Contrast of Mr. Davies and Dr. Ledwich's of the learned Vallancey. phabet, and the Romans their Abcedarium*. "This people, (says Mr. O'Conor) knew so little of the Greek or Roman learning, that it was only in the 5th century they have learnt the use of the Roman alphabet from the christian missionaries. It was then, or soon after, that they laid aside their uncouth and virgular characters, their Bethluisnion and their Oglum, the form heretofore used, and since preserved by the antiquaries, either from vanity, or the more rational motives of preserving an ancient fact worthy of being recorded. The old manner of writing was indeed useless to the public, after a better and more elegant form was introduced." Ere we pass from the proofs of language to other evidence of the antiquity of the Irish history, it will not be uninteresting to contrast the conduct of the respectable curate of Olveston, towards the learned Vallancey, with that of Dr. Ledwich, who, by his disgraceful retreat to Antycira has proved his own want of the remedial qualities of that island. "General Vallancey has proved, that Irish has a certain degree of connection with Chaldaic, Arabic, Persian, Coptic, and Phoenician. I feel, continues he, infinite respect for the General's learning and abilities: I acknowledge, that much of his reasoning has force in it; * Origin and account of the ancient Scots, p. 38. For the nature and formation of the Bethluisnion and the Ogham characters, in which the druids and bards used to commit their secrets to writing, we refer the reader to Vallancey, Parsons, and other adepts in the language: our aim being only at present to ascertain the fact of the Irish having a character of their own. + P. 221, Celt. Res. but I am not prepared, implicitly, to receive his com- institutions Fifthly: There can scarcely be more decisive evidence Religious of the antiquity of a nation and of its ancient history, prove the than from proofs of the early existence of their reli-nations. gious institutions. In colonies, or derivative settle Cel. Res. p. 224. derivation cf ments, the proofs of the preexisting religion in the mother country, and its deduction down to modern times of evidence, will be demonstrative conclusion of the derivation of the colony from that country, in which the original institutions existed. The Milesians, who passed from Spain to Ireland, being of Scytho-Phoenician origin, must, at the time of their emigration, have carried with them that system of religious worship, which then prevailed in the country, from which they emigrated. That this was an idolatrous worship, is evident from the Phoenician history of the Phoenician historian Sanchoniatho, written as an apology for idolatry at this very period, viz. 1300 years before the birth of Christ. The Grecian mythology, as it has been handed down to us in their poetical and other writers, had not been worked up into its regular fable at this period, when the idolatrous worship of Baal by the Phoenicians had taken place. St. Augustin, who understood the Punic or Phoenician language, and whose authority, therefore, is of the highest estimation upon the point, considered that the Baal of the Phoenicians was the Jupiter of the Greeks. John of Antioch, Cedrenus, and Suidas, thought it their Mars. Our learned orientalist Lightfoot, considered the word Baal in the singular, and Baalim in the plural number, meaning, in Hebrew and Chaldaic, lord, mighty, or sovereign, to be a generical appellation for all idols, to which supreme adoration was paid. Baal, in the scriptures, is usually spoken of as the idol of the Moabites and Phoenicians. Selden (De Diis. Syr.) says, the Babylonians understood by it either the stars or host of heaven, or such kings and heroes, whose memory they had consecrated to posterity by a religious worship. A full disquisition of the literal, historical, and my. thological import of the word Baal or Bel would require a volume. When, for the purpose of authenticating the ancient history of Ireland, we shew, that an idolatrous people paid worship to Baal as their supreme deity, for ten or twelve centuries after the establishment and propagation of the Grecian mythology, without the introduction of any Grecian god into their worship, we prove that they received their idolatrous religion from a nation, which adored Baal before the invention of the Grecian fable. It was in reason, that the earliest idolaters should be the least gross and brutal in the objects of their adoration. Of all objects of the senses, the sun, from giving light, heat, and vegetable animation to the earth, unquestionably partakes of the most qualities calculated to impress the mind with the idea of Divinity. We read, therefore, that the Phoenicians adored the sun under this name, and that they ushered in the great annual festival of their god towards the beginning of summer, by the ceremony of kindling a sacred fire. * In Ireland, the first day of May is celebrated with great rejoicings by all these original people throughout the kingdom; *Rem. of Japh. p. 90. Dr. Parsons gives in detail the method, in which this relict of pagan observance was kept up even to his days in the country parts of Ireland. He published his book in 1767. He gives a further instance, in which that people, although they had received christianity above 1300 years, still retained ano Of the im word Baal port of the or Bel, Coincidence of Irish annals, and and they call May-day Bealteine, Beltine, or Balteine, the meaning of which is the fire of Baal: teine, fire; Beal or Bel, Baal, La Bealtine, is May-day." Does not the continuance of such a custom in an island admitted to have been inhabited by those who were born within a century of the deluge; does not the retention of particular phrases to this day in that island prove to demonstration, that Baal, or Bel, as the Grecians, or Belus, as the Romans afterwards terminated the name, was the general deity, which the inhabitants once adored, and that the introduction of this worship into Ireland preceded Grecian intercourse and Roman conquests? By debarassing the mind of that awe and diffidence, which very remote antiquity is apt to throw upon the Sanchonia- objects of criticism, we shall be astonished at the ana tho's Phoe tory. nician his-logies and coincidences, which are manifest upon the face of the Irish annals, and the coeval history of Sanchoniatho, as it is preserved in Eusebius. That learned Greek father observes, that the very ancient Greeks or barbarians had not then given into the worship of idols, the genealogy of gods and goddesses, the invocation of demons and spirits, or the obscene mythology of heroes; that this Phoenician history of Sanchoniatho proves, that the false belief in the multiplicity of gods, which some centuries afterwards prevailed throughout the world, began from the Phoeni ther heathenish custom, which they blended with christianity. |