It is true that Gabri now stands for fire-worshippers, but that is only because that they assumed to themselves this title, which belonged to another order of their ancestors. The word is derived from gabh, “a smith,” and ir, “sacred,” meaning the sacred smiths; and Cabiri being only a perversion of it is, of course, in substance, of the very same import.
Mount Caucasus,[409] also, which still, in our language, retains its original pronunciation, of Gaba-casan, or the Smith’s Path, was named from the same root; nor is the tradition of the reason altogether obliterated from those who dwell beside it, if we may judge from a ceremony described by a recent traveller, as performed by them, as follows:—
“The original founders of the Tartarian Mongolian Scythians, called Cajan and Docos, got embarrassed amongst those mountains, then uninhabited. After a sojourn there of 450 years, having become so numerous as to require other settlements, they were at a loss to find a passage through the mountains, when a smith, pointing out to them a place very rich in iron ore, advised them to make great fires there, by which means the ore melted, and a broad passage was opened for them. In commemoration of which famous march, the Mongols to this day celebrate an annual feast, and observe the ceremony of heating a piece of iron red hot, on which the Ceann (that is, the chief) strikes one blow with a hammer, and all the persons of quality do the same after him.”
I shall close this chapter by the description given of the destruction of Cambyses’s army in the Nubian desert, after the insults offered by him to the Cabiri priests.
“Gnomes, o’er the waste, you led your myriad powers,
Climb’d on the whirls, and aim’d the flinty showers;
Onward resistless rolls the infuriate surge,
Clouds follow clouds, and mountains mountains urge;
Wave over wave the driving desert swims,
Burst o’er their heads, inhumes their struggling limbs;
Man mounts on man, on camels camels rush,
Hosts march o’er hosts, and nations nations crush:
Wheeling in air, the winged islands fall—
And one great sandy ocean covers all.”[410]
CHAPTER XXV.
On the east side of the river Shannon, about ten miles distant from Athlone, in the barony of Garrycastle, and King’s County, is situated the Sanctuary of Clonmacnoise. Within the narrow limits of two Irish acres, are here condensed more religious ruins, of antiquarian value, than are to be found, perhaps, in a similar space in any other quarter of the habitable world.
Nine churches, built respectively by the individuals whose names they bear, namely: (1) that of Macarthy More; (2) that of Melaghlin; (3) that of MacDermott; (4) that of Hiorphan; (5) that of Kieran; (6) that of Gawney; (7) that of O’Kelly; and (8) that of O’Connor;—independently of the cathedral,—here moulder, in kindred mortality, with the ashes of nobles, of princes, and of kings, entombed beneath their walls; and who, at feud, mayhap, in life, are now content to sleep beside each other, “their warfare o’er,” in the levelling indistinction of death.