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Island, proves that the materials for tree worship were not, in former ages, wanting on her shores. The name of the Vodii, an ancient tribe inhabiting the southern coast of the county of Cork, signifies dwellers in a woody country,* and Youghall, formerly Ochill, is said to have been similarly derived. It appears that in general the old names of places, whether hills or plains, are found to be words implying forests, groves, or trees. The poet Spenser has commemorated the Ireland of his day as abounding in shade and foliage, and we collect from Stanihurst that the natives had been accused of living savagely in the dark depths of their forests. It is, indeed, alleged, by competent authority, to have been made evident from an examination of the soil, that, at no very remote period, the country must have been abundantly wooded.

The oak, the statue of the Celtic Jove, was here, as in all other countries, selected for peculiar consecration; and the Plain of Oaks, the Tree of the Field of Adoration,|| under which the Dalcassian Chiefs were inaugurated, and the Sacred Oak of Kildare, show how early and long this particular branch of the primitive worship prevailed.

By some antiquaries, who affect to distinguish between the Celtic and Gothic customs in Ireland, the mode of inaugurating the Dalcassian Chiefs is alleged to have been derived from the first inhabitants or Celts; while, on the other hand, the use of the Lia Fail, or Stone of Destiny, in the ceremony, was introduced, they say, by the later, or Scythic colonies. In this latter branch of the opinion, they are borne out by the ancient traditions of the country, which trace to the Danaans, a Scythic or Gothic tribe, the first importation of the custom. That the worship of stones, however, out of which this ceremony sprung, was a superstition common not only to both of these races, but to all the first tribes of mankind, is a fact admitted by most inquirers on the subject. The same may he affirmed of every branch of the old primitive superstition; and, therefore, to attempt to draw any definite or satisfactory line of distinction, between the respective forms of idolatry of the two great European races, is a speculation that must be disconcerted and baffled at every step. A well-known dogmatist in Irish antiquities, desirous to account, by some other than the obvious causes, for that close resemblance which he cannot deny to exist between the Celtic and Gothic superstitions, has had recourse to the hypothesis, that a coalition between the two rituals must, at some comparatively late period, have taken place. But a natural view of the subject would, assuredly, have led to the very reverse of this conclusion, showing that, originally, the forms of idolatry observed by both races were the same, and that any difference observable, at a later period, has been the natural result of time and circumstances.

* Quasi Britannicè dicas Sylvestres, sive, apud sylvas degentes.-Baxter. Glossar. Antiquitat. Brit.— Smith's County of Cork.

Cantos of Mutability; where in describing Ireland, he speaks of "woods and forests which therein abound." In his View of the State of Ireland, also, speaking more particularly of the country between Dublin and Wexford, he says:-"Though the whole track of the country be mountainous and woody, yet there are many goodly valleys," &c. Campion likewise asserts, that the island was covered with forests; yet, so rapid must have been their destruction, that, not much more than a century after Spenser and Campion wrote, we find Sir Henry Piers, in his Chorographical Description of the County of Meath, complaining of the want of timber of bulk, wherewith it was anciently well stored;" and recommending to parliament a speedy provision for "planting and raising all sorts of forest trees."— Collectan, vol. i.

"I never saw one hundred contiguous acres in Ireland in which there were not evident signs that they were once wood, or at least very well wooded. Trees, and the roots of trees, of the largest size, are dug up in all the bogs; and, in the cultivated countries, the stumps of trees destroyed show that the destruction has not been of very ancient date."-Arthur Young, Tour in Ireland.

ο Αγαλμα δε Διος Κελτικον υψηλη δρυς.—Max. Τyr. Serm. 38.

Magh Adhair." A plain, or field of adoration or worship, where an open temple, consisting of a circle of tall straight stone pillars, with a very large flat stone, called cromleac, serving for an altar, was constructed by the Druids, ... several plains of this name, Magh-Adhair, were known in Ireland, particularly one in the country now called the County of Clare, where the kings of the O'Brien race were inaugurated."-O'Brien's Irish Dictionary. It was under a remarkable tree on this plain that the ceremony of initiating the Dalcas. sian Kings took place. (O'Brien, in voce Magh bile.) In the Annals of the Four Masters for the year 981, there is an account of the destruction of this Sacred Tree.

For the origin of four of the great Dalcassian families, viz. the O'Briens, the Mac Mahons, the O'Kennedys, and the Macnamaras, see Rer. Hiberniear. Script, prol. 1. 133.

The Druids, when known to the Greeks and Romans, had united the Celtic and Scythic rituals, and exercised their functions both in groves and caves."-Ledwich, Antiquities of Ireland, p. 49.

CHAPTER III.

THE DRUIDS, OR MAGI OF THE IRISH.

THE religious system of the Pagan Irish having been thus shown, as regards both its ceremonies and its objects, to have been, in many respects, peculiar to themselves, it remains to be considered whether the order of priesthood which presided over their religion did not also, in many points, differ from the Priests of Britain and of Gaul. Speaking generally, the term Druidism applies to the whole of that mixed system of hierurgy, consisting partly of patriarchal, and partly of idolatrous observances, which the first inhabitants of Europe are known to have brought with them in their migration from the East; and the cause of the differences observable in the rituals of the three countries where alone that worship can be traced, is to be sought for as well in the local circumstances peculiar to each, as in those relations towards other countries in which, either by commerce or position, they were placed. Thus, while to her early connexion with the Phoenicians the Sacred Island was doubtless indebted for the varieties of worship wafted to her secluded shores, the adoption by the Gallic Druids of the comparatively modern gods of Greece and Rome, or rather of their own original divinities under other names, may, together with the science and the learning they were found in possession of by the Romans, be all traced to the intercourse held by them, for at least five hundred years before, with the colony of Phocæan Greeks established at Marseilles.

Of all that relates to the Druids of Gaul, their rites, doctrines, and discipline, we have received ample and probably highly coloured statements from the Romans. Our knowledge of the Irish Magi, or Druids, is derived partly from the early Lives of St. Patrick, affording brief but clear glimpses of the dark fabric which he came to overturn, and partly from those ancient records of the country, founded upon others, as we shall see, still more ancient, and so reaching back to the times when Druidism was still in force. With the state or system of this order, in Britain, there are no such means of becoming acquainted. It is a common error, indeed, to adduce as authority respecting the British Druids, the language of writers who profess to speak only of the Druidical priesthood of Gaul; a confusion calculated to convey an unjust impression of both these bodies; as the latter, even without taking into consideration their alleged conferences with Phythagoras, which may be reasonably called in question,-had access, it is known, through the Massilian Greeks, to such sources of science and literature, as were manifestly beyond the reach of their secluded brethren of Britain. Even of the Gaulish Druids, however, the description transmitted by the Romans is such as, from its vagueness alone, might be fairly suspected of exaggeration; and the indefinite outline they left has been since dilated and filled up by others, till there is scarcely a department of human knowledge with which these Druids are not represented to have been conversant. Nor is this embellished description restricted merely to the Gaulish priesthood, but given also as a faithful picture of the Druids of Britain; though, among all the Greek and Roman writers who have treated of the subject, there is not one-with a slight exception, perhaps, as regards Pliny,-who has not limited his remarks solely and professedly to Gaul.

The little notice taken by the Romans of the state of this worship among the Britons, is another point which appears worthy of consideration. Instead of being general throughout the country, as might have been expected from the tradition mentioned by Cæsar, the existence of Druidism appears to have been confined to a few particular spots; and the chief seat of its strength and magnificence lay in the region nearest to the shores of Ireland, North Wales. It was there alone, as is manifest from their own accounts, and from the awe and terror with which, it is said, the novelty of the sight then affected them, that the Romans ever encountered any Druids during their whole stay in Britain; nor did Cæsar, who dwells so particularly upon the Druids of Gaul, and even mentions the prevalent notion that they had originated in Britain, ever hint that, while in that country, he had either met with any of their order, or been able to collect any information concerning their tenets or rites. The existence still, in various parts of England, of

* Novitate aspectus perculere milites.-Tacit. Annal. lib. xiv. c. 30.

what are generally called Druidical monuments, is insufficient to prove that Druidism had ever flourished in those places; such monuments having been common to all the first races of Europe, and though forming a part of the ritual of the Druids, by no means necessarily implying that it had existed where they are found. In the region of Spain occupied anciently by the Turditana, the most learned of all the Celtic tribes, there is to be found a greater number of what are called Druidical remains than in any other part of the Peninsula. Yet, of the existence of an order of Druids among that people, neither Strabo nor any other authority makes mention.

The only grounds that exist for extending and appropriating to the British Druids all that the Greek and Roman writers have said solely of those of Gaul, are to be found in the single, but doubtless important, passage wherein it is asserted by Cæsar, that Druidism had first originated in Britain, and was from thence derived by the Gauls. Presuming on the truth of this assertion, it has been farther concluded, as a matter of course, that all the features of the parent were exactly similar to those attributed to the offspring; and upon this arbitrary assumption have all the accounts, so fully and confidently given, of the rites, doctrines, and learning of the British Druids been founded. With respect to the statement, however, of Cæsar, an obvious solution suggests itself, arising naturally out of all that has been advanced in the preceding pages, and amply sufficient, as I think, to account for the curious tradition which he mentions. We have seen, by the strong, though scattered, lights of evidence, which have been brought to concentre upon this point, at what an early period Ireland attracted the notice of that people, who were, in those times, the great carriers, not only of colonies and commerce, but also of shrines and divinities, to all quarters of the world. So remote, indeed, is the date of her first emergence into celebrity, that at a time when the Carthaginians knew of Albion but the name, the renown of lerne as a seat of holiness had already become ancient; her devotion to the form of worship which had been transported, perhaps from Samothrace, to her shores, having won for her, as we have seen, the designation of the Sacred Island. Those who look back to the prominent station then held by her, as a sort of emporium of idolatry, will not deem it unlikely that a new religion may have originated on her shores; and that it was to her alone the prevalent tradition of the times of Cæsar must have attributed the reputation of having first moulded the common creed of all the Celts into that peculiar form which has become memorable under the appellation of Druidism.

Whatever changes this form may have undergone in its adoption by Gaul and Britain, were the natural result of local circumstances, and the particular genius of each people; while the greater infusion of orientalism into the theology of the Irish, arose doubtless from the longer continuance of their intercourse with the East. How large a portion of the religious customs of Persia were adopted by the Magi or Druids of Ireland, has already been amply shown; and to these latter Pliny doubtless refers, under the same mistake as Cæsar, when, in speaking of the Magi of different countries, he remarks of the ceremonies practised in Britain, that they were of such a nature as to render it probable that they were the original of those of the Persians. The favourite tenet as well of Druidism as of Magism, the transmigration of the soul, which the Druids of Gaul are thought to have derived from the Massilian Greeks, might have reached them, through Ireland, from some part of the East, at a much earlier period; this favourite doctrine of all Oriental theologues, from the Brachmans of India to the priests of Egypt, being found inculcated also through the medium of some of the traditions of the ancient Irish. The use, both by Pliny and Cæsar, of the name Britain instead of Ireland argues but little against the presumption that the latter was the country really designed. The frequent

* For proofs of the adoption of circular stone temples, and other such monuments, by the Gothic nations, see Ledwich's Antiquities (Pagan State of Ireland, and its Remains,) and Pinkerton's Inquiry, &c. part iii. chap. 12. † History of Spain and Portugal, CAB. CYCLO. Introduction.

Disciplina in Britannia reperta, atque inde in Galliam translata esse existimatur.-De Bell. Gall. lib.

vi. c. 13.

§ Britannia hodieque eam attonite celebrat tantis cæremoniis, ut dedisse Persis videri possit.-Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. xxx. c. 4. On the intimation contained in this passage, Whitaker has founded a supposition, that, at some period, which he calls the Divine Age, the doctrine of the Western Druids may have penetrated so far East; "thus solving," he says, "Pliny's conjecture of the Persians receiving it from them, which must have been in times comparatively to which the foundation of Rome is hardly not a modern incident."— Celtic Vocabulary.

The prevalence, among them, of a belief in the transmigration of the soul, may be inferred from the fable respecting Ruan, one of the colony that landed in Ireland, under Partholan, some two or three centuries after the Flood. Of this ancient personage, it was believed that he continued to live, through a long series of transmigrations, till so late as the time of St. Patrick, when, having resumed the human shape, he com. municated to the saint all he knew of the early history of the island, and was then baptised and died.— Nicholson's Library, chap. 2.—Rerum Hibern. Script. Ep. Nunc.

employment of the plural, Britanniæ,* to denote the whole of the British Isles, was, in itself, by no means unlikely to lead to such a confusion. Besides, so ignorant were the Roman scholars respecting the geography of these regions, that it is not impossible they may have supposed Britain and Ireland to be one and the same country; seeing that, so late as the period when Agricola took the command of the province, they had not yet ascertained whether Britannia was an island or continent.t

To his statement, that Britain was thought to have originated the institution of Druidism, Cæsar adds, that those who were desirous of studying diligently its doctrines, repaired in general to that country for the purpose. If, as the reasons I have above adduced render by no means improbable, the school resorted to by these students was really Ireland, the religious pre-eminence thus enjoyed by her, in those pagan days, was a sort of type of her social position many centuries after, when again she shone forth as the Holy Island of the West; and again it was a common occurrence, as in those Druidical times, to hear said of a student in divinity, that he was "gone to pursue a course of sacred instruction in Hibernia."{

While, from all that has been here advanced, it may be assumed as not improbable that Ireland was the true source of this ancient creed of the West, there is yet another point to be noticed, confirmatory of this opinion, which is, that the term Druid, concerning whose origin so much doubt has existed, is to be found genuinely, and without any of the usual straining of etymology, in the ancient Irish language. The supposed derivation of the term from Drus, the Greek word for an oak, has long been rejected as idle ;|| the Greek language, though flowing early from the same Asiatic source, being far more likely to have borrowed from than contributed to that great mother of the most of the European tongues, the Celtic. It is, however, unnecessary to go any farther for the origin of the name than to the Irish language itself, in which the word Draoid is found, signifying a cunning man, or Magus, and implying so fully all that is denoted by the latter designation as to have been used as an equivalent for it in an Irish version of the Gospel of St. Matthew, where, instead of "the wise men, or Magi, came from the East," it is rendered, "the Druids came from the East;" and, in like manner in the Old Testament, Exod. vii. 11., the words "magicians of Egypt" are made "Druids of Egypt."¶

CHAPTER IV.

ANTIQUITY OF THE IRISH LANGUAGE,-LEARNING OF THE IRISH MAGI OR DRUIDS.

OUR accounts of the learning of the Irish Druids, though far more definite and satisfactory than any that relate directly to the Druids of Britain, are still but imperfect and vague. Before we enter, however, on this topic, a few remarks on a subject intimately connected with it, the ancient language of the country, will not be deemed an unnecessary preliminary. Abundant and various as are the monuments to which Ireland can point, as mute evidences of her antiquity, she boasts a yet more striking proof in the living language of her people,-in that most genuine, if not only existing, dialect, of the oldest of all European tongues,-the tongue which, whatever name it may be called by, according to the various and vague theories respecting it, whether Japhetan, Cimmerian,

Thus Catullus:-"Hunc Galliæ timent, hunc timent Britaniæ."-Carm. 27.

Hanc oram novissimi maris tunc primum Romana classis circumvecta insulam esse Britanniam affirmavit. Tacit. Agric. 10. Plutarch, in his Life of Cæsar, asserts that the very existence of such a place as Britain had been doubted.

Et nunc qui diligentius eam rem cognoscere volunt plerumque illo discendi causa proficiscuntur.-De Bell. Gall. lib. vi. c. 13.

"St. Patrick's disciples in Ireland were such great proficients in the Christian religion, that, in the age following, Ireland was termed Sanctorum Patria, i. e. the Country of Saints..... The Saxons, in that age, flocked hither as to the great mart of learning; and this is the reason why we find this so often in our writers, Amondatus est ad disciplinam in Hibernia,' such a one was sent over into Ireland to be educated."

Camden.

For the various derivations of the term Druid that have been suggested by different writers, see Frickius de Druid. pars i. cap. i.

Matt. ii. 1. The Irish version is thus given by Toland :-Feuch tangadar Draoithe o naird shoir go Hirulasem:-and the passage in Exod. vii. 11. is thus rendered:-Anos Draoithe na Hegipte dor innedur. sanfús aran modhgceadna le nandroigheachtuibh.

Pelasgic, or Celtic, is accounted most generally to have been the earliest brought from the East, by the Naochida, and accordingly to have been "the vehicle of the first knowledge that dawned upon Europe."* In the still written and spoken dialect of this primæval languaget we possess a monument of the high antiquity of the people to whom it belongs, which no cavil can reach, nor any doubts disturb.

According to the view, indeed, of some learned philologers, the very imperfections attributed to the Irish language, the predominance in it of gutturals, and the incompleteness of its alphabet,-are both but additional and convincing proofs, as well of its directly Eastern origin, as of its remote antiquity; the tongues of the East, before the introduction of aspirates, having abounded, as it appears, with gutturals, and the alphabet derived from the Phoenicians by the Greeks having had but the same limited number of letters which compose the Irish. That the original Cadmeian number was no more than sixteen is the opinion, with but few exceptions, of the whole learned world; and that such exactly is the number of the genuine Irish alphabet has been proved satisfactorily by the reverend and learned librarian of Stowe. Thus, while all the more recent and mixed forms of language adopted the additional letters of the Greeks, the Irish alone continued to adhere to the original number-the same number no doubt which Herodotus saw graven on the tripods in the temple of Apollo at Thebes-the same number which the people of Attica adhered to with such constancy, that it became a customary phrase or proverb, among the Greeks to say of any thing very ancient, that it was "in Attic letters."** To so characteristic an extent did the Irish people imitate this fidelity, that even the introduction among them of the Roman alphabet by St. Patrick did not tempt them into any innovation upon their own. On the contrary, so wedded were they to their own letters, that, even in writing Latin words, they would never admit any Roman character that was not to be found in their primitive alphabet, but employed two or more of their own ancient characters to represent the same organic sound.tt

* Inquiries concerning the First Inhabitants, Languages, &c. of Europe, by Mr. Wise.

According to the learned but fanciful Lazius, the Irish language abounds with Hebrew words, and had its origin in the remotest ages of the world. (De Gentium Migrationibus.) A French writer, Marcel, also, in speaking of the Irish idiom or dialect, says, "On peut dire avec quelque probabilité qu'il doit remonter à une époque beaucoup plus reculée que les idiomes de la plupart des autres contrées de l'Europe." This writer, who was Directeur de l'Emprimerie Imperiale, under Napoleon, published an Irish alphabet from types belonging to the Propaganda of Rome, which were sent, by the order of Napoleon, to Paris. Prefixed to his publication are some remarks on the grammatical structure of the Irish language, which he thus concludes; Par cette marche conjugative elle se rapproche de la simplicité des langues anciennes et orientales. Elle s'en rapproche encore par les lettres serviles ou auxiliares, les affixes et les préfixes, qu'elle emploie comme la langue Hébraïque." With the types of the Propaganda, the Irish Catechism of Molloy, called Lucerna Fidelium, was printed.

"La lingua Punica certamente venne pronunziata anticamente colla gorgia, e ne resta provato in quel piccol monumento che la scena prima di Plauto ci ha lasciato col carattere Letino."-G. P. Agius de Solandis, quoted in Vallencey's Essay on the Antiquity of the Irish Language. "In the Oriental languages gutturals abounded; these by degrees softened into mere aspirates." &c.-Rees's Cyclopædia, art. Gothic Language. In tracing the Eastern origin of the Celtic, Dr. Pritchard remarks, that words derived by the western from the eastern languages are changed in a peculiar way. The most general of these alterations is the substituting of guttural for sibilant letters. May not such words, however, have been derived previously to the introduction of aspirates and sibilants?

§"Now, if this alphabet (the Irish) had not been borrowed at least before the time of the Trojan war, when Palamedes made the first addition to it, we can hardly conceive it should be so simple. Or, if the Druids should cull it, it would be remarkable that they should hit precisely on the letters of Cadmus, and reject none but the later additions."-Smith's Gaelic Antiquities, chap. 4.

Huddlestone, the editor of Toland, also remarks upon this subject," If the Irish had culled or selected their alphabet from that of the Romans, how, or by what miracle, could they have hit on the identical letters which Cadmus brought from Phoenicia, and rejected all the rest? Had they thrown sixteen dice sixteen times, and turned up the same number every time, it would not have been so marvellous as this.".

Detractis itaque quinque dipthongis, et consonantibus supra memoratis, qui nullibi in lingua Hibernica extant, non remanent plures quam sexdecim simplicia elementa, quot fuisse antiquissimas Cadmeias, Plinius, et Nonnus, et antiquissimi scriptores una voce testatum reliquere.-O'Connor, Annal. Inisfall. De Inscript. Ogham.

"If they had letters first from St. Patrick, would they have deviated from the forms of the letters? Would they have altered the order? Would they have sunk seven (eight) letters? For in every country they have rather increased than diminished the number of letters, except those of the Hebrew and Irish, which are in statu quo to this day."-Parson's Remains of Japhet.

** In reference to this proverb, Lilius Geraldus, quoting the assertion of some ancient writer that treaties against the barbarians were ratified in Ionic, not in Attic, letters, adds, "quasi, ut puto, dicat literis recen. tioribus."-Lil. Girald, de Poetis.

Thus in all words begun or ended by X, instead of writing that simple character, they never chose to represent it otherwise than by employing two of the Roman characters, viz. gs or cs; a trouble they certainly might have saved themselves, at least in writing the Latin, had they not rejected it as an exotic character, and not existing in their alphabet."-Literature of the Irish after Christianity, Collectan. No. 5. This mode of expressing this letter X was anciently practised by the Romans themselves; but had been disused ages before the time when it could be supposed to have been communicated to them by the Irish. Another curious point, respecting the Irish alphabet, is thus noticed by the author of Galic Antiquities:"They could much easier have spared one of Cadmus's letters than some of those which have been afterwards joined to it. The Greek, for example, expresses a sound so common in the Galic, and so imperfectly expressed by the combined powers of e (or k) and h, that they could not possibly have omitted it, had it been in the alphabet when they adopted the rest of the letters."

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