This Beauford is not to be confounded with Miss Beaufort. She, too, paganises the towers by aggravating some misstatements of Mason's Parochial Survey; but her errors are not worth notice, except the assertion that the Psalters of Tara and Cashel allege that the towers were for keeping the sacred fire. These Psalters are believed to have perished, and any mention of sacred fires in the glossary of Cormac M'Cullenan, the supposed compiler of the Psalter of Cashel, is adverse to their being in towers. He says:—
"Belltane, i.e., bil tene, i.e., tene bil, i.e., the goodly fire, i.e., two goodly fires, which the Druids were used to make, with great incantations on them, and they used to bring the cattle between them against the diseases of each year."
Another MS. says:—
"Beltaine, i.e., Bel-dine; Bel was the name of an idol; it was on it (i.e., the festival) that a couple of the young of every cattle were exhibited as in the possession of Bel; unde Beldine. Or, Beltine, i.e., Bil-tine, i.e., the goodly fire, i.e., two goodly fires, which the Druids were used to make with great incantations, and they were used to drive the cattle between them against the diseases of each year."
Mr. Petrie continues:—
"It may be remarked that remnants of this ancient custom, in perhaps a modified form, still exist in the May-fires lighted in the streets and suburbs of Dublin, and also in the fires lighted on St. John's Eve in all other parts of Ireland. The Tinne Eigin of the Highlands, of which Dr. Martin gives the following account, is probably a remnant of it also, but there is no instance of such fires being lighted in towers or houses of any description:—
"'The inhabitants here (Isle of Skye) did also make use of a fire called Tin Egin (i.e.), a forced Fire, or Fire of necessity, which they used as an Antidote against the Plague or Murrain in cattle; and it was performed thus: All the fires in the Parish were extinguish'd, and eighty-one marry'd men, being thought the necessary number for effecting this Design, took two great Planks of Wood, and nine of 'em were employed by turns, who by their repeated Efforts rubb'd one of the Planks against the other until the Heat thereof produced Fire; and from this forc'd Fire each Family is supplied with new Fire, which is no sooner kindled than a pot full of water is quickly set on it, and afterwards sprinkled upon the people infected with the Plague, or upon cattle that have the Murrain. And this, they all say, they find successful by experience.'—Description of the Western Islands of Scotland (second edition), p. 113.
"As authority for Miss Beaufort's second assertion, relative to the Tower of Thlachtga, etc., we are referred to the Psalter of Tara, by Comerford (p. 41), cited in the Parochial Survey (vol. iii., p. 320); and certainly in the latter work we do find a passage in nearly the same words which Miss Beaufort uses. But if the lady had herself referred to Comerford's little work, she would have discovered that the author of the article in the Parochial Survey had in reality no authority for his assertions, and had attempted a gross imposition on the credulity of his readers."
Mr. D'Alton relies much on a passage in Cambrensis, wherein he says that the fishermen on Lough Neagh (a lake certainly formed by an inundation in the first century, a.d. 62) point to such towers under the lake; but this only shows they were considered old in Cambrensis's time (King John's), for Cambrensis calls them turres ecclesiasticas (a Christian appellation); and the fishermen of every lake have such idle traditions from the tall objects they are familiar with; and the steeples of Antrim, etc., were handy to the Loch n-Eathac men.
One of the authorities quoted by all the Paganists is from the Ulster Annals at the year 448. It is—"Kl. Jenair. Anno Domini cccc.xl°.viii°. ingenti terræ motu per loca varia imminente, plurimi urbis auguste muri recenti adhuc reædificatione constructi, cum l.vii. turribus conruerunt." This was made to mean that part of the wall of Armagh, with fifty-seven Round Towers, fell in an earthquake in 448, whereas the passage turns out to be a quotation from "Marcellinus"[38] ] of the fall of part of the defences of Constantinople—"Urbis Augustæ!"