“Silva Gadelica,” by S.H. O'Grady, p. 73.
The authority here quoted is a narrative contained in a fifteenth-century vellum manuscript found in Lismore Castle in 1814, and translated by S.H. O'Grady in his “Silva Gadelica.” The narrative is attributed to an officer of Dermot's court.
From Greek megas, great, and lithos, a stone.
See [p. 78].
See Borlase's “Dolmens of Ireland,” pp. 605, 606, for a discussion of this question.
Professor Ridgeway (see Report of the Brit. Assoc. for 1908) has contended that the Megalithic People spoke an Aryan language; otherwise he thinks more traces of its influence must have survived in the Celtic which supplanted it. The weight of authority, as well as such direct evidence as we possess, seems to be against his view.
See Holder,“Altceltischer Sprachschatz.” sulb voce “Hyperboreoi.”
Thus the Greek pharmakon=medicine, poison, or charm; and I am informed that the Central African word for magic or charm is mankwala, which also means medicine.
If Pliny meant that it was here first codified and organised he may be right, but the conceptions on which magic rest are practically universal, and of immemorial antiquity.
Adopted 451 B.C. Livy entitles them “the fountain of all public and private right.” They stood in the Forum till the third century A.D., but have now perished, except for fragments preserved in various commentaries.