The Irish standard., 1915-10-23

of the British Association in 1911,
showed that at the time of the Sixth
Dynasty the fashion Of building stone
monuments, dolmens, menhirs, crom-
lech, etc., began to spread west as
well as east of Egypt.
Perhaps l should have mentioned
before that that strange, hayward
genius, James Clarence Mangan, was
not satisfied with either the methods
or conclusions of DR.. Petrie, and
asked my readers to hear what an.
other great lrishman, Denis Florence
Mccarthy, wrote ON these same
riddles in his beautiful poem, THE
Pillar Towers of Ireland:
The pillar towers of Ireland, how Won
drously they stand
BY lakes and rushing rivers through
the valleys of our land
In mystic file, throughout the isle,
they lift their heads sublime,
These grey old pillar temples-these
conquerors of time!
Beside these grey old pillars, how
perishing and weak
The Romans arch of triumph, the
temple of the Greek,
And the gold domes of Byzantium, and
the pointed Gothic spires
All are gone, one by one, but the
temples of our sires.
The names of their founders have
vanished in the gloom,
Like the dry brand in the fire or the
body in the tomb;
But today, in the ray, their shadows
still they cast
These temples Of forgotten gods
these relics Of the past!
Richard c. Boland, in a paper he
published on the Round Towers in
the Irish Emerald a few years ago,
says:
From this it can be concluded that
the art of building with stone was
not unknown to the Irish at this early
date (1700 B. CO., besides it gives
clear evidence OF the fact that such
stone buildings were circular in form ::
The top of the house one stone
closed" He quotes from an old
Irish work of famous Irish antiquary
MacFirbis, a truly striking passage
showing that there were stone build
ings in Ireland thousands of years
ago, with smooth hewn stones.
Lest any should object that the
Book of Lecan, though there dealing
with such an early time, was still
written in Christian times, long after
the days there dealt with Though il
might very we'll have been transcribed
from some earlier work, or at least
the substance of some of it may have
come down from these far-off days.,
will close with quotation from one
who is certainly free from such OBJ
jections, as he wrote long before the
coming of Christianity to our shores
in short, he was a contemporary o.
Our Blessed Lord during His earthl,
life, or slightly earlier even-Diodoru'
Siculus. And while those best &C
quainted with him will be forced tt
admit that he was not at all times
trustworthy in what he wrote, it il
obvious that he could not be prophetic
in his mistakes, and so state tina
there was something actually ,existini
in the Ireland of his day which wa
not there for over four hundred year
after, and still strike on the YER
exact thing, SO that whether we wis
it or not, we are compelled to ADM
that something should have bee
there when he wrote of Ireland a
being about "the size of Sicily" an
Astounding in round temples whereof
the Druids and priests sing, to tn
music of their harps, the praises Q
!, Apollo, and also alludes to their grea
, skill in astronomy.
This last is so striking, not to sa
decisive in it's bearing on this ma
| ter, that it almost. makes me retrac
my disclaimer at the beginning c
this, that could not prove the tower
: pagan-perhaps the work of some pr
Milesian race, such as the De Danaan'
= In taking leave of my readers,
t will only say that while making n
! claims myself to elucidate this seen
. ing mystery, still, II have done augl
K to induce others to start study thu
r may we'll lead to the discovery {
( the most brilliant chapter Of IL
v glories of Ancient Erin-one provir
9 that in the prehistoric past we ha
J. grand civilization Of our own, Of
n high order and of high antiquity, al
8 no more exotic imported from Ron
9 or elsewhere-then will be happy
y deed.