having been, in all countries, a natural consequence of that creed, insomuch that science, no less than poetry, may be said to have profited largely by superstition.

How far those pillar-temples, or Round Towers, which form so remarkable a part of Ireland's antiquities, and whose history is lost in the night of time, may have had any connexion with the Pyrolatry, or Fire-worship, of the early Irish, we have no certain means of determining. That they were looked upon as very ancient, in the time of Giraldus, appears from the tale told by him of the fishermen of Lough Neagh pointing to strangers, as they sailed over that lake, the tall, narrow, ecclesiastical round towers under the water,* supposed to have been sunk there from the time of the inundation by which the lake was formed. This great event,-the truth or falsehood of which makes no difference in the fact of the period assigned to it,-is by the annalist Tigernach referred to the year of Christ 62; thus removing the date of these structures to far too remote a period to admit of their being considered as the work of Christian hands.

The notion, that they were erected by the Danes, is unsupported even by any plausible grounds. In the time of Giraldus, the history of the exploits of these invaders was yet recent; and had there been any tradition, however vague, that they were the builders of these towers, the Welsh slanderer would not have been slow to rob Ireland of the honour. But, on the contrary, Giraldus expressly informs us that they were built "in the manner peculiar to the country." Had they been the work of Danes, there would assuredly have been found traces of similar edifices, either in their own Scandinavian regions, or in the other countries of Europe which they occupied. But not a vestige of any such buildings has been discovered, nor any tradition relating to them; and while, in Ireland, Round Towers, or the remains of them, are found in places which the Danes never possessed, in some of the principal seats of these people, such as Waterford and Wexford, no building of the kind has been ever known to exist.

In despair of being able to ascertain at what period, and by whom, they were constructed, our antiquaries are reduced to the task of conjecturing the purposes of their construction. That they may have been appropriated to religious uses in the early ages of the church, appears highly probable from the policy adopted by the first Christians in all countries, of enlisting in the service of the new faith the religious habits and associations of the old. It is possible, therefore, that they might, at some period, have been used as stations for pilgrims; for to this day, it appears, the prayers said at such stations are called Turrish prayers. Another of the notions concerning them is, that they were places of confinement for penitents. But, besides the absurdity of the supposition, that a people, whose churches were all constructed of wood and wicker, should have raised such elaborate stone towers for the confinement of their penitents, we have means of knowing the penitential discipline of the early Christian Irish, and in no part of it is such a penance as that of imprisonment in a Round Tower enjoined. The opinion of Harris, that they were intended, like the pillars of the Eastern Stylites for the habitation of solitary anchorets, is in so far, perhaps, deserving of notice, as showing how naturally the eye turns to the East, in any question respecting the origin of Irish antiquities. It is pretended that the models of these Inclusorii,―as, according to this hypothesis, the towers are supposed to have been,-were brought from the East by some of those Irish monks who are known to have visited the places of the Holy Land. But of any such Oriental importation, at that period, there exists no record whatever; and Adamnan, an Irish writer of the seventh century, who, in a work taken down by him from the lips of a French traveller to the East, gives an account of the Tombs of the Patriachs and other holy wonders, makes no mention of the abodes of these Pillar Saints, nor of the models which they are alleged to have furnished for his country's Round Towers. It may be mentioned, too, as one of the points in which the resemblance here assumed is wanting,

"Piscatores Turres istas, quæ, more patriæ, arctæ sunt et altæ, necnon et rotundæ, sub undis manifeste, sereno tempore, conspiciunt."-Giralds. Cambrens. Dist. II. c. 9.

The chief supporters of this opinion, as well as of the notion that these towers were intended for belfries, are Molyneux (Natural History of Ireland, Discourse concerning the Danish Mounts, &c,) and Dr. Ledwich, in his Antiquities As an instance of the vitality of a misrepresentation, it may be noticed that Lynch, the author of the Defence of Ireland against Giraldus, was the first who mentioned, and only upon hearsay, that the Danes were the builders of the Round Towers.-" primi erexisse dicuntur." The Franciscan, Walsh, professing to copy Lynch, converts into certainty what Lynch gave but as a report; and on this authority, so misrepresented, the learned Molyneux, and others, found their conclusions. See, on this subject, Dr. Lanigan, chap. 32.

1 "A pilgrimage is called Turrish in Irish, and prayers said by pilgrims at stations are called Turrish prayers; a term peculiar to this country, and perhaps allusive to these towers."-William Tighe, Survey of the Co. of Kilkenny.

This opinion seems to have been first proposed by a Dean Richardson, of Belturbet, from whom it was taken by Harris, who has endeavoured to make it appear probable."-Lanigan, Ecclesiast. Hist. chap. 32. The same opinion was adopted also by Doctor Milner.-Letters from Ireland, Let. 14.

that Simon Stylites, and his fanatical imitators, lived upon, not within, their high columns.

To the notion that our Irish structures were intended for watch-towers or beacons, there are the most conclusive objections;-their situation being frequently on low grounds, where they are overlooked by natural elevations,* and the apertures at their summit not being sufficiently large to transmit any considerable body of light. Their use occasionally as belfries may be concluded from the term, Clocteach, applied to some of them; but, besides that their form and dimensions would not admit of the swing of a moderately sized bell, the very circumstance of the door or entrance being usually from eight or ten to sixteen feet above the ground, proves them to have been in no degree more fitted or intended for belfries, than for any of the other various modern uses assigned to them.

In the ornaments of one or two of these towers, there are evident features of a more modern style of architecture, which prove them to have been added to the original structure in later times; and the same remark applies to the crucifix and other Christian emblems, which are remarked on the tower at Swords, and also on that of Donoughmore.† The figures of the Virgin and St. John, on one of the two Round Towers of Scotland, must have been, likewise, of course, a later addition; unless, as seems likely from the description of the arches in which these figures are contained, the structure itself is entirely of recent date, and, like the tower of Kineth, in Ireland, a comparatively modern imitation of the old Pagan pattern.

As the worship of fire is known, unquestionably, to have formed a part of the ancient religion of the country, the notion that these towers were originally fire-temples, appears the most probable of any that have yet been suggested. To this it is objected, that enclosed structures are wholly at variance with that great principle of the Celtic religion, which considers it derogatory to divine nature to confine their worship within the limits of walls and roofs;-the refined principle upon which the Magi incited Xerxes to burn the temples of the Greeks. It appears certain, however, that, at a later period, the use of fire-temples was adopted by the Persians themselves; though, at the same time, they did not the less continue to offer their sacrifices upon the hills and in the open air, employing the Pyreia introduced by Zoroaster, as mere repositories of the sacred fire.‡ A simple altar, with a brazier burning upon it, was all that the temple contained, and at this they kindled the fire for their worship on the high places. To this day, as modern writers concerning the Parsees inform us, the part of the temple called the Place of Fire, is accessible only to the priests; and on the supposition that our towers were, in like manner, temples in which the sacred flame was kept safe from pollution, the singular circumstance of the entrance to them being rendered so difficult by its great height from the ground is at once satisfactorily explained.

But there is yet a far more striking corroboration of this view of the origin of the Round Towers. While in no part of Continental Europe has any building of a similar construction been discovered, there have been found, near Bhaugulpore, in Hindostan, two towers, which bear an exact resemblance to those of Ireland. In all the peculiarities of their shape, the door or entrance, elevated some feet above the ground, the four windows near the top, facing the cardinal points, and the small rounded roof,-these Indian temples are, to judge by the description of them, exactly similar to the Round Towers; and, like them also, are thought to have belonged to a form of worship now extinct and even forgotten. One of the objections brought against the notion of the Irish Towers having been fire-temples, namely, that it was not necessary for such a purpose to raise them to so great a height, T is abundantly answered by the description given of some

* In the deep and secluded valley of Glendalough stands one of the most interesting, from its romantic position, of all these Round Towers. † A print of this tower at Swords, with a crucifix on the top, may be seen at the end of Molyneux's work.

"Cependant, tous les auteurs, Arabes et Persans, cités par M. Hyde et M. D'Herbelot, attribuent à Zerdusht l'établissement des Pyrées."-Foucher, Memoires de l'Acad. tom xxix. M. Foucher has shown, that the two apparently inconsistent systems,-that of Zoroaster, which introduced fire temples, and the old primitive mode of worshipping in the open air,-both existed together. "Pour lever cette contradiction apparente, il suffit d'observer que les Pyrées n'etoient pas des temples proprement dits, mais de simples oratoires, d'où l'on tiroit le feu pour sacrifier sur les montagnes."

Anquetil du Perron, Zend Avesta, tom. ii.

Voyages and Travels, by Lord Valentia, vol. ii.—"I was much pleased," says his lordship, "with the sight of two very singular Round Towers, about a mile north-west of the town. They much resemble those buildings in Ireland, which have hitherto puzzled the antiquaries of the sister kingdoms, excepting that they are more ornamented. It is singular that there is no tradition concerning them, nor are they held in any respect by the Hindoos. The Rajah of Jyanegur considers them as holy, and has erected a small building to shelter the great number of his subjects who annually come to worship here."

Dr. Milner, Tour in Ireland, letter xiv. "The tower at Kildare is calculated to be four feet loftier than the pillar of Trajan at Rome."-D'Allon.

of the Pyrea, or fire-temples of the Guebres. Of these, some, we are told, were raised to so high a point as near 120 feet,* the height of the tallest of the Irish towers; and an intelligent traveller, in describing the remains of one seen by him near Bagdad, says, "the annexed sketch will show the resemblance this pillar bears to those ancient columns so common in Ireland."+

On the strength of the remarkable resemblance alleged to exist between the pillartemples near Bhaugulpore and the Round Towers of Ireland, a late ingenious historian does not hesitate to derive the origin of the Irish people from that region; and that an infusion, at least, of population from that quarter might, at some remote period, have taken place, appears by no means an extravagant supposition. The opinion, that Iran and the western parts of Asia were originally the centre from whence population diffused itself to all the regions of the world, seems to be confirmed by the traditional histories of most nations, as well as by the results both of philological and antiquarian inquiries. To the tribes dispersed after the Trojan war, it has been the pride equally both of Celtic and of Teutonic nations to trace back their origin. The Saxon Chronicle derives the earliest inhabitants of Britain from Armenia; and the great legislator of the Scandinavians, Odin, is said to have come, with his followers, from the neighbourhood of the Euxine Sea. By those who hold that the Celts and Persians were originally the same people, the features of affinity so strongly observable between the Pagan Irish and the Persians will be accounted for without any difficulty. But independently of this hypothesis, the early and long-continued intercourse which Ireland appears to have maintained, through the Phoenicians, with the East, would sufficiently explain the varieties of worship which were imported to her shores, and which became either incorporated with her original creed, or formed new and distinct rallying points of belief. In this manner the adoration of shaped idols was introduced; displacing, in many parts-as we have seen, in the instance of the idol Crom-Cruach-that earliest form of superstition which confined its worship to rude erect stones. To the same later ritual belonged also those images of which some fragments have been found in Ireland, described as of black wood, covered and plated with thin gold, and the chased work on them in lines radiated from a centre, as is usual in the images of the sun. There was also another of these later objects|| of adoration, called Kerman Kelstach, ¶ the favourite idol of the Ultonians, which had for its pedestal, as some say, the golden stone of Clogher, and in which, to judge by the description of it, there were about the same rudiments of shape as in the first Grecian Hermæ.** Through the same channel which introduced these and similar innovations, it is by no means improbable that, at a still later period, the pillar-temples of the Eastern fire-worship might have become known; and that even from the shores of the Caspian a colony of Guebres might have found their way to Ireland, and there left, as enigmas to posterity, those remarkable monuments to which only the corresponding remains of their own original country can now afford any clue.

The connexion of sun-worship with the science of astronomy has already been briefly adverted to; and the four windows, facing the four cardinal points, which are found in the Irish as well as in the Eastern pillar-temples, were alike intended, no doubt, for the purposes of astronomical observation,-for determining the equinoctial and solstitial times, and thereby regulating the recurrence of religious festivals. The Phoenicians themselves constructed their buildings on the same principle; and, in the temple of Tyre, where stood the two famous columns dedicated to the Wind and to Fire, there were also

*These edifices are rotundas, of about thirty feet in diameter, and raised in height to a point near 120 feet."-Hanway's Travels in Persia, vol. i. part iii. chap. 43.

† Hon. Major Keppel's Personal Narrative, vol. i. chap. 7.

Cluverius, Keysler, Pelloutier, and others. "A l'égard des Perses," says Pelloutier, "ils étoient certainement le même peuple que les Celtes."

§ By Governor Pownall, in his account of these and other curious Irish remains to the Society of Antiquaries, 1774. In speaking of one of the images, which he supposes to have been a symbolic image of Mithra, he remarks, that the Gaditanians used such radiated figures, and adds," from the known and confirmed intercourse of this Phoenician or Carthaginian colony with Ireland, all difficulty as to this symbolic form ceases." Pursuing the view that naturally suggests itself on the subject, the learned antiquary adds, "Whatever the image was, I must refer it to the later line of theology rather than to the Celtic Druidic theology of the more ancient Irish. To the colonies, or rather to the settlements and factories of the later people of Carthage and Gades, and not to the original Phoenicians, I refer those several things heretofore and hereinafter described."

To a still later mythology belong the belief of the Irish in a sort of Genii or Fairies, called Sidhe, sup. posed to inhabit pleasant hills. Lanigan, vol. i. chap. 5. In the same class with the Sidhe, Vallancey places the Bansidhe, or Banshee," a young demon," as he explains it, "supposed to attend each family, and to give notice of the death of a relation to persons at a distance."-Vindic. of Anc. Hist. There were also the Suire, or Nymphs of the Sea, claimed by Vallancey as the Dea Syria; and described by Keating, as playing around the ships of the Milesian heroes during their passage to Ireland.

¶ The scholia of Cathold Maguir, quotod by O'Flaherty, Ogygia, part iii. chap. 22.

** “Πλαττεται δε και αχεις, και απους, και τετράγωνος, τω σχήματι δ' Έρμης.”Phurnutus de Natur. Deor.

pedestals, we are told, whose four sides, facing the cardinal points, bore sculptured upon them the four figures of the zodiac, by which the position of those points in the heavens is marked.* With a similar view to astronomical uses and purposes the Irish Round Towers were no doubt constructed; and a strong evidence of their having been used as observatories is, that we find them called by some of the Irish annalists Celestial Indexes. Thus in an account given in the Annals of the Four Masters, of a great thunder-storm at Armagh, it is said that "the city was seized by lightning to so dreadful an extent as to leave not a single hospital, nor cathedral church, nor palace, nor Celestial Index, that it did not strike with its flame." Before this and other such casualties diminished it, the number of these towers must have been considerable. From the language of Giraldus, it appears that they were common in his time through the country; and in thus testifying their zeal for the general object of adoration, by multiplying the temples dedicated to its honour, they but followed the example as well of the Greek as of the Persian fireworshippers.

There remain yet one or two other hypotheses, respecting the origin and purposes of these structures, to which it may be expected that I should briefly advert. By some the uses to which they were destined have been thought similar to that of the turrets in the neighbourhood of Turkish mosques, and from their summits, it is supposed, proclamation was made of new moons and approaching religious festivities. A kind of trumpet,|| which has been dug up in the neighbourhood of some of these towers, having a large mouth-hole in the side, is conjectured to have been used to assist the voice in these announcements to the people. Another notion respecting them is, that they were symbols of that ancient Eastern worship, of which the god Mahadeva, or Siva, was the object;T while, on the other hand, an ingenious writer, in one of the most learnedly argued, but least tenable, of all the hypotheses on the subject, contends that they were erected, in the sixth and seventh centuries, by the primitive Cœnobites and Bishops, with the aid of the newly converted Kings and Toparchs, and were intended as strong-holds, in time of war and danger, for the sacred utensils, relics, and books, belonging to those churches** in whose immediate neighbourhood they stood. To be able to invest even with plausibility so inconsistent a notion as that, in times when the churches themselves were framed rudely of wood, there could be found either the ambition or the skill to supply them with adjuncts of such elaborate workmanship,tt is, in itself, no ordinary feat of ingenuity. But the truth is, that neither then nor, I would add, at any other assignable period, within the whole range of Irish history, is such a state of things known authentically to have existed as can solve the difficulty of these towers, or account satisfactorily, at once, for the object of the buildings, and the advanced civilization of the architects who erected them. They must, therefore, be referred to times beyond the reach of historical record. That they were destined originally to religious purposes can hardly admit of question; nor can those who have satisfied themselves, from the strong evidence which is found in the writings of antiquity, that there existed, between Ireland and soine parts of the East, an early and intimate intercourse, harbour much doubt as to the real

Joseph. Antiq. 1. viii. c. 2.

† Annal. Ult. ad ann. 995.; also Tigernach, and the Annals of the Four Masters for the same year. Tigernach adds, that "there never happened before in Ireland, nor ever will, till the day of judgment, a similar visitation." The learned Colgan, in referring to this record of the annalists, describes the ruin as extending to the "church, belfries, and Towers of Armagh;" thus clearly distinguishing the Round Towers from the belfries.

It is generally computed that there are now remaining fifty-six; but the Rev. Mr. Wright, in his account of Glendalough, makes the number sixty-two; and Mr. Brewer (Beauties of Ireland, Introduction,) is of opinion, that "several, still remaining in obscure parts of the country, are entirely unnoticed by topo. graphical writers."

In speaking of the Prytanea, which, according to Bryant, were properly towers for the preservation of the sacred fire, a learned writer says, "When we consider that before the time of Theseus, every village in Attica had its Prytaneum, we may collect how generally the fire-worship prevailed in those times."—Dissertation upon the Athenian Skirophoria. So late as the 10th century, when Ebn Haukal visited Pars, there was not, as he tells us, "any district of that province, or any village, without a fire-temple."

See a description of these trumpets in Gough's Camden, and in Collectan de Reb. Hibern. No. 13.

See, for the grounds of this view, General Vallancey's imaginary coincidences between the Eocad of the Irish and the Bavani of the Hindoos; as also between the Muidhr or Sun-stone of the former, and the Mahody of the Gentoos.-Vindication of an ancient History of Ireland, pp. 160, 212, 506. The same notion has been followed up in Mr. O'Brien's clever, but rather too fanciful disquisition, on the subject, lately published.

** Inquiry into the Origin and primitive Use of the Irish Pillar-Tower, by Colonel Harvey de Montmorency Morres.

tt Dr. Milner, a high authority on such subjects, says of these structures:-"The workmanship of them is excellent, as appears to the eye, and as is proved by their durability."-Inquiry, &c. Letter 14. No words, however, can convey a more lively notion of the time they have lasted and may still endure, than does the simple fact stated in the following sentence.-"In general, they are entire to this day; though many churches, near which they stood, are either in ruins or totally destroyed."—S. Brereton, on the Round Towers, Archæolog. Lond. Soc.

of the Pyrea, or fire-temples of the Guebres. Of these, some, we are told, were raised to so high a point as near 120 feet,* the height of the tallest of the Irish towers; and an intelligent traveller, in describing the remains of one seen by him near Bagdad, says, "the annexed sketch will show the resemblance this pillar bears to those ancient colunins so common in Ireland."+

On the strength of the remarkable resemblance alleged to exist between the pillartemples near Bhaugulpore and the Round Towers of Ireland, a late ingenious historian does not hesitate to derive the origin of the Irish people from that region; and that an infusion, at least, of population from that quarter might, at some remote period, have taken place, appears by no means an extravagant supposition. The opinion, that Iran and the western parts of Asia were originally the centre from whence population diffused itself to all the regions of the world, seems to be confirmed by the traditional histories of most nations, as well as by the results both of philological and antiquarian inquiries. To the tribes dispersed after the Trojan war, it has been the pride equally both of Celtic and of Teutonic nations to trace back their origin. The Saxon Chronicle derives the earliest inhabitants of Britain from Armenia; and the great legislator of the Scandinavians, Odin, is said to have come, with his followers, from the neighbourhood of the Euxine Sea. By those who hold that the Celts and Persians were originally the same people, the features of affinity so strongly observable between the Pagan Irish and the Persians will be accounted for without any difficulty. But independently of this hypothesis, the early and long-continued intercourse which Ireland appears to have maintained, through the Phoenicians, with the East, would sufficiently explain the varieties of worship which were imported to her shores, and which became either incorporated with her original creed, or formed new and distinct rallying points of belief. In this manner the adoration of shaped idols was introduced; displacing, in many parts-as we have seen, in the instance of the idol Crom-Cruach-that earliest form of superstition which confined its worship to rude erect stones. To the same later ritual belonged also those images of which some fragments have been found in Ireland, described◊ as of black wood, covered and plated with thin gold, and the chased work on them in lines radiated from a centre, as is usual in the images of the sun. There was also another of these later objects|| of adoration, called Kerman Kelstach, the favourite idol of the Ultonians, which had for its pedestal, as some say, the golden stone of Clogher, and in which, to judge by the description of it, there were about the same rudiments of shape as in the first Grecian Hermæ.** Through the same channel which introduced these and similar innovations, it is by no means improbable that, at a still later period, the pillar-temples of the Eastern fire-worship might have become known; and that even from the shores of the Caspian a colony of Guebres might have found their way to Ireland, and there left, as enigmas to posterity, those remarkable monuments to which only the corresponding remains of their own original country can now afford any clue.

The connexion of sun-worship with the science of astronomy has already been briefly adverted to; and the four windows, facing the four cardinal points, which are found in the Irish as well as in the Eastern pillar-temples, were alike intended, no doubt, for the purposes of astronomical observation,—for determining the equinoctial and solstitial times, and thereby regulating the recurrence of religious festivals. The Phoenicians themselves constructed their buildings on the same principle; and, in the temple of Tyre, where stood the two famous columns dedicated to the Wind and to Fire, there were also

These edifices are rotundas, of about thirty feet in diameter, and raised in height to a point near 120 feet."-Hanway's Travels in Persia, vol. i. part iii. chap. 43.

† Hon. Major Keppel's Personal Narrative, vol. i. chap. 7.

Cluverius, Keysler, Pelloutier, and others. "A l'égard des Perses," says Pelloutier, "ils étoient certainement le même peuple que les Celtes."

By Governor Pownall, in his account of these and other curious Irish remains to the Society of Antiquaries, 1774. In speaking of one of the images, which he supposes to have been a symbolic image of Mithra, he remarks, that the Gaditanians used such radiated figures, and adds," from the known and confirmed intercourse of this Phoenician or Carthaginian colony with Ireland, all difficulty as to this symbolic form ceases." Pursuing the view that naturally suggests itself on the subject, the learned antiquary adds, "Whatever the image was, I must refer it to the later line of theology rather than to the Celtic Druidic theology of the more ancient Irish. To the colonies, or rather to the settlements and factories of the later people of Carthage and Gades, and not to the original Phoenicians, I refer those several things heretofore and hereinafter described."

To a still later mythology belong the belief of the Irish in a sort of Genii or Fairies, called Sidhe, sup posed to inhabit pleasant hills. Lanigan, vol. i. chap. 5. In the same class with the Sidhe, Vallancey places the Bansidhe, or Banshee," a young demon," as he explains it, "supposed to attend each family, and to give notice of the death of a relation to persons at a distance."-Vindic. of Anc. Hist. There were also the Suire, or Nymphs of the Sea, claimed by Vallancey as the Dea Syriæ; and described by Keating, as playing around the ships of the Milesian heroes during their passage to Ireland.

The scholia of Cathold Maguir, quotod by O'Flaherty, Ogygia, part iii. chap. 22.

** “Πλαττεται δε και αχεις, και απους, και τετράγωνος, το σχηματι δ' Έρμης”Phurnutus de Natur. Deor.