The anachronism committed in the instance of the Goban Saer was precisely of the same character! and the very name assigned him, which is that of a class, not of an individual, exposes the counterfeit!
Gobhan Saer means the Sacred Poet, or the Freemason Sage, one of the Guabhres, or Cabiri, such as you have seen him represented upon the Tuath-de-danaan cross at Clonmacnoise. To this colony, therefore, must he have belonged, and therefore the Towers traditionally associated with his erection must have been constructed anterior to the Scythian influx.
But we are not left to such inferences to determine the point. A more substantial ally, the imperishable landmarks of history stand forward as my vouchers.
To this hour the two localities,—whereon the Tuath-de-danaans had fought their two decisive battles with the Fir-Bolgs, their immediate predecessors in the occupation of this island,—one near Lough Mask, in the county Galway, and the other near Lough Arran, in the county Roscommon, are called by the name of Moy-tura, or more correctly, in Irish, Moye-tureadh!
The meaning of this compound, beyond the possibility of disputation, is The field of the Towers! And when in both those places are still traced the ruins of such edifices, are we not inevitably forced to connect, as well their erection as the imposition of the name, with the fortunes or with the feelings of some side of the above combatants?
You will say, then, that the Fir-Bolgs were as likely to have originated the name, and built those structures upon the site, in reliance upon their divinities, as that the Tuath-de-danaans should have been the authors in gratitude to theirs?
Our only mode, therefore, is to consider the vestiges of their respective religions: and when we perceive that in the isles of Aran, whither the Fir-Bolgs betook themselves after their first defeat, for the period intervening between those two battles, commemorated by the above name, there appears not a vestige of architectural masonry approaching in character to a Columnar temple, while, on the contrary, they abound in specimens of Druidical veneration, is it not evident that they, at all events, have no claim thereto?
The worship, therefore, of the Fir-Bolgs differed altogether from that of the Tuath-de-danaans, and so they are excluded from those immortal memorials. Indeed the avidity with which they hailed the approach of a new conqueror, and tendered him their assistance for the reduction of the island, arose not so much from any fondly-cherished hope of their being themselves restored to the throne they had lost, or even allowed therein a participation, as from an illiberal aversion to the emblematic ritual of their temple-serving superiors, which their ignorant prejudices could not allow them to appreciate!
We are warranted, then, I presume, in assigning solely to the Tuath-de-danaans the affixing of the name Moy-tureadh to those two scenes of their success. And did there even a doubt remain on the mind of the most incredulous as to the accuracy of the inference, or the correctness of that reasoning, which would identify this people with the erections in general of those rotundities, it will hide its diminished head, and vanish with self-abasement, when I bring forward the testimony of Amergin, brother to Heremon and, Heber,—the immediate victors of this religious order—in the following graphic and pictorial treasure, as still religiously preserved in the Book of Leccan, viz.:—
“Aonoch righ Teambrach
Teamor Tur Tuatach
Tuath Mac Miledh
Miledh Long Libearne.”