THEORY OF THE EASTERN ORIGIN OF THE ROUND TOWERS.
Among the middle and upper classes in Ireland the Round Towers are regarded as one of the results of an intimate connection between Ireland and the East, and are spoken of as either—1, Fire Temples; 2, Stations from whence Druid festivals were announced; 3, Sun-dials (gnomons) and astronomical observatories; 4, Buddhist or Phallic temples, or two or more of these uses are attributed to them at the same time.
Mr. Petrie states that the theory of the Phœnician or Indo-Scythic origin of these towers was stated for the first time so recently as 1772 by General Vallancey, in his "Essay on the Antiquity of the Irish Language," and was re-asserted by him in many different and contradictory forms in his Collectanea de Rebus Hibernicis, published at intervals in the following years.
It may be well to premise who
GENERAL CHARLES VALLANCEY
was. His family were from Berry, in France; their name Le Brun, called De Valencia, from their estate of that name. General Vallancey was born in Flanders, but was educated at Eton College. When a captain in the 12th Royal Infantry he was attached to the engineer department in Ireland, published a book on Field Engineering in 1756, and commenced a survey of Ireland. During this he picked up something of the Irish language, and is said to have studied it under Morris O'Gorman, clerk of Mary's Lane Chapel. He died in his house, Lower Mount Street, 18th August, 1812, aged 82 years.
His Collectanea, and his discourses in the Royal Irish Academy, of which he was an original member, spread far and wide his oriental theories. He was an amiable and plausible man, but of little learning, little industry, great boldness, and no scruples; and while he certainly stimulated men's feelings towards Irish antiquities, he has left us a reproducing swarm of falsehood, of which Mr. Petrie has happily begun the destruction. Perhaps nothing gave Vallancey's follies more popularity than the opposition of the Rev. Edward Ledwich, whose Antiquities of Ireland is a mass of falsehoods, disparaging to the people and the country.
FIRE TEMPLES.
Vallancey's first analogy is plausible. The Irish Druids honoured the elements and kept up sacred fires, and at a particular day in the year all the fires in the kingdom were put out, and had to be re-lighted from the Arch-Druid's fire. A similar creed and custom existed among the Parsees or Guebres of Persia, and he takes the resemblance to prove connection and identity of creed and civilisation. From this he immediately concludes the Round Towers to be Fire Temples. Now there is no evidence that the Irish Pagans had sacred fires, except in open spaces (on the hilltops), and, therefore, none of course that they had them in towers round or square; but Vallancey falls back on the alleged existence of Round Towers in the East similar to ours, and on etymology.
Here is a specimen of his etymologies. The Hebrew word gadul signifies great, and thence a tower; the Irish name for a round tower, cloghad, is from this gadul or gad, and clogh, a stone: and the Druids called every place of worship cloghad. To which it is answered—gadul is not gad—clogh, a stone, is not cloch, a bell. The Irish word for a Round Tower is cloich-theach, or bell-house, and there is no proof that the Druids called any place of worship cloghad.