Chapter XXX: (pp. 445-474)

The duration of Tuath-de-danaan supremacy may have been some six centuries, dating from the first battle of Moytura, in B.C. 1202 (p. 435), to the second battle, in or about B.C. 600, between the Firbolgs, or Celts (who had been gradually reasserting themselves), and a reinforcement of Tuath-de-danaans, coming this time, not from Persia, but from India, whence they had been expelled by the Brahmins (p. 443). Although this second invasion proved successful, the power of the Tuath-de-danaans was now on the wane, and the height of civilisation to which they had raised the island rapidly declined before the inroads of the Scythians. Their ritual became merged in that of the Druids, and their taste for letters vitiated. Possibly, with a view to arrest this decadence, they began to cultivate intercourse with Greece, the result being a strong reciprocal influence, exercised by the languages of the two countries on each other, and more especially by Irish upon Greek. A corresponding influence resulted from the migration of discontented Tuath-de-danaans into Scotland. Nor was it confined to language; for certain peculiarities of ancient Irish architecture are found reproduced in Mycenian and Caledonian structures, as, for example, in the _Treasury of Atreus_ (Mycenæ) and the _Dune of Dornadilla_ (Scotland); and that religion was not wholly unaffected is proved by the discovery of Irish relics showing that the oracular superstitions of Dodona had their counterpart in Ireland.

CHAPTER XXXI

(PP. 475-497)

The relics of Tuath-de-danaan occupation, which exist in the shape of gigantic crosses, and of sculptured ornamentation in which cross-symbolism is prominent, point to a mystery far more esoteric than that involved in the Christian emblem. The cross had become representative of the number _ten_, because in Irish the same word, _lambh_, denoted equally a _cross_ and the human _hand_, or the number of fingers on both hands; whilst the “triangle of _ten_” (p. 268) embraced “all that was solemn in religion and in thought,” being, in fact, “the index of male and female united,” and the prototype of the ark and pyramid. This _Sabaic_, and only intelligible, explanation of these highly figurative sculptures disposes of the theory that they are the product of a Christianity with which they have nothing in common but a shape which is not peculiar to any one religion in any part of the world.