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of human civilization is at any rate much more ancient than the oldest written histories we now possess. The civilization of Egypt was on the decline when Herodotus wrote and travelled, nearly twenty-three centuries ago. The vast architectural monuments of that country were of venerable antiquity, even when his eye beheld them. The ear

ROUND TOWER OF DONOUGH MORE. were in much the same semi-barbarous condition with the Britons. The primitive civilization of Ireland, therefore, whether under the same, or, what is more likely, under a different dominant race, must be sought for in a yet more remote antiquity. The only structures that have been anywhere found similar to the Irish Round Towers are in certain countries of the remote east, and especially in India and Persia. This would seem to indicate a connexion between these countries and Ireland, the probability of which, it has been attempted to show, is corroborated by many other coincidences of language, of religion, and of customs, as well as by the voice of tradition, and the light, though faint and scattered, which is thrown upon the subject by the records of history. The period of the first civilization of Ireland then would, under this view, be placed in the same early age of the world which appears to have witnessed, in those oriental countries, a highly advanced condition of the arts and sciences, as well as flourishing institutions of religious and civil polity, which have also, in a similar manner, decayed and passed away. Nothing can be more certain than that the first period

liest civilization of Phoenicia, of Persia, and of Hindostan, was, perhaps, of still more ancient origin. We know that the navigating nation of the Phoenicians had, long before the time of Herodotus, established flourishing colonies, not only in the north of Africa, but also on the opposite coast of Spain. Even the foundation of Marseilles, on the coast of France, by a Greek colony, has not been stated by any authority to be more recent than six hundred years before the commencement of our era, and there are some reasons for believing a town to have been established there at a much earlier date. There is, therefore, no such improbability as is apt to strike persons, not conversant with such investigations, in the supposition that Ireland also may have been colonized by a civilized people at some very remote period. It seems, in

In most instances the cut of a particular local object will have reference to its existing state, except when otherwise expressed.

deed, to be scarcely possible otherwise to account either for the Round Towers, or for the other relics and memorials of a formerly advanced state of the arts which the country still contains-the extensive coal-works and other mining excavations which appear in various places, and the many articles of ornamental workmanship in gold and silver which have been found in almost every part of the island, generally buried deep in the soil-all unquestionably belonging to a time not comprehended within the range of the historic period.*

It is remarkable, and may be taken as some confirmation of the evidence afforded by circumstances of another kind which appear to indicate a connexion in very ancient times between Ireland and the east, that nearly all the knowledge of the country of which we find any traces in the Greek and Roman writers seems to have been derived from oriental sources. If the Orphic poem on the voyage of the ship Argo be of the age to which it has been assigned by some of the ablest critics, namely, five hundred years before the birth of Christ, it is there that we have the first mention of Ireland by its Celtic name. The writer speaks of an island which he calls Iernis, as situated somewhere in the Atlantic; and, from various passages of his poem, he is believed to have had much of his information from the Phoenicians. He makes no mention of Britain. Herodotus, a century later, had only heard of the British islands by the descriptive epithet of the Cassiterides, or Tin Islands. Even Eratosthenes, in the third century before Christ, appears not to have been aware of the existence of Ireland, although the island is mentioned by the name of Ierne, in a work attributed to Aristotle, and which has been supposed to be at least of the age of that philosopher, who flourished in the fourth century before the commencement of our era.† Polybius, in the second century before Christ, just notices Ireland. On the other hand, Ptolemy, who is known to have composed his work from materials collected by the Tyrian writer Marinus, gives us, in his Geography, a more full and accurate account of Ireland than of Britain. Another very curious notice of Ireland is that which has been preserved in the Latin geographical poem of Festus Avienus, a writer of the fourth century, but who tells us expressly that he drew his information on the subject from the Punic records. Avienus gives us the only account which we possess of the voyage made by the Carthaginian navigator Himilco to the seas north of the Pillars of Hercules, at the same time that

• See these and other arguments to the same effect, copiously illustrated, though applied to the maintenance of somewhat varying hypotheses, in the several publications of General Vallancey; Lord Rosse's Vindication of the Will of the Right Honourable Henry flood; Dr. Villanueva's Phoenician Ireland, translated by the late Mr. H. O'Brien: Mr. O'Brien's highly ingenious and learned, though occa. sionally rather fanciful, work on the Round Towers (2nd edit. 8vo. Lond. 1834); Sir William Betham's Gael and Cymbri (8vo. Dublin, 1834); and the first volume of Mr. Thomas Moore's History of Ireland (12mo. Lond. 1835)—a work not more distinguished by those graces of composition which were to have been expected from its eminent author, than by extensive erudition and varied and laborious research.

* Περι Κοσμου. The writer says that in the sea beyond the Pil. lars of Hercules (the Straits of Gibraltar) are two large islands, called the British Islands, Albion and Ierne.

Hanno, whose Periplus has come down to us, set out in the opposite direction from the same straits. These voyages seem to have been undertaken about a thousand years before our era. In the narrative given by Avienus, which is a very slight sketch, the islands with which the Carthaginians were wont to trade are designated the Estrumnides, by which name is supposed to have been meant the Scilly Islands; and two days' sail from these is placed, what is said to have been called by the ancients, the Sacred Island, and to be inhabited by the nation of the Hiberni. The island thus described there can be no doubt is Ireland. Near, either to the Estrumnides or the island of the Hiberni (it is not very clear which is intended), is said to extend the island of the Albiones, that is, Britain.

The existence of an abode of science and the arts, and the seat probably also of some strange and mysterious religion, placed in the midst of the waters of the farthest west, and withdrawn from all the rest of the civilized world, could hardly have failed, however obscurely and imperfectly the tale might have been rumoured, to make a powerful impression upon the fancy of the imaginative nations of antiquity. Some speculators have been disposed to trace to the Ireland of the primeval world, not only the legend of the famous island of Atlantis mentioned by Plato and other writers, but also the still earlier fables of the Isle of Calypso, and the Hesperides, and the Fortunate Islands, and the Elysian Fields of Homer and other ancient poets. "The fact," observes Mr. Moore,† "that there existed an island devoted to religious rites in these regions, has been intimated by almost all the Greek writers who have treated of them; and the position in every instance assigned to it, answers perfectly to that of Ireland. By Plutarch it is stated that an envoy despatched by the Emperor Claudius to explore the British Isles, found, on an island in the neighbourhood of Britain, an order of magi accounted holy by the people; and in another work of the same writer, some fabulous wonders are related of an island lying to the west of Britain, the inhabitants of which were a holy race; while, at the same time, a connexion between them and Carthage is indistinctly intimated." passage which Strabo has extracted from an ancient geographer, it is expressly stated that in an island near Britain sacrifices were offered to Ceres and Proserpine, in the same manner as at Samothrace, in the Egean, the celebrated isle where the Phoenicians had established the Cabiric or Guebre worship, that is, the adoration of the sun and of fire, which they again appear to have received from the Persians. "From the words of the geographer quoted by Strabo," continues Mr. Moore, 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

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See a curious interpretation of this name in Davies's Celtic Researches, p. 228. + History of Ireland, i. 13.

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."

But the most curious of all the legends preserved by the classical writers, which have been supposed to allude to Ireland, is the account given by Diodorus Siculus of the Island of the Hyperboreans, on the authority, as he says, of several investigators of antiquity, and especially of Hecatæus, an author who is believed to have flourished in the sixth century before our era. The island, in the first place, is stated to lie in the ocean over against Gaul, and under the arctic pole-a position agreeing with that assigned to Ireland by Strabo, who describes it as situated beyond Britain, and as scarce habitable for cold. It is affirmed to be as large as Sicily, which is a sufficiently correct estimate of the size of Ireland. The soil, the narrative goes on to say, is so rich and fruitful, and the climate so temperate, that there are two crops in the year. Mention is then made of a famous temple of round form, which was here erected for the service of Apollo, whom❘ the inhabitants worshipped above all other gods, his mother Latona having been born in the island. Here seems to be an evident reference to the Round Towers, and the Cabiric religion, of which they were in all probability the temples. The remainder of the account contains apparent allusions to the skill of the inhabitants in playing on the harp, and to their knowledge of astronomy, a study which has always been associated with the worship of the sun. Upon the supposition that this relation refers to Ireland, the famous Abaris, who is said to have come from the Hyperboreans on an embassy to Athens, six centuries before the commencement of the Christian era, and of whose learning and accomplishments so many wonderful stories are told by various authors, would be an Irishman.*

These, and other seeming indications of an oriental connexion have appeared so irresistible to many of the ablest and most laborious inquirers into the antiquities of Ireland, that, however variously they may have chosen to shape their theories in regard to subordinate details, they have found themselves obliged to assume an early colonization of the country by some people of the east, as the leading principle of their investigations. Whatever question there may be, however, as to who this people were, it is agreed on all hands that they were a people speaking the present Irish language. The popular tradition, which makes the

For a more complete examination of the narrative in Diodorus Siculus, see O'Brien's Round Towers, chaps. iv. and xxvii. Toland, however, conceives the island of the Hyperboreans to be" the great island of Lewis and Harris, with its appendages, and the adjacent island of Skye," in the Hebrides. (History of the Druids, p. 155, &c.) Davies is decidedly of opinion that it was Great Britain. (Celtic Researches, 181-199, and'Appendix, 549, &c.) There is a curious article ou Abaris in Bayle's Dictionary.

Milesians or Scots to have been a Scythian colony, considers them nevertheless to be Gael, or Gauls. Colonel Vallancey, who in his latter days adopted the hypothesis that the original Irish people were a colony of Indo-Scythians, and denied that they were either Gauls or Celts, maintained at the same time that the Irish was not a Gallic or Celtic tongue. Mr. O'Brien, who deduces the Irish population from Persia, makes the Irish to have been the ancient language of that country.* Finally, Sir William Betham and others, whose system is that Ireland was colonized by the Phoenicians, contend that the ancient Phoenician or Punic language was the same with the modern Irish, and hold themselves to be able to make out that point from the remains of it which we yet possess. In particular, they supply, by the aid of the Irish tongue, an interpretation of the celebrated scene in Punic, in the "Pœnulus" of Plautus, which has at least a very imposing plausibility.†

imposing plausibility. "The complete identity of the Phoenician and Irish languages," observes Sir William Betham," explains, makes palpable, and elucidates, not only the history and geography of Europe, but most of the ancient maritime world, and in fact removes every difficulty to the acquirement of correct notions of the events of the earliest times."

There can be no doubt, it may be here observed, that the Irish is a Celtic tongue, and essentially the same with that which was anciently spoken by the chief part of the population both of Gaul and of the south of Britain. Colonel Vallancey and others who have doubted or denied this identity have been misled by taking it for granted that the true representative of the Celtic tongue of the an cient Britons and Gauls is the modern Welsh, which, as we shall presently have occasion to notice more particularly, appears really to be a different language altogether.

It may also be remarked that there does not appear to be any irreconcilable discordance between the two principal modern theories on the subject of the ancient connexion of Ireland with the East, namely that which attributes the colonization of the country to the Phoenicians, and that which deduces the people, together with their language and their religion, from Persia. It is far from improbable that the Phoenicians were originally a Persian people. The ancient writers generally bear testimony to the fact that the district called Phoenicia, at the extremity of the Mediterranean, was not their original seat. They seem to have found their way thither from some country farther to the east or the south-east. Herodotus makes them to have been Chaldæans, and Strabo brings them from the neighbourhood of the Persian Gulf. Their religion, as has been already observed, appears to have

The identity of the Celtic people and the Persians, and of the Celtic and Persian languages, is also considered by Pelloutier as admitting of no doubt. See his Histoire des Celtes.

This interpretation was first published by the late General Vallancey, by whom, however, it appears to have been obtained, though that fact was not acknowledged, from a manuscript of an Irish scholar of the name of Neachtan. It is given in the most complete form in Sir W. Betham's Gael and Cymbri, pp. 112–138.

been the same Cabiric or Guebre worship which prevailed among the ancient Persians.

The popular tradition brings the progenitors of the people of Ireland immediately from Spain, making that country one of the principal restingplaces of the Gaelic or Milesian race in their progress from the East. This view also would sufficiently harmonize with the supposition that Ireland was indebted for its earliest civilization and its language to the Phoenicians, who had settlements in Spain, and are expressly stated by Strabo and other ancient writers to have carried on a trading intercourse from very remote times with the British Islands. The Irish traditional history, however, it is to be observed, brings the Spanish colonizers of the country not from Gades, which Strabo speaks of as the place from which the voyages to Britain were chiefly made, but from Gallicia, at the opposite extremity of Spain. Particular mention is made of a lighthouse which stood in the neighbourhood of the port now called Corunna, and was of great service in the navigation between that coast and Ireland; and a remarkable coincidence has been noticed between this part of the tradition and an account given by Ethicus, the cosmographer, of a lofty pharos, or lighthouse, standing formerly on the sea-coast of Gallicia, and, as his expressions seem to imply, serving as a beacon in the direction of Britain. Whatever may be thought, indeed, of the share that either the Phoenicians or some other eastern people may have had in colonizing Ireland, or at least in communicating to the country its earliest civilization and religion, little doubt can be entertained that the great body of the Celtic progenitors of its present population was derived, not, as in the case of Britain, from Gaul, but from Spain. Even some of the British tribes, as we have already hinted, were probably of Spanish extraction. Tacitus, as has been observed above, conjectures that the Silures, who inhabited the south of Wales, had come from Spain, from their swarthy countenances, their curled hair, and the position of the district in which they dwelt, facing that country. Ireland, from its position, in like manner, offered the most inviting field for the occupation of colonists from the same quarter. Many of the names of the ancient Irish tribes, as recorded by Ptolemy, are the same with those of tribes forming part of the Spanish population. 66 So irresistible, indeed," observes Mr. Moore, "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, who, on account of the remarkable similarity which exists between his country's Round Popular History of Ireland, by Mr. Whitty, Part I.

*

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."

At the same time, as Mr. Moore has elsewhere remarked, there are sufficient evidences that Gothic tribes from Germany have effected settlements in Ireland as well as the Celts from Spain. This would be proved by Ptolemy's map of the country alone, in which there are several tribes set down whose names clearly indicate them to have been of Teutonic origin. There is every reason to believe, indeed, as we shall have occasion to show in the sequel, that the most famous of all the Irish tribes, the Scots, a people who seem to have eventually established a dominion over all the other races in the island, -were not Celts, but Germans or Goths. Notwithstanding these mixtures, however, the mass of the population remained essentially Celtic, as it had been from the first; and so thoroughly was the Celtic character impressed upon and worked into the whole being of the nation, that it speedily fused down, and assimilated everything foreign with which it came in contact. "It cannot but be regarded as a remarkable result," observes Mr. Moore, "that while, as the evidence adduced strongly testifies, so many of the foreign tribes that in turn possessed this island were Gothic, the great bulk of the nation itself, its language, character, and institutions, should have remained so free from change; that even the conquering tribes themselves should, one after another, have become mingled with the general mass, leaving only in those few Teutonic words, which are found mixed up with the native Celtic, any vestige of their once separate existence. The fact evidently is, that, long before the period when these Scythic invaders first began to arrive, there had already poured, from the shores of the Atlantic into the country, an abundant Celtic population, which, though but too ready, from the want of concert and coalition, which has ever characterized that race, to fall a weak and easy prey to successive bands of adventurers, was yet too numerous, as well as too deeply imbued with another strong Celtic characteristic, attachment to old habits and prejudices, to allow even conquerors to innovate materially either on their language or their usages." +

According to Sir William Betham, the proper Celtic name of Ireland is not, as commonly stated, Erin, but Eire, of which Erin is the genitive, and which is pronounced precisely as Iar, a word still in common use, and signifying the west, the end, everything last, beyond, the extremity. So, he observes, we find by the Periplus of Hanno History of Ireland, i. 18.

+ Ibid. i. 98.

that the last Phoenician settlement on the west coast of Africa was called Cerne, pronounced Kerne, or Herne, being the same word with Erin. Strabo also tells us that the promontory forming the most western point on the coast of Spain was called Ierne. Ierne and Iernis are among the forms which the Celtic name of Ireland assumes in the pages of the Greek and Roman authors. The same original has, without doubt, also given rise to the forms Juvernia and Hibernia, and to the common Latin names for the people Hiberni and Hiberniones. The derivation of the Celtic name of Ireland from a word signifying the extremity, or the remotest point, is as old as the time of Camden.

It is an important part, however, we ought to note, of Mr. O'Brien's theory, that this name is nearly the same word with Iran, the old and still the native name of Persia. Iran, he says, means the Sacred Land, and Irin the Sacred Island. In support of this explanation he quotes a statement by Sir John Malcolm, to the effect that he had been told by a learned Persian that Eir or Eer signified in the Pahlavi, or court dialect of Persia, a believer, and that that was the root of the name of the country. The uniform spelling of Erin, or Irin, in the oldest manuscripts, according to Mr. O'Brien, is Eirin.*

III. The most ancient name by which the northern part of Britain was known, appears to have been Caledonia. We have no evidence, however, that this name was in use among the inhabitants of the country themselves. It seems to have been that which was employed to designate them by the southern Britons, from whom no doubt the Romans learned it. Caoill signifies wood in Celtic, as Kāλov, kalon, (which appears to be the same word,) does in Greek; and the Caledonii of the Roman writers has been supposed, with much probability, to be merely a classical transformation of Caoill daoin, literally, the people of the woods, or the wild people. The meaning of the term, indeed, is exactly expressed by the modern word savages, in French sauvages, in Italian selvaggie, the original of which is the Latin silva, a wood.

If it could be shown that the northern Britons of the time of the Romans called themselves Caledonians, or Caoill daoin, this circumstance would afford some evidence that they were a Celtic people. But the name in itself, if the commonly received interpretation of it be correct, does not appear to be one which a people would be very likely to adopt as their national appellation. Notwithstanding this probably Celtic name, therefore, by which they were known to the Romans and to the southern Britons, the Caledonians may not have been a Celtic race.

As the south of Britain was in all probability chiefly peopled from Gaul, and Ireland chiefly from Spain, so it has been conjectured that the main source of the original population of North Britain was in like manner the part of the contiThe Round Towers, chap. ix.

VOL. I.

nent immediately opposite to it, namely, the north of what was then called Germany, including modern Holland and Denmark, and also Norway and Sweden, or the region anciently comprehended under the general name of Scandinavia. Tacitus, as already noticed, expressly tells us that the red hair and big bones of the Caledonians asserted their German origin. If this view be correct, the earliest occupants of the North of Britain were a people not of Celtic, but of Teutonic race.

In the later days of the Roman domination the name Caledonians appears to have gradually fallen into disuse, and in their stead the Picts appear on the scene. Everything connected with the Pictstheir name, their language, their origin, their final history-has been made the subject of long and eager controversy. But it may now be said to be agreed on all hands that, whether we are to consider them as having been Gothic or Celtic, the Picts were really of the same stock with the Caledonians.

The Picts are mentioned for the first time about the beginning of the fourth century, by Eumenius, the author of a Panegyric on the Emperor Constantine, who speaks of the Caledonians as being a tribe of Picts: Caledones aliique Picti-the Caledonians and the other Picts-is his expression. About a century later Ammianus Marcellinus describes the Picts as divided into two nations, the Dicaledones, or, according to another reading, Deucaledones, and the Vecturiones. Upon this passage, a late writer, who holds that both the Caledonians and the Picts were Celts, observes-" The term Deucaledones is attended with no difficulty. Duchaoilldaoin signifies, in the Gaelic language, the real or genuine inhabitants of the woods. Du, pronounced short, signifies black; but pronounced long, signifies real, genuine; and in this acceptation the word is in common use; Du Erinnach, a genuine Irishman; Du Albinnach, a genuine Scotsman. The appellation of Deucaledones served to distinguish the inhabitants of the woody valleys of Albinn, or Scotland, from those of the cleared country on the east coast of Albinn, along its whole extent, to certain distances westward along its mountains in the interior parts of the country. These last were denominated, according to Latin pronunciation, Vecturiones; but in the mouths of the Gael, or native inhabitants, the appellation was pronounced Uachtarich.”* We do not find, however, that any explanation of this last term is attempted further than the following:"That a portion of the country was known in ancient times by the name of Uachtar, is evinced by the well-known range of hills called DruimUachtar, from which the country descends in every direction towards the inhabited regions on all sides of that mountainous range." + Sir William Betham, also, explaining the names recorded by Marcellinus from the Welsh, will have the

Thoughts on the Origin and Descent of the Gael. By James Grant, Esq. of Corrimony. 8vo. Lond. 1828, p. 276. + Ibid. p. 277.

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