Now, our Round Towers have similar shelves, or recesses in the wall, and “reaching, like a circular beaufait, from near the bottom to the top”! Wherever these do not appear, their place is supplied by projecting stones, for the evident purpose of acting as supporters.[528] And as the Mycenian, the Caledonian, and the Hibernian edifices thus far correspond, the only thing that remains is to explain to what purpose could those recesses serve.
I thus solve the question—They were as so many cupboards for containing the idols of Budha, as the structures themselves for temples of his worship, etc. Nor is this their use yet forgotten, in the buildings of the like description in Upper India, as appears from the following statement by Archer. “In the afternoon,” says he, “I went to look at a Jain temple. It was a neat building, with an upper storey. The idol is Boadh. There is a lattice verandah of brick and mortar round the shrine, and there are small cupboards, in which numerous figures of the idol are ranged on shelves.”
Arguments crowd upon me to establish these particulars; the only difficulty is in the compression. I shall, however, continue to prove this from another source, even by showing that when Ezekiel declared, in allusion to Tyre, that “the men of Dedan were thy merchants,”[529] he meant the men of Ireland.
First let me refer you to [page 4], by which you will be reminded of our ancient possession of a naval equipment. Secondly, let me quote to you an extract from Vallancey, when directing the result to a different application. His words are: “Another proof of the ancient Irish being skilled in the art of navigation, I draw from a fragment of the Brehon laws in my possession, where the payment, or the reward, for the education of children, whilst under the care of fosterers, is thus stipulated to be paid to the ollamhs, or professors, distinguishing private tuition from that of public schools. The law says: ‘If youth be instructed in the knowledge of cattle, the payment shall be three eneaclann and a seventh; if in husbandry and farming, three eneaclann and three-sevenths; if in milrach, i.e. glais-argneadh as tear, that is, superior navigation, or the best kind of knowledge, the payment shall be five eneaclann and the fifth of an eanmaide; if in glais-argneadhistein, that is, second, or inferior (branch of) navigation, two eneaclann and a seventh.’ And this law is ordained because the pupils must have been previously instructed in letters, which is the lowest education of all.”
Thus you see, at all events, that we were qualified for the duties required. Now, I will demonstrate, and that too by the aid, or rather at the expense, of Mons. Heeren, that we were the actual persons pointed to by the prophet.
“Deden,” says the professor, “is one of the Bahrein, or rather more northerly one of Cathema. The proofs, which to detail here would be out of place, may be found in Assemani, Bib. Orient. tom. ii. par. ii. pp. 160, 564, 604, and 744. Difficulties arise here, not merely from want of maps, but also from the variation and confusion of names. Daden, or Deden, is also frequently called Dirin; and it may be conjectured that from hence arose the name of Dehroon, which is given to one of the Bahrein islands in the map of Delisle. If that were the case, then Dedan would not be Cathema, as Assemani asserts, but the island mentioned above; and this is rendered probable by the resemblance of names, which is a certain guide.”
If the “resemblance of names” be “a certain guide,” identity of names must be still more certain; and then must my proofs already prevail, and the professor’s conjectures fall to the ground! Surely he cannot say that there is any even resemblance between D-Irin and Dehroon! But he admits that the place alluded to is called indifferently Dedan[530] and D-Irin; and have I not shown that each of those names, identical and unadulterated, belonged properly to Ireland? Ireland, therefore, alone can be the country alluded to by the inspired penman.
In denying, however, a Dodona to the Greeks, and an oracle also, General Vallancey was quite incorrect. What he should have maintained was, that both name and oracle had their prototypes in Ireland; but that, so remote was the date at which the transfer occurred, all insight into the mysteries had long since perished.
Indeed, their priests very frankly acknowledged the fact to Herodotus, when, in his thirst for information, he waited upon them at Dodona. “We do not,” said they, “know even the names of the deities to whom we make our offerings—we distinguish them, it is true, by titles and designations; but these are all adventitious and modern in comparison of the worship, which is of great antiquity.” Upon which the historian very truly concludes, “that their nature and origin had been always a secret; and that even the Pelasgi, who first introduced them and their rites, had been equally unacquainted with their history.”
Like a true Greek, however, he must set about coining an origin for them; and so he tells us a cock-and-a-bull story of two pigeons (Peleiai) having taken flight from Thebes in Upper Egypt, and never stopped until they perched, one upon the top of Dodona, and the other God knows where; and then he flatters himself he has the allegory solved, by imagining that those pigeons were priestesses, or old women, carried off by Phœnician pirates, and sold into the land of Greece!