Morning journal and courier., 1888-12-01

Fourteen Centuries Ago-Scenery of
 the spot-Fact and Fiction In Irish
 History.
 NAvAN, Ireland, Nov. 20. To the Editor efthe JOURNAL AND COURIER:
 "At Temur to day I place the virtue of the bi1th of Christ with his baptism, the virtue of his cruci6xion with his burial, the virtue of his resurrection with his ascension, the virtue of coming to eternal judgment.
 t'At Temur today may the strength of God pilot me, may the power of God pre- serve me, may the wisdom of God instruct me, may the eye of God view me, may the ear of God hear me, may the word of God render me eloquent"
 On an Easter Sunday upwards of one thousand four hundred and fifty years ago, thus chanting, St. Patrick came up one of the five ancient roads which led to the royal the youthful Benignus, son of Sechnan, were with him. The chieftains and princes of Meath were assembled to celebrate the festi- val of Belltaine, or fire of Baal, until whose sacred flame was lighted none dare kindle fire in the surrounding country on pain of death. King Laeghaire, prompted by his dru- ids and magi, had invited St. Patrick to dis cussior with his wise men of the royal pal- ace, but had also trsacherously planned the noble missionary's death on the road from Slane. Of this he knew, but undaunted pressed on unharmed. Seated in barbaric state with the greatest psrsonages of the realm around him, King Laeghaire saw and felt the loving power of Christianity over come the idolatries of Baal. The king, his arch poet Dubtach and the entire court were converted through the gentleness and eio- quence of an humble missionary; and thus and at this very spot was Paganism over- thrown in Ireland.
 Whether or not one follows the footsteps of St. Patrick and reaches the Hill of Tara | from the old Slane road, if he has eyes and sense and soul which see along the shining | lines of bardic tradition and the equally lu- | minous ways of authenticated history, g marvellous fascination attaches to the spot and the entire surrounding region. The place itself may justly be regarded as the | very fountain head of prehistoric life and lore more sonorous, eventful and winsome tc l the student of ancient days and ways than has ever been developed in relations of the wondrous Morse mythology; the original nursery of fond and fruitful brood which glow through Irish hagiology; as that fine
 thin girth of space, reminding of the houl glass middle, through which the golder grains of fact have flown from the wide, dim spaces of tradition to the ample fields o1 clear Investigation and exact historic truth of to-day; and also, if not the most fruitfu field of research for the archaeologist, al 1 least as that spot to which converge at last | all half revealed threads of portentous ina port and all undeniable clues to 8 mighty past, continually being disclosed by the ! splendid researches of erudite men into the | surprisingly plentiful and wondrously enter taining antiquities of Ireland.
 It is curious fact that while the subjuga- tion of Irish men, the seguestration of IrisE | fame, and the annihilation of ancient Irish glories, through the approximation and extir l patton of Irish people, have for centuries l comprised the basest and most vigorously I active policy of one of the greatest of gov ernments, four stsnzss of but four lines each by an Irish poet, the immortal Moore | in an instant rekindled the flames upon eve " hill top of love for land, history, tradition | and freedom.
 
 The soul of music shes
 l Now hangs mute on Tara's walls l AS If that soul had fled
 Thus freedom now so seldom wakes | The only throb she gives,
 Is when some heart indignant breaks To show that still she lives
 1 That song of Moore's, which thrilled th'
 earlier part of our own century, let th' | world know there had been Tara. Din | and voiceless as the words may have been, o | throbless as was the melody given the word | to those who sang and heard outside of Ire | land, it furnished the living fire in everI | real aspiration by 1rishmen for Ireland l The poets sang again. The starving tenant I labored, prayed, hoped. The men of brain and heart were reawakened. The historian began anew. And these patient, unknowl ! souls, the archaeologiGts and antiquarians, ta whom any land owes infinitely more thai can ever be paid, tireless, unvanauished, un known and unrswarded, dug, delved ant predded, slfted, compared, rejected, proVe' | anew; until no land beneath the sun cal furnish more clean and noble highways iron the eommonplaces of to-day past illimitabl l treasure fields and broadening landscapes 0 historic centuries, eventful ages and rein
 habited areas, on to the silences of the remo
 test past than this one; whose people, with
 worlds sympathy, are struggling for 8 hal of that human liberty which America quarter century since dared no longer den
 her black chattles and slaves.
 Without this knowledge and sentimen
 Tara is but pretty hill of Meath, or rathe
 group of pleasing hillocks. With it th
 whole region swarms with wondrous memo 1 ries and presences. Without 1t, look wher
 you will, there is but charming landscape
 winding roadways, bordering hedges, clue l ters of sycamores, tiny meadows, trailin
 walls, quaint, sleepy villages, gray old man
 sions and cabins of white, with their thatch
 ings of russet brown. With it, for the mile the eye can reach, and county's cross dis | tance in every direction beyond, rise th
 wraithful and actual monuments to th I known life and activities of men durin
 more than three thousand years. Not tweI ty miles to the east is the Irish sea, apo
 whose near shores the ravaging Danes an
 the as remorseless Britons landed times witt out number for reprisal, pillage and COT quest. The Nanny Water, the Broad Wate l the Deel, the lower Black water, the Ston,
 ford, the Matlock, the sluggish Black wat' | and the numerous Boyne, all gleam an
 simmer past banks, through gorges an glens, and within forests aud valleys, whe1 ; every rood has it's tale of storied past tell. 10 the southeast. not a days tram
 away. are Dublin county and city with the countless legends, traditions and historic the clumsiest truths in which read like glov , | ing romances Over here to the west bit . rough old Mullingar, near the superbly O. nate shores of loughs Owel and Ennel, Whe improbable things are granted, and evt i. land is held in perpetuity until "when u 5 king comes to Mullingar," which never VI
 or is to be- Nearer is venerable Trim, whe done in Irish history, and where, when s 1446 Parliament was there held, it was e