity of the Irish. Even the very title of Beel-Samen, or Lord of Heaven, by which the Phoenicians, with outstretched hands, invoked their God, was preserved in the Pagan worship of Ireland; and the Festival of Samhin, or Heaven, the great Cabiric divinity, (honoured, under the same name at Samothrace,) marked one of the four divisions of the Irish year. That the worship of the Sun formed a part of the Pagan system which St. Patrick found established on his arrival, appears from the following passage of his Confession:-"That Sun whom we behold, rises daily, at the command of God, for our use. Yet will he never reign, nor shall his splendour endure; and all those who adore him will descend wretchedly into punishment. But we believe and adore the true Sun, Christ." Even to our own days the names of places,-those significant memorials, by which a whole history is sometimes conveyed in a single word,-retain vestiges of the ancient superstition of the land, and such names as Knoc-greine and Tuam Greine, "Hills of the Sun," still point out the high places and cairns where, ages since, the solar rites were solemnized. It will be found, in general, that names formed from the word Grian, which, still in the Irish, as in the old Celtic language, signifies the Sun, and from which, evidently, the epithet Grynæus, applied to Apollo, was derived, marked such places as were once devoted to the solar worship. Thus Cairne-Grainey, or the Sun's Heap, Granny's Bed, corrupted from Grain Beacht, the Sun's Circle, &c.

"Magh Sleacth, so called from an idol of the Irish, named Crom-Cruach-a stone capped with gold, about which stood twelve other rough stones. Every people that conquered Ireland (that is, every colony esta. blished in Ireland) worshipped this deity, till the arrival of St. Patrick. They sacrificed the first-born of every species to this deity; and Tighernmas Mac Follaigh King of Ireland, commanded sacrifices to this deity on the day of Saman, and that both men and women should worship him prostrated on the ground, till they drew blood from their noses, foreheads, ears, and elbows. Many died with the severity of this worship, and hence it was called Magh-Sleacth."-Vet. MSS. quoted in the Collectan. de Reb. Hibern. No. XII. † See Borlase, book ii. ch. 23. "On the Resemblance betwixt the Druids and the Persians."

· Τας χείρας ορεγειν εις τους ουρανους προς τον Ήλιον.—Euseb. Preparat. lib. i. c. 7.

§ Τούτον γαρ φησι θεον ενόμιζον μόνον ουρανου κυριον ΒΕΕΛΣΑΜΗΝ καλούντες, ο εστι παρά Φοίνιξι Κύριος Ougavou.-Philo. Byb. ex Sanchoniath. See Orellius on this passage, for his view of Sanchoniathon's account of the progress of idolatry, "a cultu arborum et plantarum ad solis astrorumque cultum, a Fetischismo ad Sabæismum."

Nam Sol iste quem videmus Deo jubente, propter nos quotidiè oritur, sed nunquam regnabit, neque permanebit splendor ejus, sed et omnes qui adorant eum in pœnam miseri malè devenient. Nos autem credimus et adoramus Solem verum, Christum.-St. Patricii Confessio.

Rer. Hibern. Scriptor prol. 1 54.

1

From the same associations, a point of land, in the neighbourhood of Wexford, is called Grenor, or the Place of the Sun's Fire; and the ancient town of Granard, where there existed, in the fifth century, a sacred well of the Druids, and where also St. Patrick is said to have overturned an altar of the Sun, and erected a church in its place, was so named from being a site of the ancient Irish worship. On like grounds, the appellation of Grange is supposed to have been given to that curious cavern near Drogheda, which, from the manner of its construction, as well as from the pyramidal obelisk* found in its recesses, is thought to have been consecrated, like the caves of the Mithraic worship, to the Sun. Among various other monuments of solar worship through Ireland, may be noticed the remains of a cromlech, or tomb-altar, near Cloyne, which bore, originally, the name of Carig Croith, or the Sun's Rock.

Wherever the sun has been made an object of adoration, the moon has naturally shared in the worship; and, accordingly, in Ireland this luminary was adored under the sacred name of Re. While some of their mountains, too, appear to have been dedicated to the sun, we meet with Slieve-Mis, in the county of Antrim, signifying Mountains of the Moon. Those golden ornaments, in the shape of a crescent, which have been found frequently in the Irish bogs, are supposed to have been connected with this lunar worship, and to have been borne by the Druids in those religious ceremonies which took place on the first quarter of the moon's age.

The worship of fire, once common to all the religions of the world, constituted also a part of the old Irish superstitions; and the Inextinguishable Fire of St. Bridget was but a transfer to Christian shrines and votaries of a rite connected, through long ages, with the religious feelings of the people. Annually, at the time of the vernal equinox, the great festival of La Baal-tinne, or the Day of the Baal-Fire, was celebrated; and through every district of Ireland it was strictly ordered that, on that night, all fires should be extinguished; nor were any, under pain of death, to be again lighted till the pile of sacrifices in the palace of Tara was kindled. Among the Persians the same ceremony, according to Hyde, still prevails: after their festival of the 24th of April, the domestic fires are every where extinguished, nor would any good believer rekindle them but by a taper lighted at the dwelling of the priest. A similar relic of Oriental paganism exists also in Jerusalem, where, annually, at the time of Easter, a sacred fire is supposed to descend into the Holy Sepulchre, and of the tapers lighted at its flame a considerable traffic is made by the priests. To this day the custom of making bonfires on the first night of May prevails throughout Ireland;-the change of the period of the festival from the vernal equinox to the commencement of May having been made soon after the introduction of Christianity, in order to guard against its interference with the holy season of Lent.

With the worship of fire, that of water was usually joined by the Gentiles; and we find, in like manner, particular fountains and wells were held sacred among the Irish. Even that heresy, or, at least, variety of opinion, which is known to have prevailed among the Easterns on this subject, existed also in Ireland; as we are told, in the Tripartite Life of St. Patrick, of a certain Magus, or Druid, who regarded water alone as an object of reverence, considering fire to be an evil genius. Hence, by his own wish, it is added, he was buried under a stone in a certain well, in Mayo, which had been long venerated by the people under the name of the King of the Waters. In another history of St.

It was to a stone, we know, of this pyramidal shape, that the Phoenicians of Emesa offered up their vows, invoking it, as a symbol of the sun, by the mystic name Elagabalus.-See Gibbon, vol. i. ch. 6.—This stone, like most of those dedicated to the sun, was black; and it is rather remarkable that, at Stonehenge, which is supposed in general to have been a temple consecrated to the sun, the altar-stone has been lately discovered, on examination, to be black.

†The monument at the New Grange exactly points out to us the manner in which the Mithratic cavern is connected wih the Mithratic pyramid."-"The narrow passage, in fact, and the stone bowls of this Irish grotto are merely the counterpart of those in the cave of Trophonius, the pagodas of Hindostan, and the pyramids of Egypt."-Faber, on the Cabiric Mysteries, vol. ii. The reverend writer adds, that "the island of Ogygia, which Plutarch affirms to lie due west of Britian, must certainly be Ireland, and no other."

I See, for a description of these crescents, Collectan. No. XIII. Gough's Camden, vol. iii.-A bas-relief, found at Autun, of which there is an engraving given by Montfaucon, represents a Gallic Druid holding in his right hand a crescent resembling the moon at six days old; "which," adds Montfaucon, “ agrees so exactly with that religious care of the Druids not to celebrate the ceremony of the mistletoe except on the sixth day of the moon, that I think it cannot be doubted but that this crescent, which is of the size of the moon at that age, respects that rite of the Druids.”—Antiq. Expliq, vol. ii. part. ii. book v.

To this day, the annual ren; which the farmers pay to their landlords, in the month of May, is called by them Cios-na-Bealtinne, or the rent of Baal's fire. See account of this ceremony, from Chardin, in Dupuis, Origine des Cultes, tom. v. 169. "Tout le peuple crédule achète aussitôt de ces bougies," This mode of increasing their income, says Hyde, is resorted to by them in addition to their tithes :-"Præter decimas excogitarunt alium sacerdotalem reditum augendi modum."

TL. 2. c. 20" This reminds us of the old Oriental contests between the worshippers of fire and those of water, and leads to a conclusion that some connexion had existed between Ireland and remote parts of the East."-Lanigan, Ecclesiastical History of Ireland, vol. i. chap. 5.

Patrick it is mentioned, as the motive of this holy man for visiting Slane, that he had heard of a fountain there which the Magi honoured, and made offerings to it as to a god.* Even in our own times the Irish are described, by one well versed in their antiquities,f as being in the habit of visiting fountains, or wells, more particularly such as are in the neighbourhood of an old blasted oak, or an upright unhewn stone, and hanging rags upon the branches of the trees. When asked their reason for this practice, the answer of the oldest among them is generally, we are told, to the effect that their ancestors did the same, and that it was designed as a preventive against the sorceries of the Druids. There is scarcely a people throughout the East, among whom this primitive practice, of hanging pieces torn from their garments upon the branches of particular trees, has not been found to prevail. The wild-olive of Africa,‡ and the Sacred Tree of the Hindus, bear usually strung upon them this simple sort of offering; and more than one observant traveller in the East has been reminded, by this singular custom, of Ireland.

There are, however, some far less innocent coincidences to be remarked between the Irish and Eastern creeds. It is, indeed, but too certain that the sacrifice of human victims formed a part of the Pagan worship in Ireland, as it did in every country where the solar god, Baal, was adored. On the eve of the Feast of Samhin, all those whom, in the month of March preceding, the Druids had, from their tribunal on Mount Usneach, condemned to death, were, in pursuance of this solemn sentence, burned between two fires.]] In general, however, as regarded both human creatures and brutes, the ceremony of passing them between two fires appears to have been intended not to affect life, but merely as a mode of periodical purification. Thus, in an old account of the Irish rites, it is said, "The Druids lighted up two blazing fires, and having performed incantations over them, compelled the herds of cattle to pass through them, according to a yearly custom." But it cannot be denied that, to a late period, some of the most horrible features of the old Canaanite superstition continued to darken and disgrace the annals of the Irish; for, like the Israelite idolaters, not only did they "burn incense in the high places, and on the hills, and under every green tree," but also the denounced crime of Manasseh and Ahaz, in "causing their children to pass through the fire," was but too faithfully acted over again in Pagan Ireland. A plain, situated in the district at present called the county of Leitrim, to which they gave the name of Magh-Sleacth, or Field of Slaughter, was the great scene, as already has been stated, of these horrors of primæval superstition; for there, on the night of Samhim, the same dreadful tribute which the Carthaginians are known to have paid to Saturn, in sacrificing to him their first-born children,** was by the Irish offered up to their chief idol, Crom-Cruach.tt This frightful image, whose head was of gold, stood surrounded by twelve lesser idols, representing, it is most probable, the signs of the zodiac;-the connexion of sun-worship with astronomy

* Sir W. Betham's Irish Antiquarian Researches, Append. 29.

† Letters of Columbanus, by Dr. O'Connor, let. iii.

The Argali.-Travels in Europe and Africa, by Colonel Keating. "A traveller," observes this writer, "will see precisely the like in the west of Ireland." Mungo Park, too, speaks of the large tree called Neema Tooba, "decorated with innumerable rags and scraps of cloth," and which "nobody now presumed to pass without hanging up something."

§ See Sir William Ouseley's interesting Travels through Persia, vol. ii. Append. No. 9.-Among the trees thus decorated, seen by Sir William in the vale of Abdui, and elsewhere, he mentions one in the neighbour. hood of a stone pillar; bringing to his recollection, he says, various remains which he had seen in Wales and Ireland.

From an old Irish manuscript in the possession of the learned antiquary, Lhuyd, cited by Dr. O'Connor. See also O'Brien's Irish Dictionary, Beol, tinne, where, however, the translation is somewhat different from that of Dr. O'Connor.

The superstition of purifying between two fires appears to have been as universal as it was ancient. "Les adorateurs de feu, dit Maimonide (lib. iii. c. 38.,) publièrent qui ceux qui ne feraient point passer leurs enfans par le feu, les exposoient au danger de mourir."-Dupuis, tom. iii. p. 740. "The narrative of an embassy from Justin to the Khákàn, or emperor, who then resided in a fine vale near the Irtish, mentions the Tartarian custom of purifying the Roman ambassadors by conducting them between two fires.'"-Sir. W. Jones, Fifth Discourse, on the Tartars. "The more ignorant Irish," says Ledwich, "still drive their cattle through these fires as an effectual means of preserving them from future accidents;" and Martin tells us that the natives of the Western Isles of Scotland, which are known to have been peopled from Ireland, "when they would describe a man as being in a great strait, or difficulty, say that he is between two fires of Bel." The same superstitious practice was observed at the festival of the goddess Pales, at Rome. "Per flammas saluisse pecus, saluisse colonos."—Ovid. Fast. lib. iv. Of this old Roman ceremony, Niebuhr thus speaks:"The Festival of Pales, the 21st, when the country people and the earliest inhabitants of Rome used to purify themselves by passing through a strong fire, as our ancestors used to kindle fires on May day." **Diodor. Sicul. lib. 20.

tt Dinseanchus, MS., quoted Rer. Hibernic. Script, prol. 1. 22. This image was destroyed by St. Patrick."In commemoration," says O'Flaherty, "of this memorable annihilation of idolatry, I believe, the last Sunday in summer is, by a solemn custom, dedicated throughout Ireland, and commonly called Domnach Cromcruach, that is, the Sunday of Black Crom; I suppose on account of the horrid and deformed appearance of this diabolical spectre."-Ogygia, part iii. ch. xxii. "Cromcruach," says Keating, "was the same god that Zoroaster worshipped in Greece." To this one flighty assertion of Keating may be traced the origin, perhaps, of all those wild notions and fancies which Vallancey afterwards promulgated.

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