“Ganesa, who is identified with Vishnu, and has also an inferior paradise in the White Island, and another in the Euxine, or Jeshu sea, thus says to a king of Casi, or Benares, an antediluvian, and who, like Bali, wished much to be admitted into his elysium, “you cannot now enter my paradise in the White Island; you must wait 5000 years; but in the mean time you may reside in my other paradise, in the Euxine Sea.”
Now, all these monstrosities, as they presented themselves to Mr. Wilford, gauging them with the comparisons of dry rule and line on the application of the true touchstone, vanish into ether.
The most mysterious and religiously-occult name given to Ireland in the days of its pristine glory was Muc-Inis.
This word has three interpretations—firstly, the Boar Island; secondly, the White Island; and, thirdly, the Sacred, or rather the Divine, and Consecrated Island of God.[381]
Is it necessary that I should say one syllable more to authenticate the Puranas, and identify this hallowed spot with the paradise of their encomiums? No: I shall not affront your understanding by so supposing. The explanation of this single term has, more effectually than could a ship-load of folios, set to flight the hobgoblins of ignorance and of scepticism, and reared the castle of truth on the ruins of prostrated error.
I would by no means, however, be understood as intending an ungenerous trophy over Mr. Wilford’s mistakes. I respect the zeal with which he embarked in his undertaking; and, to speak over-board, the lapses which he has committed were to him ethically unavoidable.
The sting, therefore, of the above, if any it convey, must be directed exclusively to the romancers of my own country: a specimen of whom I shall give you in the Rev. Dr. Keating, who, venturing to unveil the mystery of the name Muc-Inis, and account for its origin, tells us, with a serious face, that “when the Danaans found the Milesians attempted to land, by their magical enchantments they threw a cloud on the island, by which it appeared no bigger than a hog’s back!!!”
But Ireland, thank God, is rescued from the drivelling of such dotards. It will hold its place now amongst the nations of the earth; and the result is inevitable, however tardy your compliance, but that the truth will be revived from one pole of the universe to the other, that, in the primeval world, all sanctity and all happiness had here fixed their abode, that heaven was here personified, and that the irradiating focus of all moral enlightenment was here alone to be found.[382]
Look, Sir, what do you see before you? The solution of that all-healing arrow which Abaris was said to have brought with him from the island of the Hyperboreans, on his visit of religion to Greece!
Should you ever chance to travel as far as the county of Galway, inquire for the deserted village of Knockmoy. Though now dreary, inconsiderable, and forgotten, it was once the theatre of soul-stirring impressions!