s 3 5 ^r ^ * 7 ^-s *? -^^-^ V ^/m\INfl-]\\v ^ S g >; >- S I ^Hm'KJjj. ^ 1 s 5 I, I ' f \ V f 53 ' ,^ % 3> $ pr' s t 1 3 TR% ^ 5 S ITfrfS I K y, ^J\ I _B -j* -^ a' - ' 1 3 ^- > \\\f UN'IVERI//, -^ ^ d? f^" i I %/OJ11V3-JO^ 7 | I . c: t t $ g s % I I i ^ .j-OF-CAHFO/?^ ^ ^ ^. ^ s s ': > a i ^ % THK ROUND TOWERS OF I R ELAND; OK THE HISTORY OF THE TUATH-DE-DANAANS FOR THE FIRST TIME UNP'EILED. BY HENKY O'BRIEN, ESQ., A.B. Hie sacra, hie genus, hie majorum multa vestigia.' 1 ClCEf " were of fame, And had been glorious in another day." BYRON. SECOND EDITION. LONDON: PARBURY AND ALLEN, LEADENHALL-STREET; DUBLIN: J. GUMMING, LOWER ORMOND QUAY. MDCCCXXXIV. LONDON : inled by WILLIAM CLOWBS, Duke-street, Lambeth. TO THE MOST NOBLE THE MARQUIS OF LANSDOWNE, 8fC. 8fc. 8ft: MY LORD MARQUIS, Many reasons concur why I should feel ambitious to associate your name with the following production. To enumerate these would neither become my humility, nor be acceptable to your good taste. But there is one motive which, as it is the offspring of the heart, implanted there at a period when adulation was not dreamt of, I may be allowed to particularise I was born upon your estates you are the landlord of that spot which imparted my earliest images the first soarings of my fancy were derived from that scene and to the native notes which I have lisped in that primitive and retired region, more than to the vaunted advantages of a subsequent collegiate career, am I beholden for the clue with which I have traversed the ancient world ; and of which, Envy herself must yet acknowledge, that I have here rectified the history, in its very widest amplitude as well sacred as profane. 2060756 V DEDICATION. It is to do honour to this clue, in the eyes of the Mec&nas of hi? age, and, under the auspices of his approval, to promote its revival, that I give utterance to this sentiment : and so, hoping that you will view it in this light, and not as the empty chaunt of a reprehensible egotism, I beg leave to sub- scribe myself, with the most profound consideration and respect, MY IfORD MARQUIS, Your Lordship's most devoted, And most faithful, humble, Servant, HENRY O'BRIEN. London, September, 1834. THE ROUND TOWERS, 8,0. CHAPTER I. " A lively desire of knowing and recording our ancestors so generally prevails, that it must depend on the influence of some common prin- ciple in the minds of men. We seem to have lived in the persons of our forefathers ; our calmer judgment will rather tend to moderate than suppress the pride of an ancient and worthy race. The satirist may laugh ; the philosopher may preach ; but reason herself will respect the prejudices and habits which have been consecrated by the experience of mankind *." OF all nations on the globe, the Irish, as a people, are universally admitted to possess, in a pre-eminent degree, those finer sensibilities of the human heart, which, were they but wisely controlled, would exalt man above the level of ordinary humanity, and make him, as it were, a being of another species. The numerous instances adduced in all periods of their history, of ardent and enterprising zeal, in every case wherein personal honour or national glory may be involved, are in themselves sufficient to establish this assertion. But while granting their pre-eminence as to the possession of those feelings, and the capability of the feelings themselves to be refined and sub- limated to the very acme of cultivation, we may still doubt whether the mere possession of them be not less a blessing than a curse whether, in fact, their * Gibbon's Memoirs. a THE ROUND TOWERS. quick perception of disquietudes and pains be not more than a counterpoise to their keen enjoyment of delight or pleasure. Foremost, however, in the train of the many virtues which flow therefrom, is that " amor patria?," or love of country, which, unsubdued often by the most galling miseries and the most hopeless wants, throws a halo round the loneliness of their present despair in the proud retrospection of their former buoyancy. This spirit it is which, despite of obvious advantages to be derived from emigration, has riveted the Irish peasant so immutably to his home, that any effort on his part to dissolve those local fetters would be equivalent to the disruption of all the ties and attachments which nature or habit had implanted within him. " The lofty scenes around their sires recall, Fierce in the field and generous in the hall ; The mountain crag, the stream and waving tree, Breathe forth some proud and glorious history Urges their steps where patriot virtue leads, And fires the kindred souls to kindred deeds. They tread elate the soil their fathers trod, The same their country, and the same their God.'' But it may be said, that this is a day-dream of youth the hereditary vanity of one of Iran's sons, arrogating antiquity and renown for an inconsiderable little island, without a particle of proof to substan- tiate their assumption, or a shadow of authority to give colour to their claims. Why, sir, cast your eye over the fair face of the land itself, and does not the scene abound with the superfluity of its evidences? What are those high aspiring edifices which rise with towering elevation towards the canopy of the " Most High? " * What are those stu- * The Budhist temples. THE ROU.VD TOWERS. 3 pendous and awful structures of another form the study at once and admiration of the antiquarian and the philosopher, to be found on the summits of our various hills * as well as in the bowels f of the earth itself? what are they but the historical monuments of splendour departed surviving the ravages of time and decay, not as London's column, to " lift their heads and lie," but to give the lie and discomfiture to those, who, from the interested suggestions of an illiberal policy, or the more pardonable delusions of a beclouded judgment, would deny the authenticity of our historic records, and question the truth of our primeval civilisation ? It is true, the magnificence, which those memo- rials demonstrate, is but the unenviable grandeur of druidical, as it is called, idolatry and unenlightened paganism, when man, relinquishing that supremacy, consigned to him at his creation, or rather divested thereof in punishment for the transgression of his dege- nerate disposition, lost sight of that Being to whom he owed his safety and his life, and bent himself in homage before perishable creatures that crawl their ephemeral pilgrimage through the same scene with himself: granted; yet that cannot well be objected to us as a disgrace, which, co-extensive in its adoption with the amplitude of the earth's extension, equally characterised the illiterate and the sage; and if, amidst this lamentable prostration of the human understand- ing, any thing like redemption, or feature of supe- riority may be allowed, it must be, unquestionably, to the adherents of that system, which, excluding the objects of matter and clay, recognised, in its worship of the bright luminaries of the firmament, the purity * The Cromleachs. t The Mithratic Caves. B 2 THE ROUND TOWERS. and omnipotence of that Spirit who brought all into existence, and who guides and preserves them in their respective spheres ; and when I shall have proved that the intent and application of those Sabian * Towers, or, to speak more correctly, those primitive Budhist Temples, which decorate our land- scape and commemorate our past renown, appertained to this species of purified idolatry ,, which worshipped only the host of heaven, the moon and the solar body, which gives vigour to all things, I shall, methinks, have removed one obstacle from the elucidation of our antiquities,, and facilitated the road to further adventure in this interesting inquiry. Let me not be supposed, however, by the preceding remarks to restrict their destination to one single pur- pose. All I require of my readers is a patient perusal of my details ; and t deceive myself very much, and overrate my powers of enunciation, else I shall esta- blish in their minds as thorough a conviction of the development of the " Towers," as I am myself satisfied with the accuracy of my conclusions. I shall only entreat, then, of their courtesy that I be not antici- pated in my course, or definitively judged of by iso- lated scraps, but that, as my notice for this competi- tion has been limited and recent, allowing but little time, for the observance of tactique or rules, in the utterance of the novel views which I now venture to put forward, the proofs of which, however, have been long registered in my thoughts, and additionally con-, firmed by every new research, the merits of the pro- duction may not be estimated by parcels, but by the combined tendency of the parts all together. To begin therefore. The origins I have heard * Job i. HIE KOIM) TOWEKS. a assigned to those records of antiquity, however invi- dious it may appear, at this the outset of my labours, to assume so self-sufficient a tone, yet can I not avoid saying that, whether I consider their multiplicity or their extravagance, they have not more frequently excited my ridicule than my commiseration. That specimens of architecture, so costly and so elegant, should be designed for the paltry purposes of purgato- rial columns or penitential heights, to which criminals should be elevated for the ablution of their enormi- ties while the honest citizen, virtuous and unstained, should be content to grovel amongst lowly terrestrials 'mid the dense exhalations of forests and bogs, in a mud-wall hut, or at best a conglomeration of wattles and hurdles is, I conceive, an outrage upon human reason too palpable to be listened to. Not less ridiculous is the idea of their having been intended for beacons ; for, were such their destination, a hill or rising ground would have been the proper site for their erection, and not a valley or low land, where it happens that we generally meet them. The belfry theory alone, unfounded in one sense though it really be, and when confined to that appli- cation equally contemptible with the others, is, not- withstanding, free from the objection that would lie against the place, as it is well known that the sound of bells, which hang in plains and valleys, is heard much farther than that of such as hang upon eleva- tions or hills : for, air being the medium of sound, the higher the sonorous body is placed, the more rare- fied is that medium, and consequently the less proper vehicle to convey the sound to a distance. The objec- tion of situation, therefore, does not apply to this theory ; and, accordingly, we shall find that the exer- 6 THE ROUND TOWERS. cising of bells though in a way and for an object little contemplated by our theorists constituted part of the machinery of the complicated ceremonial of those mysterious edifices. The truth is, the " Round Towers" of Ireland were not all intended for one and the same use, nor any one of them limited to one single purpose : and this, I presume, will account for the variety in their con- struction, not less perceptible in their diameters and altitudes than in other characteristic bearings. For, I am not to be told that those varieties we observe were nothing more than the capriciousness of taste, when I find that the indulgence of that caprice, in one way, would defeat the very object to which one party would ascribe them, whilst its extension, in a different way, would frustrate the hopes of another set of spe- culators. But what must strike the most cursory as irresis- tibly convincing that they were not erected all with one view, is the fact of our sometimes finding two of them together in one and the same locality. Now, if they were intended as beacons or belfries, would it not be the most wasteful expenditure of time and wealth to erect two of them together on almost the same spot ? And when I mention expenditure, perhaps I may be allowed, incidentally, to observe, that, of all species of architecture, this particular form, as it is the most durable, so is it also the most diffi- cult and the most costly. Need I name the sum of money which Nelson's monument has cost in modern times ? or that imper- fect testimonial in the Phcenix Park which comme- morates the glories of the hero of Waterloo ? No ; but I will mention what Herodotus tells us was the THE KOUXD TOWERS. 7 purport of an inscription upon one of the pyramids of Egypt, the form of some of which, be it known, was not very dissimilar to our Irish pyramids, while their intent and object were more congenial ; viz., that no less a sum than 1600 talents of silver, or about 400,000/. of our money, had been expended upon radishes, onions and garlic alone, for 360,000 men, occupied for twenty years in bringing that stu- pendous fabric, that combined instrument of religion and science, to completion ! Our " Round Towers," we may well conceive, must have been attended, at the early period of their erection, with comparatively similar expense : and assuredly the motive, which could suggest such an outlay, must have been one of corresponding import, of the most vital, paramount, and absorbing consi- deration. Would the receptacles for a bell be of such moment ? And that too, whilst the churches, to which, of course, they must have appertained, were thought worthy of no better materials than temporary hurdles, and, so, leave behind them no vestiges of their local site, no evidence or trace of their ever having existed ! And, indeed, how could they ? for existence they never had, except in the creative imagination of our hypothetical antiquaries. Ruins, it is true, of chapels and dilapidated cathe- drals are frequently found in the vicinity of our ' Round Towers ;' but these betray in their materials and architecture the stamp of a later age, having been founded by missionaries of the early Christian church, and purposely thus collocated contiguous to edifices long before hallowed by a religious use, to, at once, conciliate the prejudices of those whom they 8 THE ROUND TOWERS. would fain persuade, and divert their adoration to a more purified worship. And yet, upon this single circumstance of proximity to ecclesiastical dilapidations coupled with the bas- relief of a crucifix which presents itself over the door of the Budhist temple of Donoghmore in Ireland, and that of Brechin in Scotland have the deniers of the antiquity of those venerable memorials raised that superstructure of historical imposture, which, please God, I promise them, will soon crumble round their ears, before the indignant effulgence of regenerated veracity. It might be sufficient for this purpose, perhaps, to tell them, that similar ruins of early Christian churches are to be met with, abundantly, in the neighbourhood of Cromleachs and Mithratic caves, all through the island ; and that they might as well, from this vicinity, infer, that those two other vestiges of heathenish adoration were contrived by our early Christians as appendages to the chapels, as they would fain make out by precisely the same mode of inference that the " Round Towers " had been ! But this would not suit ; they could find no ascrip- tion, associated with Christianity, which cave or crom- leach could subserve ; and, thus, have the poor mission- aries escaped the cumbrous imputation of having those colossal pagan slabs, and those astounding gen- tile excavations, affiliated upon them. Not so fortunate the " Towers." After ransacking the whole catalogue of available applications, apper- taining to the order of monastic institutions, with which to Slamise those temples, Montmorency has, at last, hit upon the noble and dignified department of a " dungeon-keep " or " lock-up !" as the sole use and intention of their original erection ! THE HOUND TOWERS. 9 As I intend, however, to unravel this fallacy in its proper quarter, I shall resume, for the present, the thread of my discourse. Besides the absurdity, then, of bestowing such mag- nificence upon so really inconsiderable a thing as a belfry, while the supposed churches were doomed to dwindle and moulder in decay, is it not astonishing that we find no vestiges of the like fashion, or struc- tures of the like form, in any of those countries where the people, to whom the advocates of this theory ascribe their erection, have since and before exercised sway? The Danes had dominion in Britain longer and more extensively than they ever had in this island ; and yet, in the whole compass of England, from one extremity to the other, is there not one fragment of architecture remaining to sanction the idea of identity or resemblance ! Nay, in all Denmark and Scandinavia, the original residence of the Ostmen and Danes, there is not a single parallel to be found to those columnar edi- fices ! Ireland, on the contrary, exhibits them in every quarter; in districts and baronies where Danish authority was never felt; and surely our forefathers were not so much in love with the usages and habits of their barbarian intruders, as to multiply the number of those stately piles, solely in imitation of such de- tested taskmasters. But what renders it demonstrative that those pro- fessional pirates had no manner of connexion with the Irish ' Round Towers,' is the glaring fact, that in the two cities of Wexford and Waterford where their power was absolute, their influence uncontrolled 10 THE HOUND TOWERS. there is not a solitary structure that could possibly be ascribed to the class of those which we now dis- cuss! In Scotland alone, of all European countries be- sides Ireland, do we meet with two of them : one at Brechin, and the other at Abernethy ; but they are smaller than the Irish, and, with other characteristics, seem to have been built, after their model, at a com- paratively recent period, by a colony from this coun- try, " as if marking the fact," to use Dalton's acciden- tally * appropriate phrase, " of that colonization hav- ing taken place when the rites, for which the ' Round Towers' were erected, in the mother-country, were on the decline." But, forsooth, they are called " cloghachd " by the peasantry, and that, without further dispute, fixes their destination as belfries ! Oh ! seri studioruni quine difficile putetis ? That some of them had been appropriated in latter times, nay and still are, to this purpose, I very rea- dily concede ; but, " toto coelo," I deny that such had ever entered into the contemplation of their construc- tors, as I do, also, the universality of the very name, which I myself know, by popular converse, to be but partial in its adoption, extending only to such as had been converted by the moderns to the purpose de- scribed, or such as may, originally, have had a clogh, or bell, of which I admit there were some, as part of their apparatus. The first bells of which we have any mention, are those described by Moses, as attached to the gar- * I say accidentally, because he foundered as well upon the actual co- lony, who erected those temples, as upon the nature of the rites for which thev were erected. THE ROUND TOWERS. 11 ments of the high-priest. From these, the Gentiles, as they affected to rival the Israelites in all their ceremonies, borrowed the idea, and introduced its exercise into the celebration of their own ritual. By " Israelites," however, I deem it necessary to explain that I do not understand those who, in strictness of speech, are so denominated as the descendants of Israel, i. e., Jacob, who, in fact, were a comparatively modern people ; but I particularize that old stock of patriarchal believers which existed from the Creation, and upon which the Israelites, rigidly so called, were afterwards engrafted. Our Irish history abounds with proofs of the " ceol," and " ceolan," the bell and the little bell, having been used by the pagan priests in the ministry of their religious ordinances ; and to the fictitious sanctity which they attributed to this instrument may we ascribe that superstitious regard, which the illite- rate and uneducated still continue to entertain for the music of its sound. From the Sabian ceremonial succeeded by the Druidical it unquestionably was that the Christian missionaries in Ireland first adopted the use of bells, wishing, wisely, therein to conform as much as pos- sible to the prejudices of the natives, when they did not essentially interfere with the spirit of their divine mission. I shall hereafter relate the astonishment excited in England, at the appearance of one of those bells, brought there in the beginning of the sixth cen- tury by Gildas, who had just returned after finishing his education in Ireland ; and this, in itself, should satisfy the most incredulous, that the Britons, as well pagan as Christian, were ever before strangers to such a sight : and no wonder, for they were strangers 12 T1IL HOLND TOWERS. also to such things as " Round Towers," to which 1 shall prove those implements properly and exclu- sively belonged. l< Clogad" is the name, and which literally signifies a " pyramid," that has led people into this " belfry" mistake. To conclude, therefore, this portion of our investigation, I shall observe, in Dr. Milner's words, " that none of these towers are large enougji for a single bell, of a moderate size, to swing about in it ; that, from the whole of their form and dimensions, and from the smallness of the apertures in them, they are rather calculated to stifle than to transmit to a distance any sound that is made in them : lastly, that though, possibly, a small bell may have been acciden- tally put up in one or two of them at some late period, yet we constantly find other belfries, or contrivances for hanging bells, in the churches adjoining to them." I fear greatly I may have bestowed too much pains in dispelling the delusion of this preposterous opinion. But as it had been put forward with so much confi- dence by a much-celebrated " antiquarian," though how he merited the designation I confess myself at a loss to know, I thought it my duty not to content myself with the mere exposure of the fallacy, without following it up with proofs, which must evermore, I trust, encumber its advocates with shame : and 'the rather, as this great champion of Danish civilisation and proclaimer of his country's barbarism, is at no ordinary trouble to affect ridicule and contempt for a most enlightened and meritorious English officer, who, from the sole suggestion of truth, promoted by observation and antiquarian research, stood forward as the advocate of our ancestral renown, to make amends, as it were, tor the aspersions of domestic calumniators. THE ROUND TOWERS. 13 Both parties are, however, now appreciated as they ought; and though Vallancey, certainly, did not under- stand the purport of our " Round Towers," his view of them, after all, was not far from being correct ; and the laborious industry with which he prosecuted his inquiries, and the disinterested warmth with which he ushered them into light, should shield his memory from every ill natured sneer, and make every child of Iran feel his grateful debtor. Having given Milner a little while ago the oppor- tunity of tolling the death-knell of the belfry hypo- thesis, I think I could not do better now than give Ledwich, in return, a triumph, by demolishing the symmetry of the anchorite vagary. (e It must require a warm imagination," says this writer, after quoting the account given by Evagrius, of Simeon Stylite's pillar, upon which Richardson, Harris, and Milner after them, had founded the an- chorite vagary, " to point out the similarity between this pillar and our ' tower :' the one was solid, and the other hollow the one square, and the other cir- cular : the ascetic there was placed without on the pillar ; with us inclosed in the tower. He adds, these habitations of anchorites were called inclusoria, or arcti indusorii ergastula, but these were very diffe- rent from our round towers ; for he mistakes Raderus, on whom he depends, and who says, ' The house of the recluse ought to be of stone, the length and breadth twelve feet, with three windows, one facing the choir, the other opposite, through which food is conveyed to him, and the third for the admission of light the latter to be always covered with glass or horn/ " Harris, speaking of Donchad O'Brien, Abbot of 14 THE ROUND TOWERS. Clonmacnois, who shut himself up in one of these cells, adds, ' I will not take upon me to affirm that it was in one of these towers of Clonmacnois he was inclosed.' It must have been the strangest perver- sion of words and ideas to have attempted it. Is it not astonishing that a reverie thus destitute of truth, and founded on wilful mistakes of the plainest pas- sages, should have been attended to, and even be, for some time, believed?" Thus have I allowed him to retaliate in his own words; but in order to render his victory complete, by involving a greater number within his closing denunciation, he should have waited until he had seen a note appended to the fourteenth of Dr. Milner's Letters, which, unquestionably, would deserve a simi- lar rebuke for its gross perversion of a " cell " into a " tower." It is this : " We learn from St. Bernard, that St. Malachy, afterwards Archbishop of Armagh, in the twelfth century, applied for religious instruction, when a youth, to a holy solitary by name Imarus, who was shut up in a c cell,' near the cathedral of the said city, probably in a Round Tower" Risum teneatis? But I am tired of fencing with shadows and special pleading with casuists. And yet, as I would wish to render this Essay systematically complete, I am forced, however reluctant, to notice the conjecture, which others have hazarded, of those " Round Towers" having been places of retreat and security in the event of invasion from an enemy ; or depositories and reservoirs for the records of state, the church utensils and national treasures ! To the former, I shall reply, that Stanihurst's description of the " excubias in castelli vertice," upon THE ROUND TOWERS. 15 which it would seem to have been founded, does not, at all, apply to the case ; because, while the " castella" have vanished, the "Round Towers," which never be- longed to them, do, many of them still firmly, main- tain their post ; and as to the latter, the boldness with which it has been put forward, by its author before named,* requires a more lengthened examination than its utter instability could otherwise justify. * Colonel Montmorency. 16 CHAPTER II. THIS chivalrous son of Mars, more conversant, I should hope, with tactics than with literary disquisi- tions, has started with a position, which he is himself, shortly after, the most industrious to contradict ; namely, " that the gods, to punish so much vanity and presumption, had consigned to everlasting obli- vion the founders, names, dates, periods, and all records relating to them*." Surely, if they were intended for the despicable dungeons, which the colonel would persuade us was their origin, there existed neither " vanity " nor " pre- sumption" in that humble design; and when to this we add the nature of that security, which he tells us they were to establish, one would think that this should be a ground for the perpetuity of their regis- tration, rather than for consigning their history to " everlasting oblivion." But secure in the consciousness of the whole history of those structures, and satisfied that truth will never suffer any thing by condescending to investigation, I will, to put the reader in full possession of this adversary's statement, here capitulate his arguments with all the fidelity of an honourable rival. His object, then, being to affix the " Round Towers" to the Christian era, he begins by insisting that, as * Pliny, Lib. Ixvi. cap. 12. 1I1K HOUND TOWERS. 17 " the architects of those buildings were consummate masters in masonic art," it follows, that " a people so admirably skilled in masonry, never could have expe- rienced any impediments in building substantial dwellings, strong castles, palaces, or any other struc- tures of public or private conveniency, some fragments of which, however partial and insignificant, would still be likely to appear, in despite of the corroding breath of time or the torch of devastation." His next argument is, " that the busy and fantastic bard, whose occupation led him to interfere in private and public concerns, who, in truth, (he adds,) is our oldest and most circumstantial annalist, on the subject of the Pillar Tower, is dumb and silent as the dead ;" whence he infers the " non-existence of those Towers during the remote ages of bardic influence," " and of their being utterly unknown to them, and to our ances- tors, anterior to the reception of the Christian faith." His third proposition is, that as " Strabo, Pompo- nius Mela, Solinus, Diodorus Siculus, and other writers of antiquity, have represented the condition of Ireland and its inhabitants to be barbarous in their days, in common with their neighbours the Britons, Gauls, and Germans, to whom the art systematically to manufacture stone had been unknown, ergo, those barbarians could not be set up as the authors of the Pillar Tower." His fourth premise is, that " wherever we chance to light upon a cromleach, we seldom fail to find near it one of those miserable caves" and which he has described before as " surpassing in dreariness every- thing in the imagination of man ;" whereas in the vicinity of the Pillar Tower no such thing is seen, unless some natural or accidental excavation may hap- c 18 THE ROUND TOWERS. pen to exist unaccountably in that direction." His inference from which is, that " although the cromleach and the cave do claim, the first a Celtic, the second a Phoenician origin, and happen here to be united, the Pillar Tower, nevertheless, disavows even the most distant connexion with either of them." His fifth is a continuation of the foregoing, with an erroneous parallelism, viz., " at Bael Heremon, in India, not far from Mount Lebanon, there stood a temple dedicated to Bael, near to which were many caves, of which one was roomy enough to admit into it four thousand persons." " The size of those temples," he adds, " was regulated according to the extent or amount of the local population, being spacious and magnificent in large cities, and small and simple in the inferior towns and villages; but nowhere, nor in any case, do we meet an example of a lofty spiral tower, internally too confined to admit into it at once a dozen bulky persons, denominated a temple." " An edifice," he resumes, " like the Pillar Tower, might easily serve for a belfry ; and there are in- stances where it has been converted, in modern times, to that use; on the other hand a temple, properly speaking, gives an idea of a spacious edifice, or of one calculated to accommodate, withinside its walls, a cer- tain congregation of devout people, met to pray. Should the building, to answer any partial or private use, be constructed upon a diminutive scale, like the little round temple at Athens *, called Demosthenes' * This incomparably beautiful object, constructed of white marble, in the days of Demosthenes, in the second year of the one hundred and eleventh Olympiad, 335 years before Christ, and in the year 418 of Rome, was erected in honour of some young men of the tribe of Archamantide, victors at the public games, and dedicated, it is supposed, to Hercules. THE ROUXD TOWERS. 19 the edifice," he continues, " in that case, obtains its appropriate shape, yet differing in plan, size, and ele- vation, from the Irish Pillar Tower, to which it can- not, in any one respect, be assimilated." . " Moreover," he^says, " the ancients had hardly any round temples. Vitruvius barely speaks of two kinds, neither of which bears the slightest resemblance to a tower. Upon the whole," concludes he, " if we will but bestow a moment's reflection on the geographical and political condition of primitive Ireland, and the avowed tardy progress towards civilization, and an acquaintance with the fine arts, then common to those nations not conveniently placed within the enlightened and enlivening pale of Attic and Roman instruction, it will be impossible not to pronounce Vallanceys conjectures respecting the Pillar Tower, as recep- tacles for the sacred fire, altogether chimerical and fabulous." Before I proceed to demolish, seriatim, this tissue of cobwebs, I wish it to be emphatically laid down that I do not tread in General Vallancey's footsteps. To his undoubted services, when temperately guarded, I have already paid the tribute of my national grati- tude; but, pitying his mistakes, while sick of his contradictions, I have taken the liberty to chalk out my own road. Now for Montmorency. As to the first, then, of those objections against the antiquity of our Round Towers, it is readily repelled by explaining that, in the early ages of the world, masonic edifices, of archi- tectural precision, were exclusively appropriated, as a mark of deferential homage, to the worship of the Great Architect of the universe ; and with this view it was that the science was, at first, studied as a sort of * c 2 20 THE ROUND TOWERS. religious mystery, of which there can be required no greater possible corroboration than the circum- stance of that ancient and mysterious society who date the existence of their institution from Noah him- self, and it is incomparably older, still retaining amid the thousand changes which the world has since undergone, and the thousand attempts that have been made to explore and explode their secrets the mystic denominational ligature of " Free and Accepted Masons *." The absence, therefore, of any vestiges of other coeval structures, for private abode or public exhibi- tion, should excite in us no surprise ; more especially when we recollect that in the East also, whence all our early customs have been derived, their mud-built houses present the greatest possible contrast between the simplicity of their domestic residences, and the magnificence and grandeur of their religious con- venticles Verum illi delubra deorum pietate, domos sua gloria decorabantf. But though this my reply is triumphantly subver- sive of the Colonel's first position, I shall dwell upon it a little longer, to hold forth, with merited retalia- tion, either his disingenuousness or his forgetfulness ; because the same inference which he deduced from the non-appearance of coeval architecture of any other class, would apply as well to the period which he wishes to establish as the era of the erection of the * The first name ever given to this body was Saer, which has three significations firstly, free ; secondly, mason ; and thirdly, Son of God. In no language could those several imports be united but in the original one, viz., the Irish. The Hebrews express only one branch of it by aliben ; while the English join together the other two. t Sallust, Cat. Con. THE ROUND TOWERS. 21 Towers, and of which era, he admits, no other archi- tectural monuments do remain, as to that which I shall incontrovertibly prove was their proper epoch. Then, without having recourse to the impossibility of which all travellers complain to ascertain even the situation of those gigantic cities which in other parts of the globe, at equally remote periods of time, were cried up as the wonders of the age the master- pieces of human genius, making their domes almost kiss the stars without betaking myself, I say, to those, the only memorials of which are now to be found in that of the echo, which, to your affrighted fancy, asking inquisitively and incredulously, " Where are they ?" only repeats responsively, " Where are they?" passing over this, I tell him that, more highly favoured than other countries, we possess, in Ireland, ample evidences of those remnants which he so vaunt- ingly challenges. Traverse the isle in its inviting richness, over its romantic mountains and its fertile valleys, and there is scarcely an old wall you meet, or an old hedge you encounter, that you will not find imbedded among the mass, some solitary specimens of chiselled execution, which, in their proud, aristocratic bearing, afford ocular and eloquent demonstration of their having once occupied a more respectable post. Not less futile than the foregoing is his second objection, arising from what he represents as the silence of " the busy and fantastic bard." Doubtless he reckoned upon this as his most impregnable bat- tery ; and I readily believe that most of his readers anticipate the same result ; but this little book will soon shiver the fallacy of such calculations, and ad- duce, in its proper place, from the very head and principal of the bardic order, no less a personage than 22 THE ROUND TOWEKS. Amergin himself, its towering refutation ; as well as the final, incontrovertible appropriation of those struc- tures to their actual founders. In the interim, I must not let the opportunity pass of vindicating our ancient bards from the false im- putations of " busy and fantastic.'' If pride of descent be a weakness of Irishmen, it is one in which they are countenanced by all the nations of the globe who have had anything like pretensions to support the claim ; and I fearlessly affirm, that the more sensitive a people prove themselves of their na- tional renown, their hereditary honour, and ancestral splendour, the more tenacious will they show themselves, in support of that repute, whether as individuals or a community, in every cause involving the far higher interests of moral rectitude, of virtue, and of religion. In the legitimate indulgence of this honourable emo- tion, the Irish have ever stood conspicuously high. No nation ever attended with more religious zeal to their acts and genealogies, their wars, alliances, and migrations, than they did : and while no people ever excelled them in enterprise or heroism, or the wisdom and administration of their legislative code, so were they surpassed by none in the number and capability of those who could delineate such events, and impart to reality the additional charm of imagery and verse. The Bards were a set of men exclusively devoted, like the tribe of Levi amongst the Israelites, to the superintendence of those subjects. Their agency in this department was a legitimately recognized and graduate faculty ; and, in accuracy of speech, the only one which merited the designation of learned ; being attainable only after the most severe novitiate of preli- minary study, and rigid exercise of all the mental powers. THE UOUND TOWERS. 23 The industry and patience bestowed on such a course were not, however, without their reward. In a classical point of view this exhibited itself in the high estimation in which they were held, both amongst foreigners and natives, as poets, as prophets, and as philosophers ; while the dignity and emolument attached to their situation, and the distinguished rank assigned them, at the general triennial assemblies of the state, at Tara, with the endowments conferred upon them by the monarch and the several provincial kings, were sure to render it, at all times, an object of ambition and pursuit, to members of the noblest families throughout the various parts of the realm. The moral deportment and personal correctness of those literary sages contributed still further to add to their esteem ; and, probably, I could not succeed better, in depicting the almost sanctity of their general behaviour, than by transcribing a stanza, descriptive of the qualities which won to them, as a society, the mingled sentiments of veneration and of awe. It is taken from a very ancient Irish poem, and runs thus : lod na laimh lith gan ghuin, lod na beorl gan ean neamhuib, lod na foghlama gan ean ghes, Is iod na lanamh nas. That is, Theirs were the hands free from violence, Theirs the mouths free from calumny, Theirs the learning without pride, And theirs the love free from venery. In later times, I admit there was a lamentable de- generacy in the bardic class ; or rather the innumer- able pretenders to the assumption of the name, and the " fescennine licentiousness " with which they vio- 24 THE ROUND TOWEKS. lated the sanctity of domestic seclusion, in exposing the objects of their private spleen, tended not a little to bring their body into disrepute, and subject them additionally to the salutary restrictions of legisla- tive severity. They were not less extravagant in the lavishment of their fulsome commendations ; so that one can hardly avoid drawing a parallel between them and those poetasters, formerly, of Italy, whom Horace so happily describes in those remarkable hexameters, viz. " Fescennina per hunc invecta licentia morem, Versibus alternis opprobria rustica fudit, quin etiam lex Poenaquelata malo quae mallet carmine quenquam, Describi*." You would imagine the Roman poet was speaking of the Irish bards in the night of their decline ; but the description by no means applies to the original institution, whose object it was to perpetuate the history and records of the nation, and preserve its history from the intrusions of barbarism. To this end it was, that they met for revision at the senatorial synod ; and the importance of this trust, it was, that procured to their body the many dignities before de- scribed, giving them precedence above the aggregate of the community at large, and investing them with an authority little short of royalty. Rhyme was the vehicle in which their lucubrations were presented ; verse the medium selected for their thoughts. To gain perfection in this accomplishment, their fancies were ever on the stretch; while the varieties of metre which they invented for the purpose, and the facility with which they bent them to each * Lib. xi. Epist. 11. THE ROUND TOWERS. 2-J application and use, were not the least astonishing- part of their arduous avocations, and leave the cata- logue of modern measures far away in the shade. Music is the sister of poetry, and it is natural to suppose that they went hand in hand here. In all countries, the voice was the original organ of musical sounds. With this they accompanied their extempo- raneous hymns ; with this they chanted the honours of their heroes. The battle-shout and the solemnity of the hour of sacrifice were the usual scenes for the concerts of oar ancestors. Singing the glory of former warriors, the combatant was himself inspired ; and while the victim expired on the altar of immolation, the priest sung the praise of the deity he invoked. The introduction of the Christian truths gave a new and elevated scope to the genius of the bards. A new enthusiasm kindled up their ardour a new vitality invigorated their frames ; and they who, but the moment before, were most conspicuous in up- holding the dogmas of the pagan creed, became now the most distinguished in proclaiming the blessings of the Christian dispensation. Fiech, Amergin, Columba, Finan, &c., are glorious examples of this transmuted zeal. About the twelfth or thirteenth centuries, however, a change burst forth for the destinies of this order. Verse ceased to be used in their historical announce- ments. Prose succeeded, as a more simple narrative ; and from that moment the respectability of the bards progressively evaporated. The jealousy of the English government at the martial feeling excited by their effusions, and the in- trepid acts of heroism inculcated by their example, if not the actual cause of this national declension, pre- 26 THE ROUND TOWERS. ponderated very largely amongst its component ingre- dients. In the height of the battle, when the war-cry was most loud, and the carnage most severe, those poetic enthusiasts would fling themselves amongst the ranks of the enraged contenders, and determine the victory to whatever party they chose to befriend. When, too, under the pressure of an untoward fate, and the disheartening yoke of what they deemed a treacherous subjugation, the nobles would seem dis- pirited at the aspect of circumstances, and all but sub- scribe to the thraldom of slavery, the bards would rouse the energies of their slumbering patriotism, and, as Tyrtaeus used the Spartans, enkindle in their bosoms a passion for war. We must not be surprised, therefore, to find in the preamble to some of the acts passed in those times for the suppression of this body of men, the following harsh and depreciating allu- sions ; viz.,