of his predecessor, Niall of the Nine Hostages, upon Armoric Gaul, that the youth, Patrick, son of Calphurn, was, together with his sisters Darerca and Lupita, first carried, among other captives, to Ireland. Holy prize! thrice happy expedition! Irishmen may well exclaim; for although the conversion of their country to Christianity, in common with the rest of Europe, was an event that could not have been delayed much beyond the time at which it took place, whoever had been its apostle, it is impossible for any one who has considered, with Catholic feelings, the history of religion in Ireland, not to be impressed with the conviction that this country has been indebted in a special manner, under God, to blessed Patrick, not only for the mode in which she was converted, but for the glorious harvest of sanctity which her soil was made to produce, and for the influence of his intercession in heaven from that day to the present

CHAPTER VI.

Civilization of the Pagan Irish.-Their Knowledge of Letters.-The Ogham Craev.-Their Religion.-The Brehon Laws.-Tanistry.-Gavel-kind.Tenure of Land.-Rights of Clanship.-Reciprocal Privileges of the Irish Kings.-The Law of Eric.-Hereditary Offices.-Fosterage.

E have thus succinctly, but carefully, analysed the entire pagan history of Ireland; and before we proceed farther it is right to consider some interesting questions which must have suggested themselves to the reader, as we went along. As, for instance, what kind of civilization did the pagan Irish enjoy? what knowledge of arts and literature did they possess? what was the nature of their religion? what is known of their laws and customs? what monuments have they left to us?

That the first migrations brought with them into this island at least the germs of social knowledge appears to be indisputable; and although these were not developed into a civilization of arts and literature, like that of Rome

or Greece, still, the social state which they did produce was far removed from barbarism, in the sense in which that term is usually understood. We have ample reason to believe, not merely that Ireland in her days of paganism had reached a point relatively advanced in the social scale, but that Christianity found her in a state of intellectual and moral preparation superior to that of most other countries. How otherwise indeed should we account for the sudden lustre of learning and sanctity, by which it is confessed she became distinguished, almost as soon as she received the Gospel, and which surely could not have been so rapidly produced among a people so barbarous as some writers would have us believe the Irish to have been before their conversion to Christianity?

While Ireland, isolated and independent, had her own indigenous institutions, and her own patriarchal system of society, Britain and Gaul lay in subjection at the feet of Rome, of whose arts and matured organization they thus imbibed a knowledge. It is true, that what Celtic Britain thus learned she subsequently lost in the invasions of Saxons and Scandinavians, and that it was Roman missionaries and a Norman conquest that again restored to her the arts of civilization; but this civilization it was, derived from Rome in the days of her decline, and modified by the barbaric elements on which it was engrafted, that created the centralised power, and sent out the mailed warriors, of the feudal ages, and that gave to Anglo-Norman England the advantages which she enjoyed, in point of arms and discipline, in her contest with a country which had derived none of her military art, or of her political organization from Rome. This connexion with Imperial Rome, on the one side, and its absence on the other, were quite sufficient to determine the destinies of the two countries. But the state of a people secluded from the rest of the world, whose curious and interesting history we have been tracing for a thousand years or more before the history of Britain commences, and whose copious and expressive language, and domestic and military arts, and costume, and laws, were not borrowed from any exotic source, is not to be held in contempt, although unlike what had been built up elsewhere on the substructure of Roman civilization. Hence, if it be idle to speculate on what Ireland, with her physical and moral advantages, might have risen to ere this in the career of mankind, had her fate never been linked with that of England, it is, on the other hand, unjust to argue as English writers do, as to her fortunes and her progress, from the defects of her primitive and unmatured institutions, or from the prostrate state of desolation to which centuries of warfare in her struggle with England and her own intestine broils had reduced her. But here we are anticipating.

St. Patrick, according to the old biographers, gave "alphabets" to some of those whom he converted, and this statement, coupled with the facts that we have no existing Irish manuscript older than his time-nor indeed any so old-and that our ordinary Irish characters, although unlike Roman printed letters, are only those of Latin MSS. of the fifth and sixth centuries, have led some Irish scholars to concede too easily the disputed point, that the pagan Irish were unacquainted with alphabetic writing. The Ogham Craov, or secret virgular writing, formed by

*Sce the remarks on this subject in Dr. O'Donovan's elaborate Introduction to his Irish Grammar; in which, by quoting the opinions of Father Innes and Dr. O'Brien, without expressing

RELIGION OF THE PAGAN IRISH.

47

notches or marks along the arras edges of stones, or pieces of timber, or on either side of any stem line on a plane surface, was only applicable to brief inscriptions, such as a name on the head-stone of a grave; and the pagan antiquity of even this rude style of alphabet has been disputed by some; but innumerable passages in our most ancient annals and historic poems show that not only the Ogham, which was considered to be an occult mode of writing, but a style of alphabetic characters suited for the preservation of public records, and for general literary purposes, was known in Ireland many centuries before the introduction of Christianity. This fact is so blended with the old historic traditions of the country, that it is hard to see how the one can be given up without abandoning the other also. There are indisputable authorities to prove that the Latin mode of writing was known in Ireland some time before St. Patrick's arrival, as there were unquestionably Christians in the country before that time, and as Celestius, the Irish disciple of the heresiarch Pelagius, is stated to have written epistles to his family in Ireland, at least thirty years before the preaching of St. Patrick; but we go farther, for we hold, on the authority of Cuan O'Lochain, who held a distinguished position in this country in the beginning of the eleventh century, that the Psalter of Tara did exist, and was compiled by Cormac Mac Art in the third century, and consequently that the pagan Irish possessed a knowledge of alphabetic writing at least in that age.† One of the questions with reference to the pagan inhabitants of Ireland, on which it is most difficult to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion, is the nature of their religion The Tuatha de Dananns are said to have had divinities who presided over different arts and professions We have seen that Tiernmas a Milesian king (A.M 3580), was the first who publicly practised the worship of Crom Cruach It is quite probable that he was the first who set up rude idols for adoration in Ireland, but Crom Cruach is referred to as a divinity which the Milesians had always worshipped. That a superstitious veneration was paid to the sun, wind,

dissent, he seems to grant that the Irish had no writing before St. Patrick's time. He also quotes, without comment, Charles O'Conor of Belanagar, who, in his introductory disquisition to the Ogygia Vindicated, abandons the whole story of the Milesian colony, &c., but holds that the pagan Irish had the Ogham, or virgular writing.

* The Ogham inscriptions found in the cave of Dunloe, in Kerry, decidedly of a date anterior to Christianity, ought to be conclusive on this point.

†The passage from Cuan O'Lochain's poem referring to the Psalter of Tara will be found in Petrie's History of Tara Hill.

The cloch-oir, or golden stone, from which Clogher in Tyrone is said to take its name, would appear to have been another of the ancient Irish idols. Cathal Maguire, compiler of the "Annals of Ulster" (A.D. 1490), is quoted in the "Ogygia," part iii. c. 22, as stating that a stone covered

and elements, is obvious from the solemn forms of oath which some of the Irish kings took and administered; and that fires were lighted, on certain occasions, for religious purposes, is also certain ; but beyond these and a few other facts, we have nothing on Irish authority to define the religious system of our pagan ancestors. They had topical divinities who presided over hills, rivers, and particular localities, but there is no mention of any general deity recognized by the whole people, unless the obscure, and not very old references to a god Beall, or Bel, be understood in that sense; nor is there any trace of a propitiatory sacrifice used by them. Their druids combined the offices of philoso phers, judges, and magicians, but do not appear to have been sacrificing priests, so far as the mention of them to be found in purely Irish authorities would lead us to conjecture.* The writings transmitted to us by the ancient Irish were not composed for the use of strangers, and hence the scantiness of their information on subjects which must have been well known to those for whom they were written. The religion and customs of the Celts of Gaul were minutely described by Cæsar; but whether his description of the druidical religion of that country was applicable to the Irish druids and their form of worship, we have no certain authority to enable us to judge. On this subject a great deal is left to conjecture, and the result is that we have had the wildest theories propounded, with the most positive assertions about fire worship, pillar temples, budhism, druids' altars, human sacrifices, and sundry strange mysteries, as if these things had been accurately set forth in some authentic description of ancient Ireland; whereas the fact is that not one word about them can be discovered in any of the numerous Irish manuscripts that have been so fully elucidated up to the present day.

The laws of the ancient Irish formed a vast body of jurisprudence, of . which only recent researches have enabled the world to appreciate the merits. Several collections and revisions of these laws were made by successive kings, from the decisions of eminent judges, and these are what are now known as the Brehon laws.†

with gold was preserved at Clogher, at the right side of the church entrance, and that in that stone Kermand Kelstach, the principal idol of the northern parts, was worshipped.

* From drai, or draoidh, a druid, comes the word dravidheacht (pronounced dreeacht), the ordinary Irish term for magic or sorcery. O'Reilly says (Irish Writers, p. lxxix.) that druidism cannot be proved to have been the religion of the pagan Irish, from the use of the word drai, which means only a sage, a magician, or a sorcerer; and he shows that Morogh O'Cairthe, a Connaught writer, who died A.D. 1067, is called by Tigernach "Ard draei agus ard Ollamh," "chief druid and ollav." The word may come from the Greek Apus, or the Irish dair, an oak. †The labours of the Brehon Law Commission are still in progress as this History is going to