“Fortunately, it occurred to one of the lads (after his voice had become hoarse with shouting), that the noise of miners’ hammers was often heard at considerable distances through the coal works; in consequence of this reflection, he took up a stone, which he frequently struck against the sides of the cavern; the noise of this was at length heard by the workmen, who, in their turn, adopted a similar artifice; by this means each party was conducted towards the other, and the unfortunate adventurers extricated time enough to behold the sun risen in full splendour, which they had left the morning before just beginning to tinge the eastern horizon. On examining this subterranean wonder, it was found to be a complete gallery, which had been driven forward many hundred yards to the bed of coal: that it branched off into numerous chambers, where miners had carried on their different works: that these chambers were dressed in a workmanlike manner: that pillars were left at proper intervals to support the roof. In short, it was found to be an extensive mine, wrought by a set of people at least as expert in the business as the present generation. Some remains of the tools, and even of the baskets used in the works, were discovered, but in such a decayed state, that on being touched, they immediately crumbled to pieces. From the remains which were found, there is reason to believe that the people who wrought these collieries anciently, were acquainted with the use of iron, some small pieces of which were found; it appeared as if some of their instruments had been thinly shod with that metal.”
There is no question but that the era when those collieries were before worked, was that in which the Tuath-de-danaans were masters of this island. Had it been at any later period, we could not fail having some traditions relating thereto. Iron, therefore, the last discovered of the metals, as stated at [page 115], must have been known to this people: and the absence of any name for it in our vernacular language is accounted for on the same principle as that by which those excavations themselves had been so long concealed, namely, the distaste of their successors to such applications, or the reluctance entertained to make them acquainted with their worth.
It is probable, however, that the little minikin fineries of life were not then in fashion—that our loaves were not baked in tin shapes, as at present, nor our carriages constructed in so many different varieties of form, excluding altogether those worked by steam; that our gunlocks were not prepared with percussion caps, nor our sofas furnished with air-blown cushions; that the routine of etiquette was differently negotiated, and that twenty, or more, several hands were not employed in the finish of a common pin, before it could be dignified with the honour of acting a useful part in adjusting the habiliments of a modern dandy:—but in all the grand essentials of life—in all its solid refinements and elegant utilities,—the scholar will confess that those who have gone before us have been fully our equals; and traces, too, are not wanting to countenance the belief that even those knick-knack frivolities on which we so pique ourselves in the present day, have not been at some period without a prototype,—so that the majority of those boasted patents for what are considered discoveries or inventions of something new, should more properly be for recoveries, or unfoldings of something old, and illustrative of the adage, as remarkable as it is correct, “that there is nothing new under the sun.”[459]
CHAPTER XXVIII.
You ask me for the proofs of this early grandeur? I point you to the gold crowns, the gold and silver ingots, the double-headed pateræ or censers, the anklets, lunettes, bracelets, fibulæ, necklaces, etc., which have been repeatedly found throughout all parts of Ireland, evidently the relics of that “Sacred” colony who gave their name to this island, and who, to the refined taste which such possessions imply, united also the science which appears in their workmanship.[460]
But these are scanty and insufficient memorials? Pray, what greater can you produce of ancient Egypt? Her Pyramids? Our Round Towers are as old; are likely to be as permanent; and are really more beautiful. What are the vestiges of ancient Etruria? of Assyria? Troy? Chaldea? nay, of Babylon the Great, the queen of the world? A few consolidations of stone and mortar—disjointed rubbish—and incrusted pottery. All these we retain, in addition to the thousand other evidences which crowd upon the historian. And, while Britain can adduce no single vestige of the Romans—who subjugated that country at their highest period of civilisation—but what, in the words of my adversaries themselves, are “only monuments of barbarism,” I answer—no wonder—for the Romans were never to be compared to the Iranian Budhists, who brought all the splendour of the East to the concentrated locality of this Hyperborean Island.
“Infant colonies, forsooth, do not carry a knowledge of the ‘Fine Arts’ along with them; they are only to be found where wealth, luxury, and power have fixed their abode.”[461] Most sapient remark! but unluckily out of place; for the authors of our Round Towers were not “an infant colony” at all; but the very heads and principals of the most polished and refined people on the bosom of the habitable earth—the Budhists of Iran. And, accordingly, in their train not only did “wealth, luxury, and power” abound, but they seemed exclusively to have taken up their abode amongst them.[462]
Analogous to the above was the rhodomontade of another pillar of the same order. “I, nevertheless,” says Montmorency, “am disinclined to believe that those same persons, had they to choose a residence between Syria and Ireland, would have taken the wintry and uncultivated wilds of Fidh-Inis, in preference to the sunny plains which gave them birth.”[463]