I would be unjust did I not furthermore avow, that it was not their enemies alone that waged this ungenerous warfare with the literature of the Irish. St. Patrick himself was the individual who, in pursuance, as he conceived, of his apostolic charge, may be said to have perpetrated the greatest outrage upon our antiquities; having set fire, in a paroxysm of pious zeal, to no less than one hundred and eighty volumes, which he selected from the great mass of the records of the nation, as embodying the tenets of Budhism and Astrology. The rest, relating to the notification of national or personal achievements, he left untouched and secure.
Yet, will it be believed that this was the severest infliction, so far as letters are concerned, which we have sustained, after all? For as the religion of the ancient Irish was intermingled with their history, and as the wide diffusion of their celebrity arose from the eminence of their religious creed, the flames of that conflagration have inflicted a loss upon the antiquarian which fifteen centuries of study have not been able to repair!
Despite, however, the united inroads of suspicion and mistaken piety, the Irish have still materials, ample and authentic, for the completion of a history, not only of insular, but, if properly handled, of almost universal elucidation:[165] and of this Toland himself was, in some measure, aware, when he said that “notwithstanding the long state of barbarity in which that nation hath lain, and after all the rebellions and wars with which the kingdom has been harassed, they (the Irish) have incomparably more ancient materials of that kind for their history, to which even their mythology is not unserviceable, than either the English, or the French, or any other European nation with whose ancient manuscripts I have any acquaintance.”
But though resources most unquestionable thus notoriously still abounded, yet has it not been the fortune of Ireland, hitherto, to meet with any historian gifted with the widely comprehensive, philosophical views and suitable education calculated to do her justice; so that, by the untoward hand of fate, and the iniquitous operation of the old political stroke, the knowledge of the character in which those papers are couched has become already so almost extinct, that they lie on the shelves, to all intents and purposes a dead letter.[166]
I now beg leave to introduce this identical war-god, in his military costume and hyperborean philabeg, in which, as before observed, the Scythians never invested themselves; and hope the reader will enjoy a hearty laugh at the expense of those blunderers, who, in their preposterous, I had almost said repentant, devotion to monastic refinements, would rob the Pagans of this long-cherished idol, and convert his godship into a Christian nonentity!
You will find him—name and all corresponding—described fully in the Rites and Ceremonies of all Nations, as similarly officiating and worshipped in the East. “There is,” says the author, “in the province of Matambo, an idol whose priests are sorcerers or magicians; and this image stands upright, directly over against the temple dedicated to his peculiar service, in a basket made in the form of a bee-hive.”[167]
“To this deity in particular they apply themselves for success when they go out a hunting or fishing, and for the relief of all such as are indisposed![168] Miramba always marches at the head of their armies; and he is presented with the first delicious morsel, and the first glass of wine that is served up at the governor’s or King of Matambo’s table.”
But a living traveller, in a very interesting work just launched from the press, and without expecting therein to become my auxiliary, decides this ascription without further pains. “This village,” says our author (near Rampore, on the Himalaya range), “instanced the care which the sacerdotal orders in the East take for their comfort and good. It was a neat, clean, and substantial place, in all acceptations of the word. These Brahmin villagers pay no rent of any kind to the state: they live on the granted lands, but are obliged to keep the temples in repair, to furnish all the implements, and to take care of the godships within it—these are small brass images, with nether garments in the shape of petticoats. They are carried in procession, on certain occasions, and the ceremonies belonging to them are performed twice a day. Mahadeo is the great god of the mountains.”[169]