There in the remnant of an ancient Tuath-de-danaan Temple, vaulted with stone, and transformed, in after ages, to a Christian Abbey, you will find, after a succession of, at least, three thousand revolving years, this pathetic representation of the youth Apollo slaying with his arrow the serpent Python[383]—in other words, overthrowing, by self-endurance, the dominion of sin! and, finally, by immolation upon a tree, to which you perceive him pinioned, establishing ascendency over the serpent and his wiles, and pointing out the road to eternity beyond the grave!
In an upper range, on the same compartment, you can trace this other line, consisting of three kings with their eastern crowns, their eastern costume, and the dove of amity entwining all of them as they superintend the spectacle, while the solemnity of the whole is enhanced by the composure with which a Brehon sits by, in his turban of state, after reading from the Bana, or the Budhist gospel, the sentence of condemnation and of mysterious expiation, in one and the same breath.
“He was oppressed and He was afflicted; yet He opened not His mouth: He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before His shearers is dumb, so He openeth not His mouth.”[384]
But this is not the only incident which this treasure of antiquity pourtrays. Beside the three monarchs are skeleton delineations of the three other divinities, who, before this fourth, assumed the form of humanity, and went through the same ordeal of atoning passion to reclaim our species, through ages back in the distance![385]
It will readily be believed, that descriptions so mysterious, relating to events so momentous, must have attracted the observation of subsequent years. Generation after generation gazed upon them with wonder! Generation after generation spoke their ignorance in wonder! Mr. Ledwich, of course, must have a snap at them: and it would make a cat laugh, or Plutarch’s boar dance a hornpipe, to hear the contortions of history, the violations of nature, the perversions of fact, of date, and of philosophy, which this blot upon letters has strung together into a melange, as if an exposition of the above hieroglyphics!
And yet, this is he who boasts of his having been “not sparing of ridicule” in those moments which he tells us, “he could steal from clerical and domestic avocations,”—to tell lies of his country!
The speculation took, however, and he was fostered in his malice—riches and honours were showered upon him!