The originals of these inscriptions are all in Hebrew, and the likenesses which accompany them, although on different metals, appear almost copies one of another: whereas the cruciform figures herein already inserted, have no one feature of correspondence whatsoever with them, but prove themselves, on the contrary, in every particular, an antecedent generation.[603]
As everything else appertaining to the history of the Round Towers has already been explained, I shall now account for the difference of appropriation noticed at p. 6. Having been all erected in honour of the Budh, they all partook of the phallic form; but as several enthusiasts personified this abstract, which, in consequence of the mysteries involved in the thought and the impenetrable veil which shrouded it from the vulgar, became synonymous with wisdom or wise man, it was necessary, of course, that the Towers constructed in honour of each should portray the distinctive attributes of the individuals specified. Hence the difference of apertures towards the præputial apex, the crucifixions over the doors, and the absence or presence of internal compartments.[604]
Those venerable piles vary in their elevation from fifty to one hundred and fifty feet. At some distance from the summit there springs out a sort of covering, which—accompanied as it sometimes is with a cornice, richly sculptured in foliage, in imitation, if you must have it, præputii humani, but such also was the pattern of the “nets of checker-work and wreaths of chain-work,” which graced “the chapiters which were upon the top of the two pillars belonging to Solomon’s temple”—terminates above in a sort of sugar-loaf crown, concave on the inside and convex on the outside.
Their diameter at the base is generally about fourteen feet through, that inside measuring about eight, which decreases gradually, but imperceptibly, to the top, where it may be considered as about six feet in the interior.
The distance of the door from the level of the ground varies from four to twenty-four feet. The higher the door the more irrefragable is the evidence of the appropriation of the structure to the purposes specified. The object was two-fold, at once to keep off profane curiosity and allow the votaries the undisturbed exercise of their devotions; and to save the relics deposited underneath from the irreverent gaze of the casual itinerant.
Analogous to these would appear to have been the edifices which the Lord had in view when He said, “Neither shalt thou go up by steps unto Mine altar, that thy nakedness be not discovered thereon,”[605] which additionally proves the antiquity of the Irish philebeg; for, as with any other costume, such a prohibition would be needless, it follows that the prevailing fashion, in the eastern habiliments, must have been diffuse and open in the nether extremes.
I beg the reader will now be pleased to look back at the Tuath-de-danaan cross at p. 358, and he will at once see how it happened that the Goban Saer, who is there represented, has been imposed upon the Royal Irish Academy, or rather promulgated by them, as a woman! viz. from the peculiarity of his dress! being the distinctive badge of his sacerdotal order.