The Round Towers of Ireland

eir legends Egypt is mixed up-in all their romances Egypt stands prominent, which certainly could not have been so universal without something at least like foundation, and m

ed was astronomy, the cultivation of which was inseparably involved in all their religious rites; for despite of the reverence which the Egyptians seemed to pay to crocodiles, bulls, and others

r to pay them homage; but, if questioned on the subject, they will tell you that in the sagacity of the former, and the strength and swiftness of the latter

overlooks the grosser object by which his impressions were communicated. Then with respect to their subterranean temples or Mithratic caves, of which we have so many specimens throughout this island, they affirm that the mysterious temple of the caverns is dedicated to services which soar as much above the worship of the plain and uninstructed Hindoo, as Brahma the invisible

were their primary study; and even to this day, depressed and humiliated as the Indians are, and aliens in their own country, they are not without some attention to their favourite pursuit, or something like an observatory to perpetu

ent, riches, and the number of its inhabitants, has not yet been equalled by any one nation on the globe. We find salutary laws, and an ingenious and refined system of religion established; sciences and arts known and practised; and all of these evidently brought to perfection by the accumulated experience of many preceding ages. We see a countr

rds see the empire overrun by a fierce race of men, who in the beginning of their furious conquests endeavoured, with their country, to subdue the minds of the Hindoos. They massacred the people, tortured the priests, threw down many of the temples, and, what was still more afflicting, converted some of them into places of worship for their prophet, till at length, tired with the exertion of cruelties whic

habitants and those of this western island. I have had an additional motive, and that was to show that the same cause which effected the mystification that overhangs our antiquities, has operated

has been attached to the vitrified appearance of Drumboe tower as if necessarily enforcing our acquiescence in the universality of that doctrine. "At some former

fication appears, I cannot but here too express more than a surmise that it was not the "sacred fire," which, when religiously preserved, was not allowed to break forth in

t! offspring of

ternal co-e

ee unblamed? Sin

ut in unapp

ernity; dwelt

ce of bright e

rather, pure e

who shall tell?

ens, thou wert,

ith a mantle

rld of waters

id and formless

n had been altogether forgotten when that ritual now prevailed, I turn to the glossary of Cormac, first bishop of

do righ

har din a

dream, lei

all, leis ga

at

he King of t

om the mounta

ands are a

ent and rem

rred to, we find the same high authority thus critically explain himself in another place: "dha teinne soinmech do gintis na draoithe con tincet laib moraib foraib, agus do bordis, na ceatra or t

er" that we find she preserved it, but in a cell or low building "like a vault," "which," says Holinshed, whose curiosity, excited by Cambrensis's report,[88] had induced him to go and visit the spot, "to this day they call the fire-house." It was a stone-roofed edifice about twenty feet square, the ruins of

e circumstance of St Columbe having for a time taken up his abode in this last-mentioned one, gave rise to the idea that he must have been its founder: but the delusion is dispelled by comparing its architecture with that of the churches which this distinguished champion of the early Christian Irish Church had erected in Iona,[90] whose ruins are still to be seen, and bear no sort of analogy with those ancient receptacles. Struck, no doubt, with some apprehensions like the foregoing, it is manifest that Miss Beaufort

iance of the legal prohibition, the appeal which we are told his Druids addressed to the monarch on that occasion was couched in the following words:-"This fire which has to-night been kindled in our presence, before the flame was lit up in your palace, unless extinguished this very night, shall never be extinguished at all, but shall triumph over all the fires of our ancient rites, and the lighter of it shall scatter your kingd

n suppose that these stupendous specimens of massive and costly workmanship, which we read of as being constructed by the Romans in the very infancy of their State, could have been the erection of a rude people, unacquainted with the arts. The story of the wolf, the vestal, and the shepherd is no longer credited; Rome was a flourishing and thriving city long before the son of Rhea was born, and the only credit t

of giants, while the true exposition of the name is to be found in the fact of their having been constructed by a caste of miners, otherwise called arimaspi, whose lamp, which perhaps they had fastened to their foreheads, may be considered as their only eye-were actually the creation of those ancient Pelasgi, and, as will shortly appear, should properly be called Irish.[92] Mycen?, Argos, and Tiryns, in Greece, as well as Etruria and other places in Italy, the early residences of this lettered tribe, abound in

e of the former country, moderns also; no, there was no intercourse between these parties for many years after the foundation of the western capital. Indeed it was not until the time of Pyrrhus that they knew anything of their respective existences, whereas we find that the vestal fire was instituted by Numa, A.U

n which pre-eminently outshone his regard to Vesta,[93] in whose sanctuary was preserved the Palladium, "the fated pledge of Roman authority," and which too, by the way, ever connected as we see it was with the worship of fire, would seem to make the belief respecting it also

fferently moulded, has already won her the applause of that society whose discriminating verdict I now respectfully await. But as my object is truth, divested as much as possible of worldly considerations, and

w:-"Taking the landing of Julius C?sar in Britain, in the year 55 before Christ, as a fixed point of time, and counting back fifty years from that, we shall be brought to about one hundred years before the Christian era, at which time the introduction of the improvements and innovati

e, or sacred fire of Baal: first at the solemn convention at Tara, in the year of Christ 79, in the reign of Tuathal Teachmar, it was enacted, that on the 31st of October annually, the sacred fire should be publicly exhibited from the stately tower of Tlactga, in Munster, from whence all the other repositories of the Baal-th

o be used in the country was to be derived from this fire; for which privilege the people were to pay a scraball, which amounts to threepence every year, as an acknowledgment to the King of Munster. The second palace was in that of Connaught, where the inhabitants assembled once a year, upon the 1st of May, to offer sacrifices to the principal deity of the island under the name of Beul, which was called the Convocation of Usneagh; and on account of this meeting the King of Connaught had from e

y way." The impost of the scraball, I must not omit to observe, has been equally misstated in the survey; for it was not for the purpose of erecting any structures, but as an acknowledgment of homage and a medium of revenue that it was enforced, as will appear most clearly on reverting to the original, and comparing it with the other means of revenue, which the other provincial kings were entitl