“Δωδωνην Φηγονν τε Πελασγων εδρανων ηκεν.”[521]

That is,—

To Dodona he came, and the hallowed oak, the seat of the Pelasgi.

Valuable as are those authorities, the General needed not to have had recourse to them at all, had he but been apprised of the origin of the word Dodona.

One of the religious names of Ireland, which I have purposely left unexplained till now, was Totdana.[522] This it derived immediately from the Tuath-de-danaans, as indeed it did all its ancient names, with the exception of Scotia. Tuath-de-danaans I have shown to mean the Magic-God-Almoners,[523] and Totdana, by consequence, must denote the Magic-almonry.[524]

Now, the Greeks, having been initiated in all their religious mystery by the Irish, did not only enrich their language with the vocabulary of our ceremonial, but adopted the several epithets of our island as the distinctive names for their various localities, so that our Muc-inis[525] became their Myc-ene, our Tot-dana, their Do-dona, etc. etc. And even the names of our lakes, with all their legends of hydras and enchantments, found their way to them also, so that from our Lough-Erne was formed, by a crasis, their L-Erna.

The change from Tot-dana to Do-dona is much more obvious than may seem at first sight. T and D being commutable, Tot-dana was at once made Dot-dana; the intermediate t was then left out for sound’s sake, making it Do-dana; and, lastly, the penultimate a was transformed into o for the “ore rotundo,”[526] completing the Grecism of Do-dona.

You see, therefore, from this that the origin of Dodona was exclusively Irish! that Dodona and Ireland were, in fact, one and the same!—a circumstance of which Homer was perfectly well assured when he styled it Δωδωνη δυσχειμερος, or the Hyperborean Tot-dana.[527]

Neither was it in name only, but in sanctity also, that the Greek Myc-ene strove to imitate our Muc-inis. To this hour is to be found one of the ancient Pelasgian temples, vulgarly termed the Treasury of Atreus, from the mere circumstance, as Dr. Clarke well remarks, “of there being found a few brass nails within it, and evidently for the purpose of fastening on something wherewith the interior surface was formerly lined, and that many a long year before Atreus or Agamemnon!” The Doctor, however, was perfectly astray in supposing it a sepulchre! In form it is a hollow cone, fifty feet in diameter, and as many in height, composed of enormous masses of a very hard breccia, a sort of pudding-stone, the very material whereof most of our Round Towers are constructed, and the property of which is to indurate by time. The Dune of Dornadella in Scotland is identically the same kind of structure, built by our Tuath-de-danaans, and for the solemn purpose of religion alone. This is so accurately described in an article in the Edinburgh Magazine, copied into Pennant’s Tour, that I too will make free to transcribe it.

“It is,” says the reviewer, “of a circular form, and now nearly resembling the frustum of a cone: whether, when perfect, it terminated in a point, I cannot pretend to guess; but it seems to have been higher, by the rubbish which lies round it. It is built of stone, without cement, and I take it to be between twenty and thirty feet still. The entrance is by a low and narrow door, to pass through which one is obliged to stoop much; but perhaps the ground may have been raised since the first erection. When one is got in, and placed in the centre, it is open overhead. All round the sides of the walls are ranged stone shelves, one above another, like a circular beaufait, reaching from near the bottom to the top. The stones which compose these shelves are supported chiefly by the stones which form the walls, and which project all round, just in that place where the shelves are, and in no others; each of the shelves is separated into several divisions, as in a bookcase. There are some remains of an awkward staircase. What use the shelves could be applied to I cannot conceive. It could not be of any military use, from its situation at the bottom of a sloping hill, which wholly commands it. The most learned amongst the inhabitants, such as the gentry and clergy, who all speak the Irish language, could give no information or tradition concerning its use, or the origin of its name.”