[613] Even among the vegetables, they abstained from beans, as did the Pythagoreans after them, ob similitudinem virilibus genitalibus.
[614] See conditions of advertisement in Preface.
[615] “You may read in Lucian, in that sweet dialogue, which is entitled, Toxaris; or, of Friendship, that the common oath of the Scythians was by the sword, and by the fire, for that they accounted those two speciall divine powers, which should worke vengeance on the perjurers. So doe the Irish at this day, when they goe to battaile, say certaine prayers or charmes to their swords, making a crosse therewith upon the earth, and thrusting the points of their blades into the ground, thinking thereby to have the better successe here in fight. Also they use commonly to swear by their swords” (Spenser).
[616] See pp. 81, 82.
[617] They were afterwards degraded to every possible purpose they could be made to subserve: but I speak above of the time immediately after their overthrow.
[618] “I had not been a week landed in Ireland from Gibraltar, where I had studied Hebrew and Chaldaic, under Jews of various countries and denominations, when I heard a peasant girl say to a boor standing by her, Féach an maddin nag (Behold the morning star), pointing to the planet Venus, the maddin nag of the Chaldean. Shortly after, being benighted with a party in the mountains of the western parts of the county of Cork, we lost the path, when an aged cottager undertook to be our guide. It was a fine starry night. In our way, the peasant pointing to the constellation Orion, he said that was Caomai, or the armed king; and he described the three upright stars to be his spear or sceptre, and the three horizontal stars, he said, were his sword-belt. I could not doubt of this being the Cimah of Job, which the learned Costard asserts to be the constellation Orion” (Vallancey).
[619] At p. 305 of his work on the Towers and Temples of Ancient Ireland, Mr. Keane observes: “Lists of Irish Round Towers have been made to the number of one hundred and twenty; of these, the remains of about sixty-six are traceable.” The list given here includes some towers of which the site alone remains, as being possibly of interest to explorers.