But if the advocates of modernism have cause to be annoyed at my depriving them of this specimen of “the Fine Arts in Ireland,” which they thought they had appropriated to the prejudice of truth, how much greater must not be their chagrin at my wrenching from their grasp another “exceedingly curious” and “richly-ornamented” “ecclesiastic?”[170] Ecclesiastic, indeed! Yes; but reverenced and revered, by many a beating heart, as the head of all ecclesiastics, for centuries upon centuries, before the name of monachism, as connected with Christianity, was ever articulated!
This, Sir, is no less a personage than Mr. Budha himself, or rather the personified abstract, in the possession of one of the last queens of the Tuath-de-danaans, at the moment of the inundation of the Scythian dynasty. I hope that, after so long an obscuration, and the uncourtly treatment he has received during the humiliating interval of revolving centuries, you will—now that he chooses to reveal his proper character, avow his delegation, and acknowledge the supremacy of that power by which his empire had been overthrown—treat him as an Irishman, with generous cordiality, and impute not to him a crime which belonged only to his followers.
But his dress is like a Christian. So much the better, man: we ought to like him the more for that. But to be serious,—although, as my friend Horace formerly told me, “what hinders one laughing from speaking truth?”—all our ecclesiastical ritual, as well of ceremony as of costume, has been borrowed from the Jewish, and that again from the Pagans, with such alterations only as the allwise Jehovah thought necessary to recommend. Besides, we have the authority of Dr. Buchanan for stating that “Samona is a title bestowed on the priests of Godama (Budha), and is likewise applied to the images of the divinity, when represented, as he commonly is, in the priestly habit.”[171]
CHAPTER XI.
Pharaoh,[172] the titular appellation of the monarchs of Egypt, being but the local modification of this our Irish Phearagh, the mind is instinctively directed towards that great storehouse of bygone consequence. And as the best authority that we can command in gaining any insight into its reverses is through the medium of its own historians, let us hear what Manetho, a priest of the country, thus transmits:—
“We had formerly,” says he, “a king named Timæus, in whose reign, I know not why, but it pleased God to visit us with a blast of His displeasure; when, on a sudden, there came upon this country a large body of obscure people from the East, and with great boldness invaded the land, and took it without opposition. Their behaviour to the natives was very barbarous; for they slaughtered the men, and made slaves of their wives and children. The whole body of this people were called Huksos, or Uksos; that is, Royal Shepherds: for the first syllable, in the sacred dialect, signifies a ‘king,’ as the latter, in the popular language, signifies ‘a shepherd.’ These two compounded together constitute the word Huksos. These people are said to have been Arabians.”