I have before shown the instance of Fergil or Virgil, who, in the eighth century, maintained the rotund and true form of the earth, when the rest of Europe were ignorant on the subject. “He was,” says Sir James Ware, “the author of a Discourse on the Antipodes, which he most truly held, though against the received opinion of the ancients, who imagined the earth to be a plain.”
In this sweeping ban upon the ancients, however, Sir James must not include the ancient Irish, whose hereditary doctrine upon the subject it is evident that Fergil did here only give utterance to; and dearly did he suffer for it; his life, like that of Galileo, having been forfeited thereby, at the hands of the same enlightened tribunal. This was enough to put the last extinguisher upon the cultivation, or at least avowal, of the Irish notions of astronomy. It is astonishing, notwithstanding, what an instinctive thirst still lurked in the Irish mind for the sublimities of this pursuit.[618] Smith mentions an instance of a “poor man near Blackstones, in the county Kerry, who had a tolerable notion of calculating the epacts, golden number, dominical letter, the moon’s phases, and even eclipses, although he had never been taught to read English.” The author of this essay has known many such characters;—one in particular who, from his great proficiency in the art, had obtained for himself the honourable designation of the Kerry Star.
LIST OF IRISH ROUND TOWERS AND CROSSES.[619]
An asterisk (*) is prefixed to the names of the most remarkable.
I. TOWERS.
Aghaboe (Queen’s Co.).
Aghadoe (Kerry), only 12 or 15 feet left. Its masonry greatly superior to that of the church near it (167).
Aghagower (Mayo), near Westport. Imperfect.