140
The past yields up its secrets; from its vague primeval birth,
In the pages of the rocks he reads the annals of the earth;
Old languages, forgotten for long ages, speak again,
And ruins of the civilizations of forgotten men.
Thus the Life Spirit of our Planet, mastering matter and time,
Past, present, on the future now projects its light sublime.
in.
What yet may man achieve amid that future, who can say ?
Th' aerial car may safely guide us through the night and day;
N ew chemic compounds and new foods may lengthen human
life,
Annihilate all pain, increase our powers amid the strife;
Wise Congresses of Nations, chosen brains, dowered with
their might,
Shall legislate for common freedom, benefit, and right ;
Shall universalize relations between place and place,
And neutralize by one symbolic tongue the bounds of race;
Hold but the sword to guard the commerce of the furthest
brine,
And let a richer world enjoy the genial feast of life divine.
Then shall true education deal with what the world requires,
With living thought and speech instead of ashes and past
fires,
So that each generation, rising radiant as the sun,
Shall learn what man mature has wrought, more than his
youth has done,
Inventions more than languages of buried Greece or Rome ;
Discoveries that point to revelations yet to come;
While, by experiment developed, highest faculties
Shall multiply the power, light, love of all the Earth'*
Societies.
IV.
Lo! nothing is too great or little now for man to comprehend;
He analyses sightless life, excursions to creation's end;
He pierces into nature's powers, minute or mighty, till we sec
The monad's pulse, and now the forces acting through
infinity;
Determines where some viewless world should be, and when
amid the blue,
The comet, lost for ages, shall return to prove his figures true ;
Thus intellect aspires to know, and all the works of God
rehearse;
Nay, weigh, even to a grain, each mighty telescopic universe.
NOTES,
FEOM ASIA TO EEIE.
Page 9.
Although the subject of this sketch is imaginary, and has no reference
to tho Milesiau colony which arrived from the north of Spain some 1200
years B.C , all the primitive traditions of the Irish indicate the East
Central Asia the cast of Europe, the west of Asia-Minor, and even Egypt
and N.W. Africa, as starting points of their migrations. Such remote tradi-
tions, like those of every ancient nation, must always remain cloudy and
uncertain. At the same time, there are certain facts connected with
even the most primitive, which give them an historical value, despite their
legendary air despite also the adaptation of the Biblical chronology, &c.,
to the annals of Erie, as we find it in Keating, and many of the old Irish
books. Genealogy was the essential form of the primitive history of the
Kelts as of the Semites; and for many ages before the introduction of
Christianity the custom of comparing, reviewing, and revising the annals
of Ireland had been an institution. 'During what extended periods the
early events in the life of nations were transmitted orally, we need not
say. In this way the Vedas, the Homeric ballads, the Servian, and other
ballad literatures have been preserved with a singular accuracy ; and in the
f.-ame way the Finnic epic the Kalewala, which contains even Turanian
reminiscences of extremely remote periods, has been committed to paper
from the lips of the poor nomads of the north only within the present
century. Unlike the Kelts, the Finns have never had any extensive litera-
ture, while the Druids of the former in Ireland were in possession of the
Ogham alphabets, which are iustrurr. ents as available as any others for the
transmission of thought, for many pagan centuries. When we consider
that Hibernian Celtic traditions were handed down with great accuracy
during the prcechrlstian ages of this order, in an island fortuitously situated
for their preservation, it being from its recluse position, removed from that
chronic state of war which prevailed during those times on the continent
conditions which have obliterated the traditions of the Celts of Gaul
and Spain ; and that the races, of which the earliest chronicles exist had
become extinct during a long series of colonizations and conquests we
are impressed by a probability that an element of truth forms the basis of
that cycle of migratory legends, which Keating, who wrote the prefatory
part of his history from manuscript bardic literature, has conserved; and
are not surprised that they are as vague as the first chapters of every
Bcriptural record which embodies the long unwritten memories of ancient
epochs. Before the Celtic Milesians arrived from Spain, Ireland was
occupied by many other peoples, such as those called Neimedians, Fomo-
niaus, Parthelonians, Fear Bolgs, Tuathas Do Duunaus. There is no
reason to conclude that these immigrants were Gaels; and it is remark-
able that many of the names of the descendants of such early colonizers,
are much more Turanian aud Cushite in their etymology than Celtic a
fact which illustrates the supposed occupation (in very ancient times) of
Ireland by those peoples of whom neither Keating or the authorities from
whom he compiled his work, had any idea. The oldest chronicles may be
uaid, ia one sense, to be the most authentic, as the object of annalist and
143 NOTES.
genealogist in such case was merely to fix the record of events without
embellishing them. Tollaud, and of late many others much more skilled
in the Celtic literature of ancient Ireland, have arrived at the opinion that
it is the most ancient and valuable in Europe. Yet, this early history
remains almost unknown, compared, for instance, with the kingly period
of Rome, of which the events occurred in a district not as large as the
County Dublin.
There is a curious and oft quoted passage in Diodorus Siculis, which is
supposed to relate to Ireland. He tells us that Hecataeus a native of
Miletus, the capital of Caria who wrote history before Herodotus and some
others, speak of an island not less in size than Sicily, lying in the ocean,
over against Gaul, which is inhabited by the Hyperboreans, so called,
because they are removed beyond the influence of the north wind. The
climate is temperate, the soil so fruitful that they have two harvests in the
year. There Latona is said to have been born, and there the worship of Apollo,
(the Sun) obtains more than that of any other of the gods, he being
honoured with perpetual praises. There he has a grove and a temple of
round form, embelished with numerous offerings; there is a city also
eacred to this god, in which the harpers hymn his praises. In ancient
times, the Hyperboreans had a particular kindness for the Greeks, chiefly
the Athenians and Delians. Some of the Greeks visited them and left;
gifts, and Abaris, an Hyperborean, travelled into Greece, and renewed
the old league with the Delians. One of the most curious details
is that in which he states that the moon is seen so close from this
island, as to appear but a little distance from the earth a statement which
some have thought indicates the invention of the telescope in remote ages.
This description certainly appears to relate more particularly to Ireland
than any other island of the north, and illustrating the origin of the round
towers, carries us back perhaps 3000 years. There is a Feunian poem
describing the journey of Abaris to Greece. In Homer the Hyperboreans
are called, Epigones, i.e., epheach-gom, the people of u vigorous kindred."
The British Islands were known through commercial relations in
extremely ancient times to the east, as is manifest from the allusions to them
found in Sanskrit literature. There England is called " Sweta-Sula, Isle of
the White Cliffs; and Ireland Surya Dwipa, the Island of the Sun, or of sun
worship. England is also called the Land of Tapas, and the most fitting
place for performing Tapasya-z'.e.. a religious austerity." In the great
Indian epic poem, the Mahabarata, Norada sets out to Sweta-Dwipa in the
remotest north-west, to worship the original form of Narayana, which lives
in that island; and in the llamayana, when Kavaua asks, where the
mighty ones dwell, he is told by Narada iu the white island. Ireland is
also called Suvarna-dwipa, the land of gold. The quantity of ancient
golden ornaments which have been found in Ireland verities this archaic
title. The subject of the Mahaharata is the great war between the Kurus
and Pandus, or black and white races, and refers to a period 1200 B.C.,
while the Kamayana is of a still earlier date.
Possibly the passage from Hecatoeus refers to an epoch when Ireland
was in possession of the Neimedians, whose name signifies "Worshippers
of the Heavens" a branch of the Cushite race, who, in prehistoric
times, created the civilizations of Iberia, Etruria, and other regions of
western and southern Europe. The Fomonians, represented as a pirate
colony, came from Africa. The presence of Cushites in Ireland thus con-
nects the island in ancient times with Egypt, with Africa, and Southern
Spain, and illustrates some of our written traditions. It is not less curious
than true, that Ireland was once occupied by a people whoso typical
tongue resembled that of the Berbers of Africa, and the Gallas of Abys-
sinia. Vide Baldwin's Prehistoric Nations, an interesting compilation of
modern research, containing several original views.
Among the early colonies to Erie was that of Partholan, who is said
to have come from Mygdonia in Thrace a region noted like all those
from the north of the Euxine to the Caucasus, for the number of its races.
The name, as explained by Phoenician and Celtic affinities, has pretty
much the same meaning z.e. the man of the scattered race, or the source
NOTES. 149
of a race ejected from this country a leader of exiles. Par-toll-ae (Celt)
par tulm Phoenician. Among the Thracian peoples were the Getce. once
supposed to have been the ancestors of the Goths, although differing
widely from the Germans in manners. One of the ascertained Getic
names is that of the god they worshipped Gebeleziu from whose Celtic
roots gibeal lets, the outer or covering splendour, they appear to have
been sun worshippers, while their own name, Getae, indicates their care of
agriculture. The immortality of the soul was a doctrine of the Thracian
eages. They believe that after death says Herodotus, they go to
Zalmoxes i.e., Salm-mochd-leis, the great light of the sun. Thrace
supplied the Greeks with many of their traditions. They had no
writings in their country before those gained from the Thracian
bards or Druids, who are identical with the Orphenas. " Linus," says
Diodorus, " was the first who wrote the history of the elder Dionisius in
Pelasgiau letters, which were also used by Orpheus." whose name, ur~fis,
signifies, man of the trees, or perhaps of the " letters." The Ogharn
alphabet possibly was in use among the Celtic and other nations of Thrace
long before the introduction of the Phoenician characters of Cadmus,
which, according to Herodotus, were afterwards changed both inform and
Eound by the Greeks. It is noteworthy that the letters of the Irish alpha-
bet have each the name of a tree ; and if with this fact we connect th
supposition that Orpheus was a Thracian Druid, the fable of his having
caused the trees (or letters) to follow the music of his lyre, resolves itself
into an intelligible metaphor.
Miletus. This city, the capital of Caria. was noted in ancient times as
the chief colonizing centre in Asia-Minor. Seneca says the Milesians sent
out 380 colonies, while others limit the number to 80. Many cities were
colonized, if not founded by this people, on the shores of the Black Sea.
It is singular that the meanings of these names are better explained from
their Celtic than their Greek derivatives a peculiarity which applies still
more to the local names in Greece. Thus we have Tomi (torn, a grove) ;
Odessus odh es nss abounding either in food or intelligence, in the sense
of news; Cyzicus ceith-each ccs - the great market of horses; Cerasus
cur asaidh- the resting place of the expedition; Sinope sine obair the
elder place of workmanship ; Cotyora coth-urach the place where food is
protected a fortified granary, &c. To the north of Miletus rose Mount
Messogis, a word identical with Ogygia, the old name of Ionia, meaning
the new pleasant country. Miletus was called the Lelegean city, from its
having been occupied, before the arrival of the louians, by the Leleges,
who are numbered in the Iliad among the Trojan forces.
Beyond uhere the Cim&ii dtceU and the Celtce marshal their legions. The
Cynese are mentioned by Herodotus as the remotest people inhabiting
beyond the gates of Hercules (Gibraltar) and the Celtoe. The name tine-
sia, signifies the people of the sunset or evening. Celtae, according to
Herodotus, was the name by which the Gauls were known to themselves.
Diodorus particularly alludes to their remarkable attire, coats of variegated
colours, interspersed as if with flowers, their tunics secured with gold and
silver clasps and belts, their variegated shields with numerous emblems
worked on them, and their imposing warlike habiliments. They are
handsome in appearance, he says. The name Keltae evidently
signifies (cel-tae) careful of then* dress. In the Scotch kilt we have a cor-
ruption of the word Celt (raiment). The root, as Stokes in his edition of
Cormack's glossary remarks, seems to be the Sanscrit, cal, to cover; or,
eel, to conceal hence the old Norse, hele the hidden place, and our Anglo-
Saxon " hell." In ancient Ireland caste was regulated by the colour of the
dress. Thus, there was one colour for a slave, two for a soldier, three
for officers, four for biatachs, five for lords of districts, six for an ollum or
king. The Celts possibly adopted a characteristic name which distin-
guished them from their neighbours. The Iberians and Celtebrians,
whose universal dress was dark-coloured, and whose women wore black
veilsa custom still preserved in Spain.
Earth's Cimmerian North. In Homer, the Cimmerians inhabiting the
Asiatic region, north of the Black Sea, are placed in a laud of darkness,
150 NOTES.
lu Herodotus, whose geographical knowledge was more extended, they
are placed in a region of day. Tbe name is identical with Scythian,
or nomad cime riagh, always wandering; like the Etruscan Rasena
ra sen, spring from wandering ancestors. Diodorus states that the word
Gymbri is but a modification of Cimmerii.
The brig/it OpoH.The Greek derivation for Apollo is, from a root mean-
ing to defend or avert The Celtic Opoll, omnipotent force or splendour,
conveys a more primitive idea of solar power.
Hades ad (iuteusitive particle) and aes age the place of the old the
grave.
That the length of the voyages and knowledge of navigation possessed
by ancient peoples has been much under rated by the moderns, is now
rendered evident by philology, ethnology, and archeology. There seems
strong grounds for supposing that the ancient Peruvian and Mexican
empires, which so strikingly resembled the Egyptian, obtained their civiliza-
tion from the same race which founded that of Egypt. The power of the
descendants of Gush had become extinct before that of the Heleues had
arisen ; one of the Greek traditions connected with the existence of the
kingdoms they founded in the western continent, is now to be found in tho
Atlantic Island of Plato, who derived his account from the Egyptian
priests. But. even before the arrival of this people in Ireland, the island
has passed through a series of occupations by other races, such as those
who erected its cyclopean architecture. It is almost unnecessary to say
that such monuments were not the forts or tombs of a Celtic people, but
of one unknown, who had come from the Southern regions of the Asiatic
World. In the Indian Deccan there are multitudes of such rude struc-
tures, which extend along South Arabia, and North Africa, through Spain,
and Western France
The Celts were the first historic Indo-European people who passed
from Asia to Europe, as the Greeks were the last, after an interval of
several thousand years. Both the Greek and Latin languages were, it is
said, developed from the Pelasgian, or that which prevailed in ancient
times along the West of Asia Minor and in the Hellenic and Italic penin-
sulas before their historic civilization. Some suppose the Pelasgians to
have spoken a Sclavic dialect, others that its residue is to be found in the
Albanian dialects chiefly; but, if it was this people to whom the ancient
local names in the regions just mentioned are to be referred, there seems
little doubt that they spoke an early form of Celtic. The Greeks whoso
history, Josephus says, "was but of yesterday" found this nation in
possession of the peninsula, in some parts of which they became mingled
up with them, while in others as Attica they were, according to
Herodotus, developed from them, and. hence, certainly derived from them
th ss traditions which they subsequently enlarged and beautified in the
Hellenic mythology. From this people Greece was anciently named,
Pelasgia -fel-ascath-ia, the nation of champions and bards, and the name
lingered long in Pelasgian Argos, and Thessaly. From those aborigines
(ur-aighe-an-ae, valliant dwellers on or possessors of the laud) they derived a
stock of traditions which, in their mythical form, are little intelligible.
Many of the oldest come from Thrace and North Greece. Such as those
of the Jupetrians and Titans. Of the former kings, Varro states there
were 300 so called; and these, judging from the Celtic components of
their titles ua-feth-tir, a ad ti-tan, were respectively the early people who
possessed a knowledge of agriculture, and the later race who were
acquainted with the use of metals and arms. This explanation illus-
trates the story of the wars of which the Olympian region was tho
scene. The agricultural race, unable to contend with a people better
armed and weapoued, ascend the mountains, and hurl rocks upon them
the thunderbolts of Jupiter. The light which Celtic derivations throw on
some of the unintelligible Greek myths is at least curious. By simplifying
they lead us back to their origin. For instance, Cerberus is, cer bar,
the wrathful or raging stag, whose horns and head imagination trans-
formed into a three-beaded monster. Orcus would be vr*ytis, the land of
death,
NOTES. 151
Ionia in Asia Minor was called Ogugia, a name which, according to
Plutarch, was given to Ireland; og-uigh-ia, the new pleasant country.
Ogygia has no Greek derivatives. Phyrgia was the cradle of the Greek
languages, whose Ionic dialect became perfected in Western Asia Minor,
as its Attic in Attica, and its .ZEolic, which has a closer affinity to the
Sanscrit than the others, in Northern maritime Greece. The name of the
loues is usually derived from ion, wandering, migratory. In the Puranas,
however, they are called Yauvana. the youag people or nation the latest
which had become known to the eastern Aryans, and are represented as
the progeny of the Kshatriyas, the warrior caste of India. " So many
destructions, 1 ' says Josephus, " have happened to the land the GreekK
inhabit, blotting out the memory of former times, that they were always
beginning a new way of living." And in a remarkable passage in the
Timceus of Plato, the priest of Sals says, that they were always children;
an old Greek never existed: they have all modern minds and no traditions
or knowledge of any kind that has grown hoary with age. Scarcely had they
invented writing and other arts, when there came down from heaven, at
certain intervals, great floods which spared only the ignorant and unedu-
cated, so that they had to start afresh from tho beginning, as though they
were a young people and knew nothing of what had occurred in this
country in the olden times, when it was inhabited by the fairest and.
noblest race of men, from the small remnant of which that remained, the
whole of the Greeks proper descended. Their past has been forgotten,
because they who perished left no written records. Before those catas-
trophes, he says, the Athenians were glorious in war and legislature; and.
goes on to allude to the great empire which, in ancient times, extended
over the Atlantic Island, which was as largo as Lybia and Europe, and
which extended over Europe as far as Etruria. The flood mentioned,
that of Ducalion, occurred from ihe melting of the snow on the Cambuniau
mountains, by which the Vale of Thessaly was deluged, and its inhabitants
destroyed. The old priest of Sais assigns a period. 9000 years previous,
for the disappearance of the Atlantic Island, which many, who do not
accept the idea of a communication having existed between the Ethiopian
nations and America, regard as a fiction. According to a modern mathe-
matical theory, deluges occur each 10,500 years from the change in the
earth's axis. The deviation, which occurred in the position of parhelion
from two centuries before 1248 A.D., caused that disappearance in tho
(mows of the Alps and Switzerland, which since that time has rendered
Europe warmer.
Josephus does not believe that the Greeks had the use of letters at the
time of the Trojan war, and adduces the many variations in the text of
Homer to prove that the songs relating to that event had been handed
down memorially; conditions which would imply that a bardic order,
similar to that of the Druids, had existed in Western Asia. The Greeks,
says Max Muller, knew as little about the original meaning of their myths
as they did of their etymology. They changed the names of nations, "&e.,
says Josephus, to others wlrch sounded well in their own language.
Pausinias, too, remarks that, having read tho poems of Liuius and Hesiod.
he found them full of interpolations, and much altered from their original
form; and it was the same with those which pass under the name of
Homer. These. Pisastratus a name which implies, the man who con-
veyed knowledge from beyond the sea brought from Ionia in the sixth
century B.C. It is hardly necessary to remark, that the name Homer
(omeros), even according to its Greek derivation, does not indicate tho
individual authorship of the great rhapsodies of war and travel, but their
collector or editor; like that of Vyasa, the arranger of the Motions con-
tained in the Indian epic, the Mahaharata; yet both Homer and Vyasa
have become historical personages with legendary biographies.
In connection with the theory that the Pelasgiaus of Western Asia
Minor and Greece were a Celtic speaking people, and with the fact that
the original meaning of local names in Greece and Western Asia, and
those of its legendary history, are rendered more intelligible by Celtic
roots thau Greek derivations ; it may not be uninteresting to add. that
152 NOTES.
the Celtic components of the name, "Omeros," would verify the supposi-
tion of this word having been applied to the editors or collectors of the
Ionian ballad literature, founded on Pelasgian traditions, relating to the
great struggle between Peninsular Greece and Asia, known as the war of
Troy; for, omhal-osadh. signifies, "a concord" or "confederacy of poets."
It may be added, that the prefix of the Irish term for a poet (omhal), that
is om, is the nrrystic word with which each of the Indian Vedas commence,
and by pronouncing which God created the universe. In this respect it
resembles the word, oiw (harmony or music), which, according to the
Triads, had a similar interpretation and application; it being at once
the name of Deity and his creative fiat. Oin in Sanscrit is a demon-
strative particle meaning, that God, and in its general signification has
a reference to creative power. Thus, the Celtic word Omhal may be
a compound of this primitive particle o>n and ala, i.e., " creative skill or
craft."
Gladstone supposes the Pelasgians to have come from Media, where,
to the present day, (Malcolm's Persia) a tribe named Elleat, bear a resem-
blance to the Helli. Elleat is a Celtic word, meaning ell eata, the "ancient
multitude," the old nation.
We append a few Celtic derivations illustrative of the meaning of old
Greek, Latin, local, and personal names, premising that the Greeks
changed the Celtic f into p, and the Latins into v.
Arcadia, ar-cadhach-ia, the laud of friendly husbandry. Argos, ar-gus,
the power of husbandry. Actasa, the old name of the stony Attica, aca-
teach, the rocky abode. Thessaly, tus-alach, the foundation or origin of
the young generation. The vale of Tempe, tern feabh, dark with woods.