[204] Cambrensis tells rather a curious story about St. Finnan’s bell:—“There is,” says he, “in the district of Mactalewi, in Leinster, a certain bell which, unless it is adjured by its possessor every night in a particular form of exorcism shaped for the purpose, and tied with a cord (no matter how slight), it would be found in the morning at the church of St. Finnan, at Clunarech, in Meath, from whence it was brought; and,” adds he, “this sometimes happened.”
[205] A communication from Mr. Hall himself, just imparted, assures me that, as far as he could judge, the aperture was coeval with the instrument, and by no means accidental.
[206] “This word is generally supposed to be derived from Fars or Pars, a division of the empire of Iran, and applied by Europeans to the whole of that kingdom. It is certainly a word unknown, in the sense we use it, to the present natives of Iran, though some Arabic writers contend that Pars formerly meant the whole kingdom. In proof of this assertion, a passage of the Koran is quoted, in which one of Mohammed’s companions who came from a village near Isfahan is called Telman of Fars or Pars. We have also the authority of the Scripture for the name of this kingdom being Paras or Phars. The authors of the Universal History, on what authority I know not, state that the word Iran is not a general name of Persia, but of a part of the country. This is certainly erroneous: Iran has, from the most ancient times to the present day, been the term by which the Persians call their country; and it includes, in the sense they understand it, all the provinces to the east of the Tigris; Assyria Proper, Media, Parthia, Persia, and Hyrcania or Mazenderan” (Sir John Malcolm).
[207] These quotations from the professor’s book are not given consecutively as he wrote them, but brought together from detached sections and chapters.
[208] Pars is the Persian, Fars the Arabic, pronunciation of the word.
[209] I should have observed, that Plato also, speaking of those modern Persians, says: “They were originally a nation of shepherds and herdsmen, occupying a rude country, such as naturally fosters a hardy race of people, capable of supporting both cold and watching, and when needful, of enduring the toils of war” (Plato, De Leg. iii. op. ii. p. 695).
[210] Επεκτεινεται δε τ’ οὔνομα της Αριανης μεχρι μερους τινος καὶ Περσων καὶ Μηδων και ετι των προσαρκτον Βακτριον και Σογδιανῶν. εισι γαρ τως και ὁμωγλωττοι παρα μικρομ (Strabo, p. 1094).
[211] All the other variations are thus similarly accounted for; being but offshoots of the same radix, such as I have already shown (p. 128) in reference to Ireland—while the careful reader will of himself see that the name of that lake in Persia, of which the Greeks and Romans conjointly manufactured Aria Palus, corresponds to our Lough Erne, and must doubtless have been so called in Persia also, for palus is evidently but the translation of lough.
[212] Zendavesta, i. 14.
[213] “And what would hardly appear possible, as we cannot discover what purpose such a finished fable of idolatrous superstition would be meant to answer” (Sir John Malcolm’s History of Persia, vol. i. p. 191).