[157] This corresponds to Ir-an, the Sacred Land.
[158] This answers to Ir-in, the Sacred Island.
[159] The reader will see that, in quoting Dr. Keating, I do so from no respect for his discrimination or sagacity. Whenever he has attempted to exert either, in the way of comment or deduction, he has invariably erred: fortunately he has offered none in this instance. Yet is his book a most valuable compilation; and I now cull out of it those three names, as one would a casket of jewels from a lumber-room.
[160] This Farragh, otherwise Phearragh, is the Peor of the Scriptures, and the Priapus of the Greeks.
[161] “Priapus, si physice consideretur idem est ac sol; ejusque lux primogenia unde vis omnis seminatrix” (Diod. Sic. lib. i.). See also Num. xxv. 4, where you will see that “Peor” remotely meant the sun.
[162] I shall not trouble myself in reciting the absurd attempts that have been heretofore made to expound this word: it is enough to say that they were all wrong.
[163] The motto, also, of this family, viz., Lamh laider a-Boo, i.e. “The strong arm from Boo,” now changed to Vigueur du dessus, is in keeping with the same idea.
[164] This is the mere utterance of an historical transaction without reference to sect, creed, party, or politics. No feelings of bitterness mingle therein. The author disclaims all such, as much as he would depreciate them in others.
[165] In the library of Trinity College, Dublin, are several such, collected in the beginning of last century, by Lhuyd, author of the Archæologia, and restored by Sir John Seabright, at the instigation of Edmund Burke. I am credibly informed also, that there have been lately discovered in the Library at Copenhagen certain documents relating to our antiquities, taken away by the Danes after their memorable defeat at Clontarf, by King Brian, A.D. 1014. Lombard has already asserted the same; and that the King of Denmark entreated Queen Elizabeth to send him some Irishman, who could transcribe them; that Donatus O’Daly, a learned antiquarian, was selected for the purpose, but that his appointment was afterwards countermanded, for political reasons.
There are, besides, in mostly all the public libraries of Europe—without adverting to those which are detained in the Tower of London—divers Irish manuscripts, presented by the various emigrants, who from time to time have been obliged to fly their country, to seek among strangers that shelter which they were denied at home; taking with them, as religious heirlooms, those hereditary relics of their pedigree and race.