“Thus dressed and ornamented, the youthful females of Ireland appeared at Tailetan, or the mysteries of the sun, on the first day of August in each year, when the ceremony of the marriage of the sun and moon took place, and the females were exposed to enamour the swains. The day still retains the name of Luc-nasa, or the Anniversary of the Sun. And the name of the month of August, in Sanscrit, is Lukie, whom they make the wife of Veeshnu, the preserver and goddess of plenty. So the Irish poets have made this festival, named Lucaid-lamh-fada, i.e. the Festival of Love, the consecration of hands, to be the feast of Luigh-lamh-fada, or Luigh-longumans, to whom they have given Tailte for wife, who, after his death, was married to Duach.”
“The Taltenean sports,” says Sir James Ware, “have been much celebrated by the Irish historians. They were a sort of warlike exercises, something resembling the Olympic games, consisting of racing, tilts, tournaments, or something like them, and other exercises. They were held every year at Talten, a mountain in Meath, for fifteen days before and fifteen days after the first of August. Their first institution is ascribed to Lugaid-lam-fadhe, the twelfth King of Ireland, who began his reign A.M. 2764, in gratitude to the memory of Tailte, the daughter of Magh Mor, a prince of some part of Spain, who, having been married to Eochaid, King of Ireland, took this Lugaidh under her protection, and had the care of his education in his minority. From this lady both the sports and the place where they were celebrated took their names. From King Lugaidh the first of August was called Lugnasa, or the memory of Lugaidh, nasa signifying memory in Irish.”
The truth is, that those games were called Tailtine (whence the English Tilts), and the place Tailton, from Tailte, which, in our language, signifies a wife; and the sports, there exhibited, made but a representation of the victory which Budha gained over Mara, the great tempter, who had attacked him on the day of his attaining to perfection, with an innumerable host of demons. The conflict is said to have lasted for fifteen days, at the end of which Budha reduced them to submission, and to the acknowledgment of his pretensions as the Son of God.
The battle-scenes, therefore, with which the Tuath-de-danaan crosses and obelisks are decorated, bear reference, all of them, to this religious achievement: and to this hour you will find those identical games celebrated in various parts of the east, and for the same number of days! In Egypt, also, there was a place called Tailtal,[441] and named from the same cause. Nay, the name of the Eleusinian mysteries was Tailtine! but this the Greeks not comprehending, they bent it, as usual, to some conformity to their own language, and made Teletai of it! and then they were at no loss in making a reason for it in like manner, namely, that no one could be finished until initiated therein!
But it is not alone as assigning those edifices to their real proprietors that this “stanza” is of value; but as giving us an insight into that mysterious personage whom our modern chroniclers would fain represent as the father of Heber and Heremon. A greater error, whether voluntary or accidental, was never incurred. Heber and Heremon were the sons of Gallamh, and invaded this island at the head of a Scythian colony,[442] distinct in all respects, save that of language,[443] from their Tuathan predecessors.
These predecessors were headed by three brothers, Brien, Iuchordba, and Iuchor, the sons of King Miledh, a Fo-morian, by a queen of the Tuath-de-danaan race, agreeably to this record in the Book of Leccan, viz.:—
“D’Hine fine Fo-mora dosomh de shaorbh a athor, agus do Tuathabh Dadanann a mhathar”—that is, the father was of the race of the Fo-morians, and the mother a Tuath-de-danaan.
Again, in the Seabright Collection, this genealogy is prosecuted further, and from it, General Vallancey translates some lines, which are by no means irrelevant, as follows, viz.: “Cuill, Ceacht, and Grian, were the children of little Touraine—and their descendants, Uar, Jurca, Jurcatha; and from Uar was descended Brian, who was named Touran; and many others not here enumerated.”
But the history of those events having been destroyed by time, the degenerate Pheeleas, wishing to flatter the vanity of the existing powers, did not hesitate to ascribe to the Scythian, or modern Irish, followers of Heber and Heremon, those brilliant features of primeval immortality which appertained exclusively to the Irish of another day—the Hyperborean or Iranian Irish!
The Tuath-de-danaans having been proved the authors of the Round Towers, my ambition in the investigation is already attained. But since we are told, that this people had claimed possession of the island as inheritors of an antecedent and preoccupying eastern colony, it may be worth while to inquire whether we can discover any traces to connect those predecessors with any of these edifices. Without bestowing upon it, however, more consideration than what the exigency demands, I will briefly observe, that we are likely to find such in the history of the Fo-moraice, who are represented in our chronicles, by the party who had ejected them, under the obnoxious character of monsters and giants.[444]