The Round Towers of Ireland

land being an island surrounded on all sides by water-which Persia is not-it was necessary it should obtain a denomination expressive of this accident; or, at all events, when

to the closest logical argumentation, which teaches that every species is contained in its genus, but that no genus is contained in its species; Irin, therefore, which is the specific term, may also be called Iran the generic, while Iran-except as in our instance, where the exten

ed Island; now every island is a land, but every land is not an island: Persia, therefore, which is not an

ng to this island:-and the words Ire, Eri, Ere,[150] and Erin, applied also thereto, a

light, the Pelasgi-who were partly Budhists, allied somewhat to them in religion, and still more akin in birth and endowments-conveyed, in conjunction with the Ph?nician merchants

the Latins, without, perhaps, exactly knowing what it meant, conjured up Hibernia, but which, however, with soul-stirring triumph, retains uninjured our original root

st interminably, from those three originals, in the several languages which they respectively represent, they will

the real origin of its sanctified renown. I have traced from the Irish, through all the variations of Greek and Latin capricios, its delineatory name;

t of denominations imposed at a time when every word was a history. In the early ages of the world whimsicality never mingled with the circumstantial designation of either person or locality. Every na

still fascinate my zeal, at an age when-did not my love for truth and the rectification of my country's history rise superior to the mortification of alienated honour-I should have flung from me letters and lit

friend, my geni

of the poet

use now stoops,

assions, or hi

thee, in vari

dignity-wit

converse hap

gay, from li

spirit, eloqu

son, or polit

154] I pretend not to be unique; and, as I should not wish to deprive any brow of the laurels which it has earned-more especially, where an undisputed enjoyment has amounted to prescriptio

e this scene of its exercise three other names, viz. Fuodhla, Fudh Inis, and Inis-na-Bhfiodhbhadh[156]-which at once associate the "worship" with the profession of the worshippers: for f, or ph, being only the aspirate of b, and commutable with it, Fuodhla-which is compounded of Fuodh and ila, t

se the first needs no exposition; the second I shall reserve for another place, but the third I will here develop. He was the military deity of this "sacred" colony, and a personification of Budh, under the designation of Farragh,[160] i.e. Copulation; and, accordingly,

d equivalent denomination, viz. Buodh, abbreviated into Boo,[162] and thus with the prefix a, implying to, or under the auspices of-assumed by the different septs as their distinctive watchwords, branched out into the national and spirit-stirring acclamations of O'Brien a-Boo![163] O'Neil a-Boo! etc. e

"is very good and delightful, far beyond the blind conceits of some, who upon the same word Farragh have made a very blunt conjecture." Oh patria! Oh mores! how little

e of a different nation, already prejudiced, or mayhap incapable of separating the gold from the baser metal, incredulity and contempt; yet the true Irish searcher, versed in the antiquities, not only of his own dear "father-land," but of the kindred East, which maintained in the old world a religious and incessant communication with this "Sacred Isle," will gl

, all those monuments of learning to which the world had bowed just before-one from innate antipathy to the thing itself; the other from apprehension that the contents of those memorials, acting upon the sensibilities of a high-hearted and proud race, should stimulate their ardour to the r

is was the signal to some liberal individuals to prosecute an inquiry for additional memorials; and the result was, that they rose from the pursuit, if not with a connected aggregate of demonstrational evidence, at least with a conviction

conceived, of his apostolic charge, may be said to have perpetrated the greatest outrage upon our antiquities; having set fire, in a paroxysm of pious zeal, to no less than one hundred and eighty volumes, which he

gion of the ancient Irish was intermingled with their history, and as the wide diffusion of their celebrity arose from the eminence of their religio

f this Toland himself was, in some measure, aware, when he said that "notwithstanding the long state of barbarity in which that nation hath lain, and after all the rebellions and wars with which the kingdom has been harassed, they (the Irish) hav

prehensive, philosophical views and suitable education calculated to do her justice; so that, by the untoward hand of fate, and the iniquitous operation of the old political stroke,

ver invested themselves; and hope the reader will enjoy a hearty laugh at the expense of those blunderers, who, in their preposterous, I had almost s

hipped in the East. "There is," says the author, "in the province of Matambo, an idol whose priests are sorcerers or magicians; and this i

ef of all such as are indisposed![168] Miramba always marches at the head of their armies; and he is presented with th

orders in the East take for their comfort and good. It was a neat, clean, and substantial place, in all acceptations of the word. These Brahmin villagers pay no rent of any kind to the state: they live on the granted lands, but are obliged to keep the temples in repair, to furnish all the impl

uth, how much greater must not be their chagrin at my wrenching from their grasp another "exceedingly curious" and "richly-ornamented" "ecclesiastic?"[170] Ecclesiastic, indeed! Yes; but reve

ty. I hope that, after so long an obscuration, and the uncourtly treatment he has received during the humiliating interval of revolving centuries, you will-now that he chooses to reveal his proper character, avow his

cclesiastical ritual, as well of ceremony as of costume, has been borrowed from the Jewish, and that again from the Pagans, with such alterations only as the allwise Jehovah thought necessary to recommend. Besides, we have th