It may, we think, be said without injustice, that when dealing with that part of the question which related to the uses of the Round Towers, O’Brien was more successful in upsetting the theories of other people than in establishing his own. The purposes for which preceding antiquarians had severally claimed that the towers were built are almost endless; but Dr. Petrie has summarised the most prominent of them as follows:[24]—(1) Fire-temples; (2) places from which to proclaim the Druidical festivals; (3) Gnomons, or astronomical observatories; (4) Phallic emblems, or Buddhist temples; (5) Anchorite towers, or Stylite columns; (6) Penitential prisons; (7) Belfries; (8) Keeps, or Monastic Castles; (9) Beacons and Watch-towers. Both he and O’Brien agree in holding that the Round Towers were not appropriated to any one of these purposes exclusively, though they might have been used for two or more of them. It is with regard to the selection of these latter that the authors differ—Petrie adopting views (7), (8), (9); O’Brien, view (3), but with much reservation; view (4) absolutely, and adding another view of his own, namely, that they were sometimes devoted to memorial or sepulchral uses. It has been mentioned already that Moore charged him with plagiarism in respect of his adoption of view (4); but, like other charges from the same quarter, the assertion rests upon unstable grounds. O’Brien made no secret of the fact that on many points he shared the views of General Vallancey, for whom he invariably expresses respect, and even admiration; but he is careful to explain that, where their judgments happen to coincide, it is for very different reasons. “I wish it to be emphatically laid down,” he says in one place, “that I do not tread in General Vallancey’s footsteps.... I have taken the liberty to chalk out my own road”; and, in another, “Though his perseverance had rendered him (Vallancey) the best Irishian of his age, and of many ages before him, yet he has committed innumerable blunders.” This goes to show that he was unlikely to adopt any theory merely because Vallancey held it; and to have arrived at the same conclusion by a wholly different road was surely not “plagiarism.” What is more, a reference to the published works of General Vallancey,[25] or even to such extracts from them as may be found in Dr. Petrie’s book, will, if we are not mistaken, give rise to some doubt of that author having ever distinctly maintained the Eastern, or pagan, origin of the Round Towers. His views are, however, so nebulous and shifting, that it is difficult to say whether he committed himself to any positive theory on the subject. Starting with the conjecture that the Round Towers may have been the work of “Phœnicians or Indo-Scythians,” he is soon found attributing them to certain “African sea-champions,” who, in his opinion, were the “Pheni,” being likewise, as he goes on to inform us, “a Pelasgic tribe.” Next, he declares that it was the Fomorians who, having conquered Ireland, “taught the inhabitants to build Round Towers”; but he afterwards seems to discard this theory in favour of a “Danish” origin, and ends, to all appearance, by resigning himself to the notion that they may, after all, have been built by “Christian” settlers. Nor are his speculations as to the purpose of those structures less varied and conflicting. At one time he maintains that they were undoubtedly “fire-temples”; at another, that they were “belfries”; and yet again, that they were “beacons.” But—what is especially remarkable in connection with the charge of plagiarism—he never, so far as we can discover, attributes to them a “phallic” significance. Upon the whole, then, it seems rather unreasonable to accuse anybody of having borrowed theories from an author who practically had none; and the probability is that, without having read General Vallancey’s works, Moore had, from hearsay, formed a vague general notion of their contents, which notion he, in the capacity of an irresponsible and not over-scrupulous reviewer, ventured to utilise for paying off old scores. Be that as it may, we are not prepared to urge that, upon the evidence, O’Brien’s theory as to the phallic emblemism of the Round Towers—whether he borrowed it from Vallancey or not[26]—absolutely deserves credence. Like his ascription of an Eastern origin to the Tuath-de-danaans, it is one of those things which, so far as we can see, are incapable of proof. Still, it cannot be said that there is any inherent impossibility in the notion; in fact, assuming that the Round Towers were built by an Eastern colony, there is much in its favour. For, as all who are acquainted with our Indian Empire must be well aware, phallic symbols are there regarded with a veneration which in its character is entirely free from associations that appear to be inseparable from them elsewhere. The East and West have taken different views as to the light in which the physical agency by which divine creative power has chosen to perpetuate life should be regarded; and to the Hindoo mind, for instance, there is nothing inconsistent with the highest moral purity in worshipping an idealised representation of the generative principle. A similar belief, on O’Brien’s showing, prevailed in ancient Persia,—indeed, but for its existence there, the Tuath-de-danaans’ immigration into Ireland could hardly have taken place,—so that colonisers from that country, if any such colonisation ever took place, were likely to have introduced corresponding typical representations wherever they settled. Hence the theory of the Eastern origin of the Round Towers and that of their phallic significance are mutually interdependent. Further than this it is useless to go. The probability of either theory is a matter that, if we are not mistaken, most readers will determine for themselves, without much respect to authority; nor has any author who tries to establish a hypothesis on evidence the bearing of which upon the subject is in itself hypothetical, a right to complain that this should be so. O’Brien has been in a manner forced to rely upon such evidence all through his book, and the latter suffers in consequence. To our thinking, those portions of it are usually the most convincing where, discarding authority for the most part, he relies upon his own native shrewdness. His attack upon the “belfry” theory is one instance of this. Another is the way in which he combats Montmorency’s notion, that the towers may have been intended as places of shelter, for persons or property, from hostile invasion. Almost equally effective is his refutation of the hackneyed argument, that because Round Towers are usually (not invariably, as some assert) found in the vicinity of ecclesiastical buildings, they must necessarily be of Christian origin; though here, as in the case of the “belfry” theory, he might, we think, have insisted more upon the curious circumstance that Christians should have discontinued building them as soon as Christianity was firmly established in Ireland, but before the country had been reduced to a peaceful or settled condition. If such adjuncts to churches were needed up to the thirteenth century, there is nothing in the history of Ireland for the next three centuries, at least, which shows that they might have been dispensed with. To account for their disappearance by representing it as a consequence of the transition from Romanesque to Gothic architecture, which took place about the twelfth century, is to beg the whole question; for it assumes that the Round Towers are Romanesque—a point on which we take leave to think that opinions are much divided, as indeed they appear to be upon almost every topic connected with the subject-matter of this very remarkable book.
W. H. C.
London, 1897.
SYNOPSIS
(Pp. 1-15)
The book opens with a preliminary statement, in general terms, of the object which its author has in view. It is to prove that the round towers date from a more remote antiquity than that usually assigned to them; that they were, in fact, erected long before Christianity reached these islands, and even before the date of the Milesian and Scandinavian invasions. In support of this view, he contrasts the materials, architecture, and costliness of their construction with those of the early Christian churches usually found in their vicinity (cf. p. 514), and accounts for the contiguity of the latter by stating that the Christian missionaries selected, as the sites of their churches, localities previously consecrated to religious use, in order that they might thereby “conciliate the prejudices of those whom they would fain persuade”; whilst he points out that a Christian origin has not been claimed for Cromleachs and Mithratic caves, in the vicinity of which ecclesiastical remains likewise abound. On the other hand, he insists that the general structure and decorative symbolism of the round towers is clearly indicative of pagan times and a pagan origin, more especially of that primitive form of paganism which, originating in Chaldea, diffused itself eastward until it overspread a considerable part of Asia, and which is known as Sabaism. Dissenting from the theories of his predecessors in the same field of inquiry, he rejects the various theories that the round towers were intended as “purgatorial columns,” or “beacons,” or “belfries,” or “dungeons,” or “anchorite-cells,” or “places of retreat” in the case of hostile invasion, or “depositories” for State records, Church utensils, or national treasures; and he states as his conviction, based on examination of their structure, that it was not the intention of their founders to limit their use to any one specific purpose.