In tracing the origin and purpose of the round towers, our author is led to consider the names given them in ancient records and Irish folk-lore. The stunted ruin of Bally-Carbery Round Tower, near his own birthplace, was, he found, known to the peasantry as the “Cathoir ghall,” i.e. “the temple of brightness or delight,” whilst both in the Annals of the Four Masters, the Ulster Annals, and the Annals of Innisfallen these towers are included in the generic name Fiadh-Neimhedh, as contrasted with the names Cloic teacha and Erdam applied to “belfries,” thus showing that the two kinds of structures are perfectly distinct. He finds that Fiadh-Nemeadth in all preceding writers on the subject is held to apply specifically to the round towers, though some of these writers (e.g. Colgan and O’Connor) have wrested its meaning to support their own particular views, and the true import of this term he subsequently explains to be “consecrated Lingams” (p. 105), or phallic temples. The “belfry” and the gnomon, or “celestial index,” theories are thus exploded. From historical evidence he is further led to assume that Ireland is identical with the Insula Hyperboreorum of the ancients, and that the legendary mission of the Boreadan Abaris[27] to Delos took place during the Scythian occupation of Ireland. This friendly communication between the ancient Irish and the Greeks he attributes to their having sprung from a common stock—the Pelasgi and the Tuath-de-danaans belonging to “the same time as the Indo-Scythæ, or Chaldean Magi.” He traces briefly the relations between the Tuath-de-danaan settlers in Ireland and their Scythian (or Milesian) conquerors, and shows that to the former is due the high state of civilisation and learning for which ancient Ireland was distinguished, and which degenerated under Scythian rule; and concludes with a general statement as to the prevalence of Sabaic worship therein, and the phallic configuration of the round towers.
(Pp. 63-76)
Being now fairly launched on the subject of Sabaism, or worship of natural manifestations of the divine energy, he traces its origin, development, and decadence into idolatry. Amid the heterogeneous confusion of beliefs that seem to have sprung up among the descendants of Noah, Nimrod introduced the worship of the sun as a deity, but only as a part of that general Sabaism which included the whole “host of heaven” as objects of worship, and recognised the Godhead, of which they were simply manifestations, under the names of Baal and Moloch. Gradually, the creature was substituted for the Creator, and their names, especially the former (Bolati), were applied to the sun, “as the source and dispenser of all earthly favours,” while to the moon was attributed a corresponding reverence under the name Baaltis, though in both cases the object of internal regard was intended to be Nature, or “the fructifying germ of universal generativeness.” From the tendency of man to the concrete, this central idea was soon lost sight of, and the material element put in its place—hence came Fire-worship. Originating in Chaldea, this degenerated form of Sabaism in course of time spread eastward until it reached Persia, where eventually there seems to have been a reversion to the principle which underlay it, i.e. that of generation and nutrition, in which form it afterwards extended to India. Though fire was the ostensible object of worship, the sun and moon, from which that worship originated, were regarded and reverenced as “the procreative causes of general fecundity,” with which was coupled the notion of regeneration after dissolution of the body. Hence when, as will appear hereafter, Eastern Sabaism was introduced into Ireland by the Tuath-de-danaans, the round towers created by them as temples of their worship had both a phallic and sepulchral meaning.
(Pp. 77-90)
That purer form of Sabaism in which the central idea of “the All-good and All-great One” predominated over materialism, seems to have prevailed in ancient Egypt, and to a more definite extent in India, whilst in both these countries, and also in Ireland, its material side led to the cultivation of astronomy. Hence the pyramids of Egypt, the pagodas of India, and the round towers of Ireland had both a religious and a scientific purpose. There is no ground, however, for supposing that the round towers were “fire-temples.” Though temples of the latter kind undoubtedly exist in Ireland, their structure is altogether different, and they evidently belong to a later period, showing, in fact, traces of an Italian origin. Fire-worship was probably introduced into Italy from Greece, where it had been practised by the old Pelasgic stock, who, on their expulsion from Thessaly, settled in Etruria, bringing their worship with them.
(Pp. 91-106)
From a careful study of Eastern records and Sabaism, the author is led to take up the position that the round towers were constructed by early Indian colonists of Ireland (the Tuath-de-danaans), in honour of “the fructifying principle of nature,” of which the sun and moon are representative. The emblem of this principle was the phallus in the case of the sun, and the crescent in that of the moon. The round tower was simply a monumental phallus, which fact is taken to explain the terms “Cathoir ghall” and “Fidh-Nemphed” to which he alludes in chap. iv.; whilst the crescent ornament by which many of these towers were surmounted is symbolical of the female nature. A corroboration of this theory is found in the circumstance that the name Budh, by which these towers are “critically and accurately designated, signifies in Irish, first, the sun, and secondly, what φαλλός, phallus, does in Greek and Latin,” a view which is supported by the analogy of Egyptian sun and moon worship.