One way of their sacrificing was as shocking as it would be otherwise ridiculous. They crowned victims with garlands, then drove them out of the temple-court, on one side whereof was an abrupt steep, where falling they thereby perished. Nay, some tied up their very children in sacks, and then shoved them down, reproaching them as wild beasts, miserably to perish.
This whole proceeding, only under a mythological garb, was in direct harmony with the directions given and the practice pursued by God’s own people. The man ascending to the top of the tower had a parallel in that declaration of the Lord recorded in Ex. xxiv. 1, 2, 3, viz.: “And he said unto Moses, come up unto the Lord, thou, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and worship ye afar off. And Moses alone shall come near the Lord; but they shall not come nigh, neither shall the people go up with him. And Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord, and all the judgments; and all the people answered with one voice, and said, ‘All the words which the Lord hath said, will we do.’”[197]
His staying there seven days corresponded with Lev. viii. 33, 34, 35: “And ye shall not go out of the door of the tabernacle of the congregation in seven days, until the days of your consecration be at an end: for seven days shall ye consecrate you. As he hath done this day, so the Lord hath commanded to do, to make an atonement for you. Therefore shall ye abide at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation day and night seven days, and keep the charge of the Lord, that ye die not; for so I am commanded.” And again, Ezek. xliii. 25: “Seven days shalt thou prepare every day a goat for a sin-offering: they shall also prepare a young bullock and a ram out of the flock, without blemish. Seven days shall they purge the altar, and purify it; and they shall consecrate themselves.”
The enrolment of their names was also sanctioned by Divine command, as Ex. xxviii. 29: “And Aaron shall bear the names of the children of Israel in the breastplate of judgment upon his heart, when he goeth in unto the holy place, for a memorial before the Lord continually.” Whilst the ringing of the bell is particularly enforced by a triple repetition, Ex. xxviii. 33, 34: “And beneath upon the hem of it thou shalt make pomegranates of blue, and of purple, and of scarlet, round about the hem thereof; and bells of gold between them round about. A golden bell and a pomegranate, a golden bell and a pomegranate, upon the hem of the robe round about.”
This last-cited text is of the most inconceivable advantage in the development of the subject which we thus pursue. The most superficial must have noticed how that, in the tracing of this analogy between the ceremonies of the Gentiles and the Hebrews, I have studiously guarded against its appearing an imitation, on the part of the former, from the ritual of the latter. The priority in point of date will certainly appear on the Gentile side. Meanwhile, ere other links of conformity crowd upon our path, it will be well to take heed to the frequency of the word pomegranate, as occurring in the Scriptures. It has already appeared that one of the names of the Syrian goddess, in whose honour the Hieropolitan Priaps were erected, was Rimmon. This epithet you have had before expounded as expressive of that fruit; and as we see that, both in the Jewish and the pagan formulæ, it occupied so prominent a position,[198] it must occasion you no surprise if, by and by, I discover it amongst the mouldings[199] of our consecrated and venerable Round Towers.
As to their devotions at the lake, and the propinquity of the lake itself to the temple, it is in direct similitude to the “molten sea,” mentioned 1 Kings vii. 23, 24, 25, 26, “the brim whereof was wrought like the brim of a cup, with flowers of lilies,” etc.;—while the cruel and shocking sacrifice with which the whole terminated, was the exact respondent of the Mosaical scapegoat.[200]
Let it not be wondered at, therefore, if on the summit of one of our Round Towers are to be found the traces of the apparatus for a bell. For independently of what Walsh and others inform us of, viz. that the Irish—enjoying tranquillity and repose after the expulsion of the Ostmen, and so recalling their attention to the cultivation of Christianity after their release from that scourge—converted those structures of exploded paganism to the only obvious use to which they could then be made subservient, namely, that of belfries, for the summoning together of the people to public worship, some remnants of which it is but natural may yet remain—independently, I say, of this, have I not here shown that bells entered essentially into the code of the pagan ceremonial, from whence it is more than probable, nay, a downright certainty, that the first Christian ecclesiastics adopted the use, as the Mohammedans, in their minarets, did so likewise.[201]
The instance to which I have referred in an early part of this volume, of astonishment created in the English minds, on their first beholding one of those implements, was that of Gildas, who, having finished his education at Armagh, and returned to Britain about the year 508, was engaged by Cadoc, abbot of the church of Mancarban, to superintend the studies of his pupils during his absence for a twelvemonth. Having done so most successfully, and without accepting of any remuneration for his labour, we find, in an ancient life of Cadoc, in the Tinmouth MS., Lambeth observes that “Cadoc, returning to his monastery, found Gildas a noble scholar, with a very beautiful little bell, which he brought with him from Ireland.”
Those bells, then, we may be sure, appertained exclusively to the service of the Round Towers.[202] Having none of these in England, of course they had no bells, and hence the surprise manifested on the above occasion. In Ireland, too, they must have been, now, comparatively obsolete.[203] And hence we find, according to Primate Usher, that their (restored) use was not general in the churches here before the latter end of the seventh century; while another writer assures us that it was not until the ninth century that large ones were invented for the purpose of suspension.[204]
The shape of the Irish pagan bells was precisely the same as of those in the present day. They were called crotals, or bell-cymbals. Oblong square ones, some of bell-metal, some of iron, from twelve inches to eighteen inches high, with a handle to sound them by, have been also dug up in our various bogs. Of these the museum of the Dublin Society possesses one; another is preserved by the Moira family. The writer of this article not having seen either of these relics, is rather diffident in the conjecture which he is now about to express; but from the account received of that in the possession of the house of Moira, he feels strongly disposed to identify its origin with the worship of the above-mentioned deity, Astarte. Lucian expressly tells us that under the veil of this goddess was really meant the moon; and that “the host of heaven,”—including sun, moon, and stars, and typifying the fulgor of that Omniscient germ whence they all had emanated,—constituted the object of the ancient Irish adoration, no one, I believe, can longer question. Now, in Hall’s Tour through Ireland, 1813, I see this bell described as having “a hole in one of its sides like a quarterly moon”; and not knowing whether this is the effect of accident or corrosion, or a symbolical property in its original shape, I trust I shall not be deemed fanciful if I ascribe it as a reference to that planet in whose vain solemnities it had been primarily exercised.