Chapter X

Thus far have Ireland and Persia kept company together, both equally rejoicing in the common name of _Iran_. But now, when we descend to particulars, this harmony separates. Ireland 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 the alteration was so easily formed as by the change of the final _an_ into _in_--_an_ meaning _land_, and _in island_--the transition was so natural as at once to recommend its propriety.

Hence it is that though we occasionally meet with _Iran_, as applied to this country, yet do we more frequently find _Irin_ as its distinctive term; whereas the latter is never, by any chance, assigned to Persia, the former alone being its universal name. And this is all conformable 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 _extension_ of both is identical--could never be called _Irin_: and so it happens that _Ireland_ is indifferently called by the names of _Iran_ or _Irin_, the latter alone marking its _insular_ characteristic; whereas _Persia_, not being so circumstanced, is mentioned only by the general form of _Iran_.

To simplify this reasoning I must repeat that _Iran_[147] signifies the _Sacred Land_, and _Irin_,[148] the _Sacred Island_; now every _island_ is a _land_, but every _land_ is not an island: Persia, therefore, which is _not an island_, could not be called _Irin_, whereas Ireland, _which is_, may as well be called one as the other.[149]

_Irin_, then, is the _true_, _appropriate_, _characteristic_ and _specific_ denomination belonging to this island:--and the words Ire, Eri, Ere,[150] and Erin, applied also thereto, are but vicious or dialectal modifications of this grand, original, and ramifying root.

The import of this appellative having spread itself over the globe before Rome was ever known, under that name, as a city, and when Greece was but just beginning to peep into the 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 Phœnician merchants, to the early Greek inhabitants;[151] and they, by a very easy process, commuted _Irin_ to _Iérne_, which is but a translation of the word--ἱερος signifying _sacred_, and νηος an island.

Of this Greek form, Ierne, there were again various inflections and depraved assimilations, such as Iernis, Iuernia, Ouvernia, Vernia, etc. And from one[152] of those, the Latins, without, perhaps, exactly knowing what it meant, conjured up _Hibernia_, but which, however, with soul-stirring triumph, retains _uninjured_ our original root, the initial _H_ being nothing more than the aspirate of the Greek ἱερος, sacred; νηος, _island_, remaining unaltered; and the letter _b_ only interposed for sound-sake.[153]

So that, whether we consider it as _Irin_, _Ierne_, or _Hibernia_, or under the multiplied variations which diverge, almost interminably, from those _three originals_, in the several languages which they _respectively_ represent, they will be found, each and all, to resolve themselves into this _one, great, incontrovertible position of the_ “Sacred Island.”

Thus, under heaven, have I been made the humble instrument of redeeming my country from the aspersions of calumniators. I have shown to _demonstration_ 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; and have proved, beyond the possibility of rational contradiction, that in all those different changes regard was still held to the original epithet.

Where, then, are the sneers--of “hallucination,”--of “lunacy,”--and of “etymological moonshine?” These are very cheap and convenient terms for gentlemen to adopt, as cloaks to the ignorance of the purport 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 name was the sober consequence of deliberate circumspection; and was intended to transmit the memory of events, in the truest colours, as well as in the most comprehensive form, to the latest generation.

Will this be considered the _vapouring_ of conceit? Is it the _spouting_ of self-sufficient inanity? Let the heartless _utilitarian_, unable to appreciate the motives which first enlisted me in this inquiry, and which 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 literature in disgust, and betaken myself, an adventurer for distinction as a soldier,--let such, I say, _conceal within himself_ his despicable worldly-mindedness, and leave me unmolested, if unrewarded, to posterity.

“Come thou, my friend, my genius, come along,
Thou master of the poet and the song,
And while the muse now stoops, or now ascends,
To man’s low passions, or his glorious ends,
Teach me, like thee, in various nature wise,
To fall with dignity--with temper rise;
Formed by thy converse happily to steer
From grave to gay, from lively to severe;
Correct with spirit, eloquent with ease;
Intent to reason, or polite to please.”

The origin of the term “Sacred Island,” being now for ever adjudicated, the reader will at once see that it belonged to an era long anterior to Christianity. In assigning to it this _date_,[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 _prescription_--I shall register, in express words, my predecessor’s own exposé, which is, that “the isle must have been so named _because of its nurturing no venomous reptile_”[155]!!! Who will not smile?

No, sir, the imposers of this name were too sensible of its value, and too jealous of its use, to expose it to ambiguity. It pourtrayed the sanctity of the occupying proprietors; and lest there should be any misconception as to the _species_ of worship whence that “sanctity” had emanated, they gave _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_, this latter signifying _land_--becomes _Buodhla_--that is, Budh_land_.[157] _Fudh Inis_, by the same rule, is reducible to _Budh Inis_, of which the latter means _island_, that is, Budh-_island_;[158] while _Inis_-na-_Bhfiodhbhadh_ requires no transposition, being clear and obvious in itself, as the _Island of Budhism_.

Now, “to make assurance doubly sure,” go to _Keating’s History of Ireland_, p. 49, and you will there find “the female deities”--an incorrect expression for the deities worshipped by the females--of the Tuath-de-danaans, to have been Badhha, Macha, and Moriagan.[159] Of these 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, the Scythians, who incorporated with them, after first dethroning them, adopted this term as their exhilarating war-shout, while under the veil of the epithet was really meant the _sun_, whose aid they invoked to give _strength_ to their _loins_ and _vigour_ to their _arms_.[161]

And yet this is the name which _Spenser_ would derive from that of Fergus, king of Scotland! Fifteen hundred years and more before Fergus was born, which, by the way, was not until the sixth century of the Christian era, the Irish basked in the _sunshine_ of their resplendent war-god, who, under another and 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. etc.; which the early English settlers, who would fain become _Hibernis ipsis Hiberniores_, afterwards imitated: such as Butler a-Boo; Shanet-a-Boo; Grasagh a-Boo; Crom a-Boo, etc.; the last having been that adopted by Fitzgerald, Duke of Leinster, and still retained as the motto of his armorial escutcheon.

It is worth while to listen to Spenser’s _gratulation_, while chuckling himself with the idea of his fancied discovery: “This observation of yours,” he says to himself, “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 is known of Ireland! But I am not surprised at _foreigners_, when the very _natives_, the descendants of the _actors_ in those glorious scenes, are ignorant of its history!

Take up any document, purporting to give an account of this country, and you will find it to be composed, either of absurd and nauseous _exaggerations_ on the one hand, or of gross and calumnious _detractions_ on the other. But though the _wildness_ of the _former_ cannot fail to generate, in the intellectual amongst all readers, an _unfavourable impression_; and in those 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 glean in the distortion of those _maniac effusions_, the _glimmerings_ of that _truth_ whence they originally emanated--while the _injustice_ of the _calumniator’s_ must, _of itself_ bring dismay, with the whole train of confusion and dishonour, upon the mercenary instruments of those foul abuses, as well as upon the heartless abettors who could have enlisted their vassalage!

Truth, notwithstanding, obliges me to say that the blame should not altogether be laid upon the historians. They did as much as, under the circumstances, could be expected at their hands. Two successive invasions having passed over, and swept away, in the whirlwind of their desolating fury, 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 recovery of their lost rights, and the consequent ejectment of the party who had usurped them[164]--the patriot had little more to guide him in supplying the deficiencies thus created, than the rude imagining of his own brain, or the oral traditions of the village schoolmaster and genealogist.

The rigour, however, of penal observances began, in time, gradually to relax; and the people ventured to confess that they had still in their possession such things as _manuscripts_, illustrative of their lineage and ancestral elevation. This 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_ on their _minds_, that those treasured visions of primeval lustre, hereditary and inborn within the breast of every Irishman, and impossible to be eradicated, were not yet, _late as was the hour_, without something like a basis to rest upon.

I would be unjust did I not furthermore avow, that it was not their enemies alone that waged this ungenerous warfare with the literature of the Irish. St. Patrick himself was the individual who, in pursuance, as he 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 selected from the great mass of the records of the nation, as embodying the tenets of _Budhism_ and _Astrology_. The rest, relating to the notification of national or personal achievements, he left untouched and secure.

Yet, will it be believed that this was the severest infliction, so far as _letters_ are concerned, which we have sustained, after all? For as the _religion_ of the ancient Irish was intermingled with their _history_, and as the wide diffusion of their _celebrity_ arose from the eminence of their _religious creed_, the flames of that conflagration have inflicted a loss upon the antiquarian which _fifteen centuries of study_ have not been able to repair!

Despite, however, the united inroads of suspicion and mistaken piety, the Irish have still materials, ample and authentic, for the completion of a history, not only of _insular_, but, if _properly handled_, of almost _universal_ elucidation:[165] and of 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) have _incomparably_ more ancient materials of that kind for their history, to which even their _mythology is not unserviceable_, than either the English, or the French, or any other European nation with whose ancient manuscripts I have any acquaintance.”

But though resources most unquestionable thus notoriously still abounded, yet has it not been the fortune of Ireland, hitherto, to meet with any historian gifted with the widely comprehensive, 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, the knowledge of the character in which those papers are couched has become already so almost extinct, that they lie on the shelves, to all intents and purposes a _dead_ letter.[166]

I now beg leave to introduce this identical war-god, in his military costume and hyperborean philabeg, in which, as before observed, the Scythians never invested themselves; and hope the reader will enjoy a hearty laugh at the expense of those blunderers, who, in their _preposterous_, I had almost said _repentant_, devotion to monastic refinements, would rob the Pagans of this long-cherished _idol_, and convert his godship into a _Christian_ nonentity!

You will find him--name and all corresponding--described fully in the _Rites and Ceremonies of all Nations_, as similarly officiating and worshipped in the East. “There is,” says the author, “in the province of Matambo, an _idol_ whose priests are _sorcerers_ or _magicians_; and this image stands _upright_, directly over against the temple dedicated to his peculiar service, in a _basket made in the form of a bee-hive_.”[167]

“To this deity in particular they apply themselves for success when they go out a _hunting_ or _fishing_, and for the relief of all such as are indisposed![168] _Miramba always marches at the head of their armies_; and he is presented with the first delicious morsel, and the first glass of wine that is served up at the governor’s or King of Matambo’s table.”

But a _living_ traveller, in a very interesting work just launched from the press, and without expecting therein to become my auxiliary, decides this ascription without further pains. “This village,” says our author (near Rampore, on the Himalaya range), “instanced the care which the sacerdotal 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 implements, and to take care of the godships within it--these are _small brass images, with nether garments in the shape of petticoats_. They are carried in procession, on certain occasions, and the ceremonies belonging to them are performed twice a day. Mahadeo is the great god of the mountains.”[169]

But if the advocates of modernism have cause to be annoyed at my depriving them of this specimen of “the Fine Arts in Ireland,” which they thought they had appropriated to the prejudice of truth, 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 reverenced and revered, by many a beating heart, as the head of all ecclesiastics, for centuries upon centuries, before the name of monachism, as connected with Christianity, was ever articulated!

This, Sir, is no less a personage than Mr. Budha himself, or rather the personified abstract, in the possession of one of the last queens of the Tuath-de-danaans, at the moment of the inundation of the Scythian dynasty. 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 delegation, and acknowledge the supremacy of that power by which his empire had been overthrown--treat him as an _Irishman_, with generous cordiality, and impute not to him a crime which belonged only to his followers.

But his dress is like a Christian. So much the better, man: we ought to like him the more for that. But to be serious,--although, as my friend Horace formerly told me, “what hinders one laughing from speaking truth?”--all our ecclesiastical 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 the authority of Dr. Buchanan for stating that “_Samona_ is a title bestowed on the priests of Godama (Budha), and is likewise applied to the _images_ of the _divinity_, when _represented, as he commonly is_, in the _priestly habit_.”[171]