But it is to me immaterial whether Avienus was aware or otherwise that “Hibernia” and “Sacred Island” were convertible and synonymous. It is not by his authority that I mean to establish the fact; for even admitting his cognisance of the identity of these two terms, he must yet of necessity be unacquainted with the root whence they both had sprung; and, accordingly, I have only put him here in the foreground—as has been the plan all through—“to break the ice,” as it were, for the exordium of the promised dénouement.
Iran, then, and Irin, or, as more correctly spelled, Eirean and Eirin, with an e prefixed to each of the other vowels, as well initial as intermediate, is the characteristic denomination which all our ancient manuscripts affix to this country. There is no exception to this admitted rule. From the romance to the annal, the observation holds good; it is an inalienable landmark, and of inviolable unanimity.
Dionysius of Sicily, who wrote about fifty years before the Advent, and who cannot be suspected of much partiality towards our forefathers, calls the land they inhabited by the name of Irin.[133] Nor will the circumstance of his applying to it in another place, the variation Iris, detract from this fact; as it is evident that he only manufactured this latter, having occasion to use a nominative case which he thought that Irin would not well represent, and so, with the lubricity of a Greek, ever sacrificing sense to sound,[134] he gave birth to a conception which strangled the original.[135]
In the Life of Gildas, an early and eminent English ecclesiastic, we find it called Iren, when the biographer, talking of the proficiency made by his subject in literary pursuits, says that he betook himself to Ireland, which he designates as above, in order to ascertain, by communion with kindred teachers, the very utmost recesses of theology and philosophy.[136]
Ordericus Vitalis, in his Ecclesiastical History,[137] having occasion to mention the Irish, calls them by the name of Irenses, equivalent to Iranians, that is inhabitants of Iran, Iren, or Irin, whichever of them you happen to prefer. And as these are now established as the basis of our general search, I shall address myself without further digression to their syllabic analysis.
To do this the more effectually, and at the same time to comprise within one dissertation what otherwise might encroach upon two, it is to be noticed that the country known in the present day as Persia, and whither our labours will be directed at no distant hour, was by its primitive inhabitants called Iran also, and spelled as ours, with an initial E. The prefixing of this letter, in both instances of its occurrence, whether we regard the Eastern or the Western hemisphere, was neither the result of chance, nor intended as an operative in the import of the term. It was a mere dialectal distinction, appertaining to the court-language of the dynasty of the times, and what is astoundingly miraculous, retains the same appellation, with literal precision, unimpaired, unadulterated, in both countries, up to the moment in which I write.
Palahvi[138] is the appellation of this courtly dialect in Persia, and Palahver is the epithet assigned to it in Ireland; and such is the softness and mellifluence of its enchanting tones, and its energy also, that to soothe care, to excite sensibility, or to stimulate heroism, it may properly be designated as “the language of the gods.”
Thus we see that Ireland and Persia were both called Iran; that both equally admitted of the change of this name to Eiran; and that the style of this variation was similarly characterised in both. How, then, will the empyrics of etymology recover their confusion: they who would persuade us that Ireland was so denominated from Iar, the West—unless, indeed, they can substitute East for West, and show that Persia was denominated from Iar also.[139] Entangled in this dilemma, the amiable old General Vallancy, without intimating, however, that it was what extorted his remark,—after rigidly maintaining through a series of volumes, that the word had its origin in the above exploded Western Will o’ the Wisp,—exclaims, in a sentiment of unconscious self-conviction, that “nothing more can be said of this derivation than that the name was common to that part of the globe whence they (who imported it) originally came.”[140]
Arrived, then, at length, at the fountain-head of our inquiry, how shall we account for it in “that part of the globe whence we originally came”? I have seen but two efforts to develop the word, as applied to that quarter: one by Professor Heeren, of the Göttingen University; the other by “a learned priest of the Parsees,” as recorded by Sir John Malcolm, the late lamented author of a history of the place itself. And as the former of these is rather humorous, and as the latter contains in it a small ingredient of truth, it is worth while to parade them in the tail of our inspection.
“Anciently,” says the professor, “they were called by the Orientals themselves by the common term of Iran, and the inhabitants, inasmuch as they possessed fixed habitations and laws, were styled Iranians, in opposition to the Turanians, or wandering hordes of Central Asia.”[141]