Nor ought this relic of an ancient pagan edifice to excite our surprise, when we are told that the temple of the “Syrian goddess,” which existed in the days of Lucian, was not that which was originally erected by Deucalion, but one built many ages after, on the same site, by Attis, Bacchus, or Semiramis.
With the church, therefore, or other Christian edifice, this “foundation” had no relation. St. Patrick was the first who erected one in that vicinity, to which he gave the name of Sgibol Phadruig, or Patrick’s Granary; having been built on the identical spot on which Dichu, son of Trichem, of the tribe of the Dalfiatachs, and lord of the territory of Lecale, had a granary constructed to preserve his corn, before that his gratitude for the saint, by whom he was just converted, induced him to consecrate the place where that event occurred, by raising thereon a house to the God of nature and of harvests.
Its situation, be it observed, was “two miles from the city of Down”;[193] different, therefore, from that of the cathedral, as was also its form: having been built from north to south, at the solicitation of Dichu himself, agreeably to the plan of the former storehouse.
This took place in 433-34; and though, for concession’ sake, I may admit,—what yet is far from being my conviction,—that some of our Round Towers may have been erected subsequently to the Christian era, yet positive I must be that no one of them was after the successful mission of the Apostle of Ireland; and the explosion of the doctrines with which even the most modern of them may happen to be associated,—while the majority, and the real ones, I shall prove, belong to an infinitely earlier date.
As a further inducement to explore for cavities beneath, and connected with, our Round Towers, I beg leave to bring under review what Maundrel relates of two Round Pillars, which he met with in his journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem, on the sea-coast, a little to the south of Aradus, in the neighbourhood of Tripoli. He describes one of them as thirty-three feet high, composed of a pedestal, ten high and fifteen square, surmounted with a tall cylindrical stone, and capped with another in the form of a pyramid. The second was not quite so high—thirty feet two inches—its pedestal, which was supported by four lions, rudely carved at each corner, was in height six feet, being sixteen feet six inches square; the superstructure upon which was one single stone cut in the shape of a hemisphere. Each of these pillars, of which he gives accurate drawings, has under it several catacombs or sepulchral chambers, the entrances to which lie on the south side. He pronounces a third which he met with, as “a very ancient structure, and probably a place of sepulchre.”[194]
With the opinion of this judicious traveller I altogether concur, provided only, as said before, in reference to the pyramids, that the application be extended to the sacred bulls and crocodiles, serpents, dragons, and heifers, with the whole train of bestial divinities, which both Indians and Egyptians, and all the other polished nations of antiquity, thought proper to adopt as objects of their regard, and treat with the homage—though only commemorative, as they will tell you—of the One Great Supreme.[195]
This extension of the use will at once afford a solution of the otherwise unaccountable and unnecessary size of those cavities, and is further supported by Savary’s remark, made on occasion of his searching for the Egyptian Labyrinth, viz. that “amidst the ruins of the towns of Caroun, the attention is particularly fixed by several narrow, low, and very long cells, which seem to have had no other use than that of containing the bodies of the sacred crocodiles; these remains can only correspond with the labyrinth.” While Herodotus’s declaration, of his not being allowed to enter its vaults, on the score of their “containing within them the bodies of the fifteen kings, together with the sacred crocodiles,” should afford it a determination no longer liable to doubt.
Archer, also, when mentioning a very ancient Hindoo temple, at the south end of the fort of Gualior, resembling in shape those on the Coromandel coast, and decorated with much carving, says that “there was a subterranean communication with the plain at the north end, but the passage has been so long neglected as to be impassable.”
Am I not justified, therefore, in the conviction, from what I have already intimated, as to the complicated design of those sacred piles, that our Round Towers would be found similarly furnished with subterranean chambers? I do respectfully urge that such is my firm belief, and that it would be well worth the while of the learned community to investigate the accuracy of the surmise here put forward.