superstition made a necessary part of their institutions. It hath already been observed, that the Celtiberi who came into Ireland from Spain, had an early commerce with the Phoenicians, whose druids Doctor Blackwell speaks of in this passage; and from them this custom and this art of writing, practised by the druids neither of Gaul nor Britain, might be derived. That this custom was in Ireland is further confirmed by Ware, who says, that, besides the vulgar character, the ancient Irish used divers occult forms and arts of writing, which they called ogham, wherein they write their several concerns, of which character he found very much in an ancient parchment book which he had."* 73. Of all the religious ceremonies or mysteries of idolatrous cult, the Cabyria were the most ancient. They are mentioned by the oldest Greek writers† as religious feasts celebrated at Thebes in Lemnos, and especially in Samothracia, in honour of the Cabiric or great and powerful gods: they are spoken of as being prior even to the time of Jupiter, who is said to have restored them. What stamps them with the most unerring badge of great antiquity, is their being mentioned by Sanchoniatho, as particularly worshipped by the Phoenicians 1300 years before the christian era, and before the actual formation of the Grecian mythology. No wonder then that the Cabirean festivals should have travelled with the Phoenician colonists cotemporary with Sanchoniatho to Ireland, in which they made a permanent settlement. Nor will it appear strange to the reflecting observer, that although, in process of time, these Cabirean rites should amongst the fabulous Greeks have been embellished or disguised by the introduction of their more recent deities, yet they remained with the Irish, as they were first imported by those to whom the Grecian mythology was unknown. These traces of the Cabiric rites to such high antiquity illus Ogham is the name of the sacred alphabet of the Irish, and signifies letters, learning, language, wisdom; and the learned Vallancey observes, Cadmus erected a temple in Baotia to Oca, as the goddess of wisdom. Besides many palpable references to other ancient authors, referring to ogham inscriptions, we shall close the subject by reference to the ogham inscription on Conan's tomb on Mount Callan, in the county of Clare, which has it oca; the original being translated from the Irish, means Long let him lie on the brink of this lake, beneath this oca, favourite of the sacred.—Adm bo socc aj loc sam oca cifa dil rof. + Diod. Sic. 1. v. trate what the indefatigable and scientific Vallancey has latterly added to his valuable elucubrations.* 66 74. "Artemidorus is my authority that the ancients knew of the Cabiric mysteries being established in Ireland. There is an island," says he, near Britain, in which the sacred rites of Ceres and Proserpine are observed, as in Samothrace." (Quoted by Strabo, lib. iv. p. 101.) On which Bochart observes, These islanders could not have been instructed in these rites by the Greeks, for Artemidorus wrote in the age of Ptolemæus Lathyrus; at which, every school-boy knows, the Greeks had not navigated to the British isles, and therefore the rites of the Cabiri must have been introduced there by the Phoenicians." (Geogr. Sacr. p. 650.) "And," adds the same author, Orpheus, or rather Onomacritus, indeed mentions Ireland, but he learned the name and site of it from the Phoenicians; the Greeks had not at that time sailed into those seas. Onomacritus lived 560 years before Christ. Polybius, who lived but 124 before Christ, acknowledges they knew nothing of the northern nations. Itaque multa potuisse illis esse perspectu de occidentalis oceani insulis quæ Polybius ignoraverit." and 75. It must be remarked, that both Greeks and Romans affected to speak of the religious rites and ceremonies of other nations with immediate reference to their own, in the names of their own deities. What Artemidorus then says of the rites of Ceres and Prosperine being known in Ireland, obviously means no more than that these rites, which amongst the Greeks were known and practised in honour of Ceres and her daughter Proserpine, were also observed in this western island; thereby referring to those most ancient rites, which were called by pre-eminence the mysteries: and by the Greeks, from the place of their celebration, Eleusynian. They were holden in such dread esti ination by the ancient Greeks, that if any person divulged them the vengeance of the gods was sure to light on the guilty head, and no one would on that account remain either under the same roof or in the same vessel with the offender. To these mystic and dark rites Virgil alludes in the sixth book of his Æneid, and strongly expresses the impenetrable se *Coll. part vi. ch. x. Of the Dioscuri and Cabiri, and the Cabiric or Mythratic laws in Ireland. crecy with which they were believed in his days to have been enveloped from the earliest times. Cumea* Sibylla Horrendas canit ambages, antroque remugit Obscuris vera involvens. * Virgil's connecting these sacred mysteries with the Cumaan Sibyl, carries with it a very strong inference of the ceremonies or mystic rites alluded to pre-existing the time of the Grecian mythology: and this will well account for the existence of them in Ireland without any tincture or admixture of the Grecian fable, or the obscenities with which their observance was latterly contaminated. Ceres and Proserpine are not mentioned in the Irish metrical annals, however they superabound with poetical fancy and allegory; it was, according to Virgil, the stile of the day both to write in verse, and wrap up truth in mystery, obscuris vera involvens. It was one amongst the few singularities of the learned Dr. Prideaux, to explode the authenticity of the Sibyl's prophecies, and to regard them as pious fictions of the early christians to strengthen their arguments against the heathens. Without entering upon the controversy, which would necessarily run into great length, it will not be irrelevant to the scope of this dissertation first to remark that this charge of forgery (however piously intended) is too serious to be lightly adopted. The most learned fathers of the primitive church are unanimous in urging their authenticity: as Justin, who suffered martyrdom, A. D. 163, in his Apology for the Christians; Origin against Celsus; Arnobius, and his scholar Lactantius, against the Gentiles; St. Cyril against Julian the apostate; St. Augustin in his City of God; Eusebius, Constantine the emperor, and several others. The modern pyrrhonism concerning the Sibyl's prophecies, is but the revival of the old pagan_opposition to christianity; and as the Emperor Constantine, in a Latin oration, which he wrote to a convention of prelates, undertook to prove their authenticity against the old antichristian heathens, we shall refer to his arguments as being equally conclusive against their antichristian imitators. The whole oration is to be seen in Eusebius, 1. iv. c. 32. First, they could not have been forged by christians, or made after the nativity of Christ, because Marcus Varro, who lived near 100 years before our Blessed Lord, makes large mention of their predictions, and (as does Fenestella and other heathen writers) affirms, that they were gathered by the Romans from all parts of the world, and laid up with diligence and great reverence in the capitol under the immediate custody of the high priest, and other officers called the fifteen. Secondly, because the Sibylla Erythrea (called afterwards the Cumæan) testified of herself, that she lived about 600 years after the flood of Noah; and her countryman Appollodorus Erythræus, as well as Varro, reported, that she lived before the seige of Troy; and amongst the works of Cicero extant at that time, was a translation into Latin verses of the famous acrostic lines of the Cumæan Sibyl, predict ing the birth of our Lord Christ; and Cicero was killed nearly forty years before Christ was born, Thirdly, because Cicero in several of his works, as in his letters to Lentulus and De Divinatione, 1. ii. makes very explicit mention of these predictions. Fourthly, because Augustus, before Christ was born, had, according to Suetonius, such reverence for them, as to put them into closer custody under the altar of Apollo, on the hill Palatine, where no one without special licence 76. When we fully reflect upon the elaborate pains which the emperor Constantine submitted to in proving to his council of bishops, and to the whole empire, the genuine authority of this Cumæan Sibyl's predictions, and that he was so far from considering her as an idolatress or magician, that he held her in the highest veneration, as an inspired favourite of Heaven; we shall the more readily reconcile with truth the report of Justin the martyr, who asserts, that she was of Babylonish descent. No author relates either the time or occasion of her passing out of Asia to Cumæ in Italy. The appellation of Cumæan may have been given to this Erithrean Sibyl, not from the place of her residence, but from her prophecies being there known or preserved, or from her worship having been there instituted or encouraged; for the Sibyls were worshipped in many places from very early times. 77. If the first druids, who went over to Ireland directly or indirectly from Asia, carried with them these ancient rites or ceremonies, the earlier the period was at which they were imported, the less likely were they to have been polluted by polytheism, or any of those horrid and obscene corrup tions which idolatry afterwards introduced into them. It is observable, that the druidism of the ancient Irish has utterly escaped the traduction, obloquy, and virulence of the Greeks and Romans: because neither of those nations ever attempted could have access to them, which as a special favour was allowed to Te duce, si qua manent sceleris vestigia nostri, That is, Thou being our leader or captain, the remnant of our sins shall be made void or taken away, and the world shall be delivered for ever from fear for the same. Greater weight is due to the arguments of this learned and respectable emperor, than to Dr. Prideaux or any phyrrnonite, for the following reasons: First, he only rests his argument upon the authority of authors who pre-existed christianity. Second, His arguments are addressed to a council of learned prelates. Third, Being emperor, he commanded access to all records and authorities then existing. Fourth, He was attended by the most learned men of his day, such as Lactantius, the preceptor to his son Crispus ; and, therefore, he ends his discourse in these remarkable words, "These are the things which fell from heaven into the mind of this virgin to foretell; for which cause I am induced to account her for blessed, whom our Saviour did vouchsafe to choose for a prophet, to denounce unto the world his holy providence towards us. the conquest of that island, and consequently had not experienced the powerful influence which their order, rank, and doctrines produced upon their countrymen in maintaining their liberties against all invaders. 78. The fairest account of druidism from a Roman pen is given by the poet Lucan,* in his Pharsalia. He was peculiarly fitted to handle such a subject, from having written a poem (not now extant) upon the descent of Orpheus into. hell; a subject immediately leading to the origin of the oldest mystic rites known amongst any of the religionists of the pagan world, whether distinguished by the appellation of Cabyric or Mithratic, Eleusynean, or Cumæan, and which originally were substantially druidical. In the spirit of his day (he wrote under Claudius and Nero) he terms their rites generally barbarous and sinister; admits the druids to be adverse to war; to have the exclusive knowledge (or error, as he must presume) of the high mysteries of the gods and the stars of heaven; they lived in awful groves; and held man's soul should neither visit silent Erebus nor Pluto's hall; that it should live in another world to eternity; that death is but the midway between life and immortality; that these northern people, happy in their error, had no fear of death, the greatest terror to other mortals; that they braved danger with dauntless minds; and were lavish of life in the hope of resurrection. Lucan was a Spaniard, and meant all the British islands by the populi quos despicit arctos. Yet it is observable, that his general opprobrious epithets, barbaricos ritus moremque sinistrum, are supported by no specific proof; but, on the contrary, the detail contains a body of philosophy and divinity soaring beyond the powers of their proudest men of science. It is a reasonable presumption, that if Lucan, (he was not only an orator and philopher, but * Et vos barbaricos ritus moremque sinistrum Aut solis nescire datum. Nemora alta remotis Pallida regna petunt, regit idem spiritus artuss Mors media est. Certè, populi, quos despicit arctos Luc. 1. i. Thers. |