In this incessant alternation—which was to be one of ascent or of descent, according to the merits of the body, which the spirit had last animated, and which was all considered as a sort of lustral crucible, for the refining of the vital spark against its reunion with the Godhead, whence it had originally derived—it is manifest that such tenderness for the entire animal creation arose from the apprehension of slaying some relation in that disguise.—Or, did we ascribe it to no higher motive than a sympathy with fellow-creatures, which, if not equally responsible, are at all events susceptible of anguish and of pain, this in itself should teach us to suppress all ebullitions of irreverent sarcasm, and, if we yield not our acquiescence, to extend to it at least our commiseration.
“Pain not the ant that drags the grain along the ground,
It has life, and life is sweet and delightful to all to whom it belongs.”[123]
The good works which they were additionally enjoined to perform were classified under the two heads of Dana and Bavana. By “Dana” was meant the giving of alms, and hence the whole fraternity were called Danaans or Almoners.[124] By “Bavana” was understood the thoughtfully pronouncing those three words, Anuzza, Docha, and Anatta: of which the first implies our liability to vicissitude; the second to misfortune, and the third our inability to exempt ourselves from either.[125]
The exposition of the terms Tuath and de, as prefixes to Danaans, forming with it the compound Tuath-de-danaan, I shall reserve for a more befitting place. Meantime I hasten to redeem my “pledge” as to the elucidation of the import of the name Hibernian.
In the wide range of literary disquisition there is no one topic which has so engrossed the investigation of studious individuals as the origin of the word Hibernia. The great Bochart, the uncertain Vallancy, the spiteful Macpherson, the pompous O’Flaherty, and the “antiquary of antiquaries,” Camden himself,—with a thousand others unworthy of recognition,—have been all consecutively shipwrecked upon its unapproachable sand-banks. But the most miserable failure of all is that of a namesake of my own, the author of a dictionary upon the language of his country, who, in his mad zeal for an outlandish conceit, foists into his book a term with which our language owns no kindred, and then builds upon that a superstructure which “would make even the angels weep.”
This gentleman would fain make out[126] that, because those islands have been denominated the Cassiterides, or Tin Reservoirs, therefore Eirin, our own one of them, must have been so called as an Iron Store! forgetting that the genius of our vocabulary has never had a term whereby to express that metal at all,—that by which we now designate it, namely, iarun, being only a modern coinage from the English word,—as the general voice of antiquity speaks trumpet-tongued on the point, and the fragments of our Brehon laws give it insuperable confirmation, that iron was the last metal which mankind has turned to profit, or even known to exist, while with us it was an exotic until a very recent period.[127]
But admitting that Eirin or Erin did signify the Land of Iron, then its Greek formation Ierne must convey the same idea, and so must Hibernia, their Latin inflection; and it would afford me a considerable portion of merriment to behold any champion for this iron-cased knight buckle on his etymological armour, and analyse these two last terms so as to make them indicate the Land of Iron.
Yet pitiable as this appears, for the author of an Irish dictionary, its ingenuity, at all events, must screen it from contempt. But how will the public estimate the brightness of that man’s intellect, who would state that Erin is but a metempsychosis of the word Green? Will it be believed that such is the sober utterance of the author of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire? But lest I should misrepresent, I shall let him speak for himself, viz.: “Ireland, from its luxuriant vegetation, obtained the epithet Green, and has preserved, with a slight alteration, the name Erin.”[128]
So that a country which piques itself on its Irishry, has remained ever without a cognomen, until the English language has been matured; and then, in compliment to her sister, Britain, has borrowed an adjective from her rainbow, which, however, she had not the good manners to preserve pure, but allowed to degenerate so far, that the sagacity of a conjurer could not trace any resemblance between this vitiation and the original epithet which pourtrayed her verdure!
Have we not here the solution of that general disbelief which attaches to proofs deduced from etymology? It is so in all professions, when quacks break into the fold, and usurp the office of the legitimate practitioner. Etymology, in itself, is an exalted science, and an unerring standard; but the mountebanks that have intermeddled with her holy tools, and disjointed the symmetry of her fair proportions, knowing no more of the foundation of languages than they do of the origin of spirit, have sunk it into a pandemonium of hackling, mangling, and laceration, at which “the satirist,” perhaps, may laugh, but “the philosopher,” who has any regard for the right thinking of society, and the implanting in the tender mind a correct idea of words, at a moment when impressions are so wrought as to be ineffaceable, will feel differently on the subject; and, if he cannot reform, do all that he can to expose it!