Chapter XV

The objections against the Dabistan being thus superseded, and the idea of its being an “invention”[213] having never crossed anyone’s thoughts, I shall now give a bird’s-eye view of its tenour in Sir John’s own summary thereof.

“It has been before observed,” says he, “that the idolatrous religion which Mohsin Fani ascribes to the ancient Persians, bears no resemblance to the worship of the Hindoos: it seems nearest that which was followed by a sect of _Sabians_, who, we are told, _believed in God_, but _adored the planets_, whom _they deemed his vicegerents, that exercised an influence over all created things in the world_. This sect of Sabians were said to follow the _ancient_ Chaldeans, and to inherit their skill in astronomy, a science built upon the same foundation as the adoration of the planets.[214] And this leads us to remark, that the very title of the work from which Mohsin Fani gives an account of this worship, appears more like that of a treatise upon astrology, than upon religion. He calls it _Akheristan_, or _the region_ of the _stars_. It is, however, impossible to enter into any minute comparison of the religion he ascribes to the ancient Persians, and the sect of Sabians that have been noticed, _because we have only a very general account of the tenets of the latter_.”

As to the _impossibility_ here complained of, it is obvious that _there is none_: whoever has digested even the early part of this essay will own it was but _ideal_. With this I should have contented myself, but that I feel called upon to correct another misconception, which the above may have produced.

That Sabaism meant _idolatry_ in the way there insinuated, I utterly and altogether repudiate. It was the religion of the early Greeks before their degenerate mythology had loaded it with so many absurdities;[215] and that it was so, is evident from the term in their language, which expresses “to worship,” viz. σεβομαι, an evident derivation, from which is anglicised, Sabaism.[216] The object of this religion was the host of heaven, meaning the sun, moon, and stars. The names assigned to the reputed idols, viz. Uranus, _i.e._ Heaven, and Gea, _i.e._ Earth, with the energies of the sky and nature typified under the names of the “Cyclops” and “Giants,” incontrovertibly demonstrate the truth of this position.

I have said that the name Cyclops, in this religious code, was meant to figure forth the energies of the atmosphere; I need but mention their denominations to establish my proof. They are “Steropes,” from στεροπη, lightning; Argues, from αργης, quick-flashing; and Brontes, from βροντη, thunder. Even the celebrated name of _Hercules_[217] himself, and the twelve labours poetically ascribed to him,--who, we must observe, many ages before the Tirynthian hero is fabled to have performed his wonders, or his mother Clymena to have been born, had temples raised to him in Phœnicia and Egypt, as well as at Cadiz and the Isle of Thasos,--are nothing more than a figurative denotation of the annual course of the solar luminary through the signs of the Zodiac.

In support of this I shall quote the authority of Porphyry, who was himself born in Phœnicia, and who assures us that “they there gave the name of Hercules to the sun, and that the fable of the twelve labours represents the sun’s annual path in the heavens.” Orpheus, or the author of the hymns that pass under his name, says that Hercules is “the god who produced time, whose forms vary, the father of all things and destroyer of all; he is the god who brings back by turns Aurora and the night, and who moving onwards from east to west, runs through the career of his twelve labours; the valiant Titan, who chases away maladies, and delivers man from the evils which afflict him.” The scholiast on Hesiod likewise remarks, “The zodiac in which the sun performs his annual course is the true career which Hercules traverses in the fable of the twelve labours; and his marriage with Hœbe, the goddess of youth, whom he espoused after he had ended his labours, denotes the renewal of the year at the end of each solar revolution.” While the poet Nonnas, adverting to the sun as adored by the Tyrians, designates him Hercules Astrokiton (αστροχιτων), or the god clothed in a mantle of stars; following up this description by stating that “he is the same god whom different nations adore, under a multitude of different names--Belus, on the banks of the Euphrates; Ammon, in Libya; Apis, at Memphis; Saturn, in Arabia; Jupiter, in Assyria; Serapis, in Egypt; Helios, among the Babylonians; Apollo, at Delphi; Æsculapius, throughout Greece,” etc. etc.

Even the father of history himself, the great Colossus of the Greeks, whilst claiming for his countrymen the honour of instituting their own theogony, evinces in the attempt more of misgiving and doubt than was consistent with the possession of authentic information. His words are these: “As for the gods whence each of them was descended, or whether they were always in being, or under what shape or form they existed, the Greeks knew nothing till very lately. Hesiod and Homer were, I believe, about four hundred years older than myself, and no more, and these are the men who made a theogony for the Greeks; who gave the gods their appellations, defined their qualities, appointed their honours, and described their forms; as for the poets, who are said to have lived before these men, I am of opinion they came after them.”

But even this assumption, were it conceded to the utmost, would not militate against the doctrine which I have laid down; for Homer’s education was received in Egypt, and India was the medium which illuminated the latter country; nothing, therefore, prevents our yielding to the stream of general authority in ascribing the introduction to the Pelasgi. The word χρονος itself, or “the father of Jove,” was nothing more than an equivalent with the Latin _tempus_; and for the very best possible reason, because the revolutions of this planet, as of the other celestial orbs, came, from their periodical and regular appearances, to be considered the ordinary measurements of the parts of duration or time.

It must, no doubt, appear a contradiction that Chronos--the “son of Uranus, and Terra,” as we were told at school, and the first person, as somewhere else stated, who was honoured with a crown--should be called an “orb,” and have “periodical appearances”; and that those appearances should regulate our estimate of days, weeks, years, and seasons. The difficulty, however, will cease, when we consider that though the _sun_, _moon_, and _stars_ were the primary objects of false worship, the deification of dead men, deceased heroes, afterwards crept in, the consequence of which was a mixed kind of idolatry, consisting of _stars_ and _heroes_, or _heroines, deceased_--a planet being assigned to each as the greatest possible honour. “That whom men could not honour in presence, because they dwelt far off, they took the counterfeit of his visage from far, and made an express image of a king, whom they honoured, to the end that by their forwardness they might flatter him that was absent, as if he was present.”[218]

Let us now see how the religion of the ancient Irish harmonises with that of the Dabistan, as illustrated in the composition of some of our ancient names. Here _Baal_, or _Moloch_, and _Astarte_ are obviously in the foreground; whilst the popular and vernacular names for those luminaries amongst the peasantry themselves, namely, _Grian_ for the _sun_, _Luan_ for the _moon_, _Righ_ for _king_, and _Rea_ for _queen_, in their appropriation to several localities throughout the country, indicate but too plainly the melancholy tale of their former deification.

To instance some few of those names, that strike me as _demonstrative_ of this Sabian worship, I shall begin with

Baltinglas.[219]--This name of a town and mountain in the county of Wicklow, and province of Leinster, is equivalent to Baal-tinne-glass, that is, “Baal’s-fire-green,” alluding to the colour of the grass at the spring season. These _igneous_ betrayals of human frailty and superstition were celebrated throughout Ireland at both the _vernal_ and _autumnal_ equinoxes, in honour of the twin divinities so often adverted to in the course of this book. The eve of the vernal one was called _Aiche Baal-tinne_, that is, the night of Baal’s fire, the eve of the autumnal, _Aiche Shamain_, that is, the night of the moon’s solemnity; on both which occasions fires were lighted on all “_the high places_” dedicated to their worship.

The return of these respective seasons gave rise to various superstitions amongst the illiterate populace, one of which was that of borrowing a piece of money at the first sight of the new-moon, if they had it not themselves, as an omen of plenty throughout the month.[220] And their praying to that luminary, when first seen after its change, is so well known as to be mentioned even by a French writer, whom Selden, _De Diis Syriis_, quotes in these words:--“Se mittent a genoux en voyant la lune nouvelle, et disent en parlant a lune, laise nous ausi sains que tu nous as trouvé.”[221]

The new moon nearest to the winter solstice was celebrated with peculiar ceremonies. On that night the chief Druid, attended by crowds of the people, used to go into the woods, and cut with a golden sickle a branch of the mistletoe of the oak, which he would carry in procession to the sacred grove. This golden sickle or crescent corresponded in form and nature with that which Aurelius Antoninus, the Roman emperor, wore at his coronation, to intimate his adherence to the Phœnician doctrines in which he had been early instructed--his adopted name still further intimating that he had been, what _it_ literally signifies, Heliogabalus, that is, priest of the sun.[222] The crescent itself is the favourite badge of _Sheevah_, the _matrimonial_ deity of the Indians, which he is represented as wearing in front of his crown.

After the introduction of Christianity, its first preachers wishing to defer to the prejudices of the inhabitants, yet not so as to interfere with the celebration of Easter at the vernal equinox, with an accommodating policy, retained the Baal-tinne ceremonial, only transferring it to the _saints’ days_; thus _diverting_ their attention from their former devotion, and fixing it upon those who, in their zealous propagation of the gospel truths, may be considered as Christian _stars_;--conformably to that gracious character of “a burning and shining light,” which our Saviour Himself applied to His precursor, St. John.

In honour of this apostle, June 24th, the day of his nativity, was substituted, in the old ecclesiastical calendar, for the pagan solstice festival, and called solstitium vulgi, the vulgar solstice.

The intention of the transfer was, however, lost sight of by the illiterate; and when they would kindle their fires on the tops of _mountains_ on those occasions, they used to blend with them the features of the pagan institution, by passing children and cattle between them for the purpose of purification.

The propriety, therefore, of thus subserving to deep-rooted prejudices, has by some been impugned; but “surely,” after all, to use the words of a very able writer, “they were much wiser and better who, in those early times, grafted the evangelical upon the druidical culture, than they who, in subsequent times, instituted a system of extirpation in order to regenerate.”

The other pagan solemnities were similarly metamorphosed, and partook of similar transmutations. The 1st of May alone retained the name and characteristics of its original appropriation, being still called “_La Beuil-tinne_,” that is, the day of Baal’s fire, as familiarly as the name _Christmas_ is given to the 25th of December. On it, too, fires are kindled on “high places,” as before; and children and cattle purified by passing between them;--

--------“Yet, oh! remember
Oft I have heard thee say, the secret heart
Is fair Devotion’s temple: there the saint
Even on that living altar lights the flame
Of purest sacrifice, which burns unseen,
Not unaccepted.”[223]

I next turn to Killmalloch, the ancient name of which, as given by Ptolemy, was Macollicon,--a metathesis for Mallochicon; and the final, _icon_, which is only a Greek termination, being taken away, leaves Malloch, that is, Moloch, the Apollo or great divinity of the ancient universe.

To divert the natives from this misplaced enthusiasm, one of the early converts to Christianity assumed to himself the name of _Maloch_; and then prefixing to it the adjunct _Kill_, made it the _church_ of _Maloch_, instead of the _city_ of _Moloch_.

Here is still to be seen, careering towards the skies, one of those “_singular_ temples of round form,” of the existence of which Vitruvius was so ignorant, but whose dogmatic enunciation of “monopteres” and “peripteres,” sounds as feebly in _my_ ears, as Montmorency’s assumption that the round towers were dungeons!--and the violence which this structure has latterly undergone--by the effort made to incorporate it with the Christian cathedral, built beside it in rivalship, after an interval of nearly three thousand years--is one of the most triumphant evidences which truth can produce in suppression of error. My soul burned with earnestness to visit this hallowed scene, upon which I had revolved so much, and which I associated in my fancy with the recorded glories of Apollo. I have, at last, seen it; and he must be indeed a slave to faction, or the dupe of prejudice, who will not subscribe to that evidence which the very stones proclaim.

Apollo’s Temple, or the Round Tower, stands at the corner of the cathedral, subsequently built half-around it: and, as you ascend the parapet of the latter, by an _intermural_ staircase, having to pass, afterwards, from one side of this parapet to the other, just at the very corner by which the Tower is girt, the pass being very narrow, and almost terrific in dimensions, wholly defenceless besides, on the right hand which looks down into the body of the cathedral, the constructors of this latter edifice were obliged, in their desire to intermarry Christianity with paganism, to scoop off, or rather to file, about six inches of the _ancient_ rotund structure, all along, on the left, to the height of the human figure, so as to allow more room; yet even thus mutilated, I could not but reverence and bow down before the Tower.

“For, even the faintest relics of a shrine,
Of _any_ worship, wake some thoughts divine.”[224]

After this transformation, Kilmalloch assumed an entirely Christian aspect; and the monastic buildings that crowded the town surpassed, in their style, anything similar throughout the island. The materials, however, of which those were constructed, being inferior in quality to the _Tuathan_ composition, did not long keep place; so that now, whilst the Round Tower still maintains its bold preoccupancy, the Christian churches exhibit but a pile of ruins!

The dreariness of this once imperial site is a moving instance of worldly vicissitudes; and one can scarcely avoid, when passing by the loneliness of its dilapidated mansions, applying the apposite and melancholy apostrophe attributed to Ossian, “Why dost thou build the hall, son of the winged days? Thou lookest from thy towers to-day; yet a few years, and the blast of the desert comes, it howls in thy empty courts.”

Ard-Mulchan, the name of a village in the barony of Duleck, county Meath, comes from _Ard_, the high place, or mound, _Mulchan_ of Moloch. And, however extraordinary it may appear to some readers, I cannot but hazard my opinion, that the name of the individual to whom St. Patrick had been sold during his captivity in this island, viz. _Milco_-Mac-Huanan, that is, Milco, the son-of-Huanan, originated in the circumstance of the family’s devotion to the service of this idol; and if a doubt remained as to the justness of this conclusion, it will, methinks, be removed, when we consider the close of his mortal career, and the unfortunate blindness with which he clung to his fatuity.

He was a petty prince of that part of the country, afterwards called Dalruadia, or the principality of the Dalruads, from the prevalence of that demi-tribe, in Ulster; and when Patrick--in prosecution of that mission of grace, to which he had been deputed by divine interposition; and impelled, perhaps, moreover, by a compassionate zeal and Christian recollection of his previous bondage--undertook, amongst other conversions, that of his former master, we find that the sentiment was not reciprocated on _his_ part; but that, either ashamed of allowing himself to be persuaded, in his old age, to abandon the religion in which he had been early initiated; or marked out by Providence as an awful victim to the prevailing superstition, he plunged himself into a fire which had accidentally broken out in his castle, and so was consumed by that element which he had before worshipped as his God!

Athlone,--or as anciently and correctly written, Ath-luain,--the name of a town situated on the river Shannon, where _it is fordable_, bounding Leinster in Westmeath, and Connaught in Galway, is compounded of the words _Ath_, which signifies a ford, and _luain_, of the moon. The common people still call it Blah-luin, an evident corruption of _Baile-ath-luin_, that is, the village of the ford of the moon; equivalent to Moon-ford-town. This name establishes the analogy of the Syrian Astarte with the worship here paid to the “queen of night,” and the many lunettes, or gold crescents, found buried in the _neighbourhood_, are “confirmation strong” of the inference deduced.

The moon, whose course through the heavens regulated the months of the early lunar year, and whose influence was regarded by the ancients, in common with that of the sun, as one of the _fertilising principles_ of _nature_, and as exerted chiefly amid wilds and woods, at a distance from the crowded abodes of man, had in this spot, apparently, a peculiar claim for her special appropriation. For here the aged majesty of the river Shannon, the Ganges of Ireland,--as we find reciprocally that Shannon is one of the Gangian names, and Saor, or Suir, the name of another Irish river, meaning “sacred” water, belongs also to the Indus itself,--displays its imposing grandeur in all the varieties of sublime and delightful scenery. Not far off is one of those beautiful lakes into which this monarch of waters expands himself, to bask, as it were, in repose, from the tiresome gaze attending the crowded path of his ordinary travels--

“Tho’ deep, yet clear; tho’ gentle, yet not dull;
Strong without rage; without o’erflowing full.”[225]

Lough Rea is the name of the lake above referred to, which, from its proximity to Athlone, gives concurrent sanction to the derivation above assigned. For _Rea_, in Irish, corresponds to Malcoth, or Astarte, _i.e._ queen, that is, Shamaim, of the heavens; as _Righ_ does to Baal, or Molock, master, or king of the same; and both re-echoed in the _regina_ and _rex_ of the Latins.[226]

I should further notice, that in the Barony of Castle-_reagh_--a name, which, though prefaced by a _modern_ adjunct, still testifies its devotion, at one time, to the moon--there has been, some years ago, dug up one of those beautiful plates of gold, shaped like a half-moon, at once confirmatory of the propriety of the local name, and of the nature of the worship of its primitive incumbents having been lunar or Sabian. This relic is now in the possession of the Downshire family.

In reference to _Shannon_, to which I have before adverted, as being one of the names of the _Ganges_, it is not a little curious that _Durga_, the supposed divinity of this water, and whose festival is annually solemnised all through Hindoostan, should be represented by _Derg_, the supposed divinity of the _Shannon_, and should have its name still more perpetuated in the Irish word _Dearg-art_, that is, the abode of Derg, in Lough Derg, the lower lake upon this river.

From its mouth to its source this noble stream is characterised with relics of primeval worship, corresponding, in form and tendency, with those on the banks of its Indian namesake. Scattery Island, or, as it should more properly be called, Inis Catty, situated very near where it discharges itself into the sea, retains a beautiful Round Tower, to which has been afterwards appended, in the Christian times, the mystical number of seven churches, and the ruins of which are still perceptible. The circumstance of an early professor of our heaven-taught religion having taken up his secluded residence within the precincts of this spot, has led many moderns to suppose that the river obtained its name from him, whereas the word _Shannon_ is derived from _Shan Aoun_, that is, the “aged river”; and the saint received his name from that _pious policy_ before explained, as well as from the constancy of his abode in its vicinity--not _vice versâ_.[227]

Killeshandra, the name of a town in the county of Leitrim, on the borders of the county of Cavan, signifies, in Irish, “the temple of the moon’s cycle,” or circle. In Sanscrit, which is a dialect of the aboriginal Irish,[228] it denotes exactly the same. We find besides Herodotus making mention, B. xi. c. 98, of a city in Egypt, during the Persian dominion, called Archandra, that is, “the city of the moon.” He asserts that it is not Egyptian, neither derived from the wife of Danaus, the daughter of Archander: yet the opposite may be well supported without at the same time injuring this derivation, for the daughters of Danaus were certainly initiated in the _Phallic rites_; nay, they were the persons who first imported them into Attica: and it is eminently worth notice, that this was the very spot[229] where the Tuath-de-danaan kings happened to be stationed upon the first Scythian deluge; the word “Kill” having been _prefixed_ to it only upon the introduction of Christianity.

Granard, the name of a town in the county of Longford, is compounded of the words _Grian_, the sun, and _ard_, a height, that is, the sun’s high-place. Nor, I suspect, will it be deemed an over-effort of criticism, if I repeat, that in our Irish _Grian_ is to be found the root of that epithet of Apollo, _Grynæus_,[230] which was also the name of a city of Asia Minor, consecrated to his worship, and favoured, as Strabo informs us, with a grove, a temple, and an oracle of that deity. The river Granicus, too, was derived therefrom, because its source lay in Mount Ida, sacred to _Grian_, or the sun, whereon was situated the _Idean stone_, upon which, we are told, Hector was wont to sacrifice; and corresponding to the _Cromleachs_, so common throughout this island. The word _Carne_, also, meaning a heap of stones, on which an inferior order of clergy, thence called _Carneach_, used to officiate, belongs to the same root, as both Ovid and Macrobius declare that it was called, by the ancients, Grane.[231]

As Lough _Rea_ had been dedicated to the moon, so was the other luminary also honoured with a lake,--called after his name,--which we find in the adjoining country, where Lough _Grany_ signifies the Lake of the _Sun_; as we do also _Beal-ath_, or Ath-en-righ, that is, the _Ford of Baal_, or the _Ford of the King_, _i.e._ the _Sun_; corresponding to _Ath-lone_, or _Ford of the Moon_.

The above are but a few of those imperishable memorials intertwined round those haunts which our forefathers have trod; the import of which, however, has been so perverted by _modern scribblers_, as to give occasion to O’Flaherty to give up their solution in despair, and, as a cover to his retreat, to pronounce them “as outlandish in their sound as the names of the savages in some of the American forests.”[232] In this rhodomontade, however, he was much more fortunate than he had intended, or, as the Englishmen say of our countrymen, “he blundered himself into the right.” Little did he suspect how near a connection there existed between the two people whom he affected, thus ridiculously, to associate; and anyone who attends to the position which I subjoin, independently of many others that could be brought in support of it, will admit the happiness of this unintentional coincidence. The Algan Kinese are the most influential and commanding people in the whole of North America; their name in Irish indicates as much, namely, _Algan-Kine_, or _Kine Algan_,[233] a _noble_ community. The language of this people is the master one of the whole country; and, what is truly remarkable, understood, as Baron de Humboldt asserts, by all the Indian nations except two. What then are we to infer from this obvious affinity? Most undoubtedly, that a colony of the same people who first inhabited Ireland, and assigned to its several localities those characteristic names which so disconcerted the harmony of Mr. O’Flaherty’s acoustic organs, had fixed themselves, at an early date, in what has been miscalled the _New World_.

Small, however, as is the number of the names here selected, they are enough, I flatter myself, to establish the prevalence of our Sabian ritual. But what puts this matter beyond anything like a question is the inscription upon a stone, still extant, in the county of Dublin, evidently a symbol of the _Sun_ and _Moon_, which, like Osiris and Isis of Egypt, were considered by the ancient Irish as _united_ in matrimony.

“God, in the nature of each being, founds
Its proper bliss, and sets its proper bounds:
But as He framed a whole the whole to bless,
On mutual wants built mutual happiness;
So from the first, eternal order ran,
And creature linked to creature, man to man.
Whate’er of life all quickening ether keeps,
Or breathes through air, or shoots beneath the deeps,
Or pours profuse on earth, one nature feeds
The vital flame, and swells the genial seeds.
Not man alone, but all that roam the wood,
Or wing the sky, or roll along the flood,
Each loves itself, but not itself alone,
Each sex desires alike, _till two are one_.”--POPE.