“I observed on the side of the mount the stump of an old thorn-bush. My guide informed me that the bush itself had been blown down one windy night, many years ago, and had been left to rot on the ground where it fell, no one daring to touch it, though in general the poor people are ready enough to appropriate to themselves anything burnable that they may find by the wayside. Young trees they will steal with very little remorse, but wood growing on one of these fairy mounts is almost always secure from their depredations.
“On the following day I visited a similar hill, the Moate-o’-Ward, which was likewise covered with white thorns, and in the sequel I met with great numbers of these artificial hillocks, of which Ireland contains many more than England or Scotland. The people call them moats, a word used in English to designate the ditch of a fortress. In Irish they are called ‘raths,’ a word bearing precisely the same signification. They are also sometimes called ‘Dane’s Mounts’; for in Ireland, as every art of destruction is charitably set down to Cromwell’s account, so every erection of a remote date is attributed to the Danes.
“The popular belief is quite unanimous, therefore, in giving the Danes the credit of having erected these tumuli, as fortresses whence they might hold the country in subjection; and when the Danes had been expelled, an Irish chief here and there chose the deserted fastness for his dwelling-place. The learned are not quite so unanimous in their views as to the origin of these erections. Some go with the stream, and set them down to Danish account; others believe the hillocks to be of a much more ancient date, and to have formed the strongholds of the ancient native kings. In the north of Ireland is a mound of enormous size, said to have been the seat of the kings of Ulster.
“Probably this earthy architecture, which appears to have been so widely diffused over Ireland, was the work of different ages, of various races, and had more objects than one in view. Nearly all the nations of Europe, in the infancy of their civilization, seem to have delighted in the erection of these artificial hills. The whole of Southern Russia is full of them, and we meet with them in Hungary, Turkey, Scandinavia, and Denmark, as well as in England and Ireland; but nowhere in such numbers as in Ireland, whence we may conclude that the ancient Irish must have built many of their raths long before the Danes arrived among them.
“It is also probable that they were erected with different objects in view. Some, we know, were intended as boundary marks, and some, we know, were raised over the remains of distinguished heroes and chiefs. From some it was customary for the law-givers and judges to announce their decisions to the assembled multitude, and on others kings were anointed and crowned. The Druids required sacred hills to offer their sacrifices on, and where a natural hill was not to be had an artificial one, no doubt, was often formed.
“Others, again, may have been intended as fortresses on which the people might seek refuge from an enemy. Many, no doubt, remain that are quite enigmatical. Several, when opened, are found to contain passages and cells, of which it is difficult to guess what use they were intended for. They are too small for storehouses, and can scarcely have served as tombs, or bones and other remains would have been found there.
“Lisserdowling, a high pyramid surrounded by a low rampart and ditch, is more likely, in my opinion, to have been erected as a religious monument than as a fortress. Had it been intended for a fortress, why should so much labour have been expended in giving it a conical form, and why not have bestowed more pains on the circumvallation. As a fortress it would have been the strangest and most ineligible that could have been built. The space on the summit would scarcely afford room for two huts, and when the ramparts had once been stormed by the enemy, the defenders would have been at the greatest disadvantage on the sides of the cone.
“Probably the circumvallation has led to the belief that this, and many other tumuli, were intended for fortresses; but Stonehenge, which nobody ever took to be a fortress, is also surrounded by rampart and ditch. The circumvallation may have been intended simply to mark the boundary of the holy place, and to cut off all connection with the profane part of the world.”
These ruins which Mr. Kohl has described, and respecting which he has given his opinion, are simply the remains of ancient granaries or pyramids, erected by the Phenicians, who left them standing when they returned to their own country. After the departure of these Phenicians, Ireland was visited by the Moors, who were masters of Spain and Portugal. These Moors coming from the coast of Africa, opposite Spain, were a colony formerly from the heart of Negroland, whence they reached the coast by way of the great desert called the Sahara, and joined their countrymen who had already settled in the new empire called Mauritania, which comprised Morocco and Tunis, &c., of our time.
These new visitors erected the round towers, in which to stack corn, just as their predecessors had constructed the Pyramids for a like purpose. There are round granaries in Africa, constructed with materials procurable in the place; but in Ireland they used stone instead, which was more durable, although retaining the same form as in the prototypes. The following is what Kohl says about the round towers:—