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CHAPTER I.

PRIMITIVE TIMES.

As antiquarians gather from the characteristics of the Erse, or ancient Irish language, and from the names of places in Ireland, which are capable, in that tongue, of interpretation and significance, the first population of Ireland was Keltic, of the same origin as the Gauls who overran France, and the Gaels of Scotland or the Cimbri of Wales. Of these people, history we have none. In common parlance, many families in Ireland are said to exhibit marks of Milesian descent. For the bards and primitive records declare that, some time after the Deluge, a Scythian horde having on its road picked up the sciences of Babylon, Phoenicia, and Egypt, landed in Spain, delivered it from the Goths, (who did not enter it till two thousand years afterwards!) and then sailed under Heber and Heremon, sons of the great Milesius, for Ireland. Here they found that already a niece of Noah, a colony of Nemedians, and a race of necromancers, called Fir Bolgs, had passed away, and the land was possessed by the Tuatha de Danaan. These last the Milesians defeated in the glorious battle of Sliabh Mis, and for two thousand years Milesian princes exercised their magnificent royalty in the happy realm of Ireland, coming to an end in the person of King Roderic O'Connor. Such fables prove no more than that the bards had imbued themselves with some portions of classic lore: the Tuatha de Danaan are the Danai of Homer, and the Fir Bolgs the Belge of Cæsar. Yet the Spanish origin of its Keltic breeds is an article

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of the national faith of Ireland, and mentioned by Nennius, who wrote as early as A.D. 858.

Ireland had its stone circles; it has its cromlechs, Logan stones, barrows, and cairns. The round towers, peculiar to it with the nearest portion of the Scottish coast, form objects of much interest to the antiquarian. They have lately been carefully examined by Mr. Petrie, who concludes them to be belfries, properly separate from the churches to which they were appurtenant, and calculated to afford refuge in time of danger. These much-talked-of structures are in number fifty or sixty, found in situations of all sorts-on hills, in valleys, on islands-with a prospect, without a prospect near to one another, and distant: they are round, and usually taper upwards; in height they vary from 50 to 150 feet, and are at the base from 40 to 60 feet in circumference. They are divided into storeys, each about 12 feet in height; of these, the floors are almost always of wood: in the uppermost are apertures or windows, usually four in number, and looking to the cardinal points, but sometimes two, five, six, or eight. The lowest storey is sometimes solid. The doorway is in the second storey, from 8 to 30 feet from the ground, and large enough to admit a single person at a time: the remaining storeys are lighted by an aperture of small size. They are built of spawled rubble, small stones being inserted between the large ones, and therefore very little mortar has been used. They are occasionally, however, of ashlar masonry. By the Irish they are called Cloictheachs, which means belfries. Many remaining doorways prove that they had been furnished with a double door. Mr. Petrie states :1, That the towers are never found unconnected with ancient ecclesiastical foundations: 2, that their architectural styles exhibit no features or peculiarities not equally found in the original churches with which they are locally connected, when such remain: 3, that on several of them Christian emblems are observable, and

that others display in their details a style of architecture universally acknowledged to belong to Christian times: 4, that they possess invariably architectural details not found in any buildings in Ireland ascertained to be of pagan times: 5, that they were intended to serve as belfries, and as keeps or places of strength, in which the sacred utensils, books, relics, and other valuables, were deposited, and into which the ecclesiastics to whom they belonged could retire for security, in cases of sudden predatory attack.

To the earliest times, therefore, the round towers do not belong. It is uncertain whether Druidism ever held sway in Ireland: yet from the institutions of other Keltic nations, it may fairly be presumed. Monuments called Druidical have not been so surely identified with the Druids as to warrant arguments from them. Among the heathen natives of Ireland, sun worship seems to have prevailed: several names of places, as Cairn Grainey (the Sun's Heap), Grainy's Bed (Grian Beacht), the Sun's Circle, Greenore, Granard, &c., support the dubious hints of actual record on the subject.

The Irish, before intermixture with the Saxon, were governed by a chief, or little king, called Canfinny. His office was not hereditary but elective, force being a frequent element in the order of succession. They had a code, complete and elaborate, of Brehon laws, so called by the English, from the brehon or judge who administered them. In later times, this code was adapted to Christian usages, and adorned with a copious commentary. It had some features in common with the laws of the Anglo-Saxons. An eric was a fine for crime, or composition for murder, like the weregild of the Saxons if a son murdered his father, the penalty amounted to twenty kine. The brehon judge appointed the greatest part of an eric to the chief, a part also to himself, and a small share only was allotted to the person aggrieved. By gavelkind, estates were divided among all the sons, legitimate or bastard, females being

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excluded; and, in fact, the chief was bound, on every change by death, to divide anew the lands of the sept. This custom continues inveterate and pernicious in its application among Irish cottiers. Of course agriculture must have been unknown under such a system. Tanistry was the choosing a tanist, or successor for the reigning chief: the election lay with the people, but their choice was limited to the royal race; thus the monarchy was elective.

Houses were of wicker, or wattles, and thatch; families were not stationary: buildings of stone were rare. A castle of stone, built at Tuam by Roderic O'Connor in the twelfth century, was called the Wonderful Castle. Yet the remains of ecclesiastical edifices are of much earlier date than this, and of a Cyclopean character.

Navigation was carried on by means of coricles (a corio), boats of wicker work covered with skins. The natives of Ireland were not more uncivilized than were their neighbours, the Britons, anterior to the Roman conquest; perhaps, indeed, they scarcely could be. Swords and chariot-scythes of brass, hammers and hatchets of stone, arrow-heads of flint and rich ornaments of gold, have been discovered in various localities.

The Irish, whose habits continued without much change till the seventeenth century, were much given to fostering: the powerful and rich selling, and the meaner sort buying, the charge of their children in infancy. For, in the opinion of this people, fosterhood has always been a closer alliance than blood relationship. The same may be said of gossipred, which was, indeed, by the canon law a spiritual affinity, and a juror might be challenged as godfather, and, consequently, not indifferent; yet no nation under the sun ever made so religious an account of it as the Irish.'

The native dress consisted of a saffron-coloured shirt or smock, and a copious mantle, which enveloped the whole person..

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