By the cross is the oath, accompanied by a transverse location of the forefinger of one hand upon that of the other: and the addition alluded to is of Christ, which is never volunteered except when equivocation is suspected; and then it is exacted as a matter of distinction between His cross and the more antecedent one!
But no further proof is requisite to prove the Bishop’s want of candour than his withholding documents from the public eye, which would appear to illustrate the subject.—“Although in these tracts and papers there are,” says he, “many other things touching primitive paganism, they are not mentioned in this epitome, lest, in being brought into notice, they should be the means of confirming more strongly an idolatrous superstition.” He should have had more confidence in his own cause, and feel that—“If anything, in consequence of this scrutiny, totter and fall, it can only be the error which has attached itself to truth, encumbering and deforming it. Truth itself will remain unshaken, unsullied, fair, immortal!”
Now, in the description of the ancient city, near Palenque, quoted before, I find some words, which prove an affinity between the worship of the ancient inhabitants of America and those of Ireland, and which rescue both from the imputations of bigotry. “I am Culebra,” says Votan, one of the early princes, I believe, of Mexico, who wrote an historical tract in the Indian idiom, “because I am Chivim.”
The man’s name, you perceive, was Votan, but his ambition was to be considered Culebra, or the snake, that is, the deity so personified: the mode whereby he sought to establish it is foreign from my inquiry.
The Gadelglas of the ancient Irish was precisely similar to this Culebra of the Americans: gad signifying a snake, or tortuosity: el, god; and glas, green—in all, the green snake-god! And conformably with this import, we are assured by a man who knew very little as to the reason why, but whose testimony is here valuable in a matter of record, not of opinion; namely, that the “Milesians, from the time they first conquered Ireland, down to the reign of Ollamh Fodhla, made use of no other arms of distinction in their banners than a serpent twisted round a rod, after the example of their Gadelian ancestors.”[596]
You have now the proof of “who puts the snakes upon our ancient crosses?” And, independently of such proof, the antiquity itself of all the traditions associating the serpent with the early memoirs of our ancestors was so great as to appal even the monks! And as they could not, in their system of transferring our history, bring down this serpent to the era of the saints, they resolved, at all events, to have him in their dispensation, and so made Moses the hero!
This they contrived by inventing the name of Gadel for one of our forefathers, and then transplanting him to the coast of the Red Sea, just as the Legislator of the Jews was conducting them out of Egypt! They then very unsacerdotally make a serpent bite him in some part of the heel, but very graciously afterwards restore him to sanity by Moses’s interposition! with a stipulation, however, that the former sore should ever appear glass or green! And thus was he called Gadelglas, or Gadel the Green!!!
In truth, it was from this green snake-god, above explained, that the island obtained the designation of Emerald; and not from the verdure of its soil, which is not greater than that of other countries.
The Arabians have a tradition, that Enoch was the first who, after Enos, son of Seth, son of Adam, wrote with a pen, in the use of which he instructed his children, saying to them additionally, “O, my sons, know that ye are Sabians!”
Although the substance of the religion, couched under this designation, has been already explained, yet the origin of the name itself remains yet to be unfolded.