In reference to Shannon, to which I have before adverted, as being one of the names of the Ganges, it is not a little curious that Durga, the supposed divinity of this water, and whose festival is annually solemnised all through Hindoostan, should be represented by Derg, the supposed divinity of the Shannon, and should have its name still more perpetuated in the Irish word Dearg-art, that is, the abode of Derg, in Lough Derg, the lower lake upon this river.
From its mouth to its source this noble stream is characterised with relics of primeval worship, corresponding, in form and tendency, with those on the banks of its Indian namesake. Scattery Island, or, as it should more properly be called, Inis Catty, situated very near where it discharges itself into the sea, retains a beautiful Round Tower, to which has been afterwards appended, in the Christian times, the mystical number of seven churches, and the ruins of which are still perceptible. The circumstance of an early professor of our heaven-taught religion having taken up his secluded residence within the precincts of this spot, has led many moderns to suppose that the river obtained its name from him, whereas the word Shannon is derived from Shan Aoun, that is, the “aged river”; and the saint received his name from that pious policy before explained, as well as from the constancy of his abode in its vicinity—not vice versâ.[227]
Killeshandra, the name of a town in the county of Leitrim, on the borders of the county of Cavan, signifies, in Irish, “the temple of the moon’s cycle,” or circle. In Sanscrit, which is a dialect of the aboriginal Irish,[228] it denotes exactly the same. We find besides Herodotus making mention, B. xi. c. 98, of a city in Egypt, during the Persian dominion, called Archandra, that is, “the city of the moon.” He asserts that it is not Egyptian, neither derived from the wife of Danaus, the daughter of Archander: yet the opposite may be well supported without at the same time injuring this derivation, for the daughters of Danaus were certainly initiated in the Phallic rites; nay, they were the persons who first imported them into Attica: and it is eminently worth notice, that this was the very spot[229] where the Tuath-de-danaan kings happened to be stationed upon the first Scythian deluge; the word “Kill” having been prefixed to it only upon the introduction of Christianity.
Granard, the name of a town in the county of Longford, is compounded of the words Grian, the sun, and ard, a height, that is, the sun’s high-place. Nor, I suspect, will it be deemed an over-effort of criticism, if I repeat, that in our Irish Grian is to be found the root of that epithet of Apollo, Grynæus,[230] which was also the name of a city of Asia Minor, consecrated to his worship, and favoured, as Strabo informs us, with a grove, a temple, and an oracle of that deity. The river Granicus, too, was derived therefrom, because its source lay in Mount Ida, sacred to Grian, or the sun, whereon was situated the Idean stone, upon which, we are told, Hector was wont to sacrifice; and corresponding to the Cromleachs, so common throughout this island. The word Carne, also, meaning a heap of stones, on which an inferior order of clergy, thence called Carneach, used to officiate, belongs to the same root, as both Ovid and Macrobius declare that it was called, by the ancients, Grane.[231]
As Lough Rea had been dedicated to the moon, so was the other luminary also honoured with a lake,—called after his name,—which we find in the adjoining country, where Lough Grany signifies the Lake of the Sun; as we do also Beal-ath, or Ath-en-righ, that is, the Ford of Baal, or the Ford of the King, i.e. the Sun; corresponding to Ath-lone, or Ford of the Moon.
The above are but a few of those imperishable memorials intertwined round those haunts which our forefathers have trod; the import of which, however, has been so perverted by modern scribblers, as to give occasion to O’Flaherty to give up their solution in despair, and, as a cover to his retreat, to pronounce them “as outlandish in their sound as the names of the savages in some of the American forests.”[232] In this rhodomontade, however, he was much more fortunate than he had intended, or, as the Englishmen say of our countrymen, “he blundered himself into the right.” Little did he suspect how near a connection there existed between the two people whom he affected, thus ridiculously, to associate; and anyone who attends to the position which I subjoin, independently of many others that could be brought in support of it, will admit the happiness of this unintentional coincidence. The Algan Kinese are the most influential and commanding people in the whole of North America; their name in Irish indicates as much, namely, Algan-Kine, or Kine Algan,[233] a noble community. The language of this people is the master one of the whole country; and, what is truly remarkable, understood, as Baron de Humboldt asserts, by all the Indian nations except two. What then are we to infer from this obvious affinity? Most undoubtedly, that a colony of the same people who first inhabited Ireland, and assigned to its several localities those characteristic names which so disconcerted the harmony of Mr. O’Flaherty’s acoustic organs, had fixed themselves, at an early date, in what has been miscalled the New World.
Small, however, as is the number of the names here selected, they are enough, I flatter myself, to establish the prevalence of our Sabian ritual. But what puts this matter beyond anything like a question is the inscription upon a stone, still extant, in the county of Dublin, evidently a symbol of the Sun and Moon, which, like Osiris and Isis of Egypt, were considered by the ancient Irish as united in matrimony.
“God, in the nature of each being, founds
Its proper bliss, and sets its proper bounds:
But as He framed a whole the whole to bless,
On mutual wants built mutual happiness;
So from the first, eternal order ran,
And creature linked to creature, man to man.
Whate’er of life all quickening ether keeps,
Or breathes through air, or shoots beneath the deeps,
Or pours profuse on earth, one nature feeds
The vital flame, and swells the genial seeds.
Not man alone, but all that roam the wood,
Or wing the sky, or roll along the flood,
Each loves itself, but not itself alone,
Each sex desires alike, till two are one.”—Pope.