Open [36.0 MB]

SCANDINAVIAN ANTIQUITIES OP DUBLIN. 173
continued and still continue to light their May fires
and to pass through or leap over them. They con-
tinued to place boughs of evergreen trees in their
places of worship at Christmas, and in some instances,
they even continued to the Christian commemoration
BOOK IIL
CHAP. II.
the pagan name. The great feast of Yiolner or Odin Tioiner or
was superseded by the Christmas festival, yet to this
hour there are many parts of England and Scotland,
as well as of Denmark and Norway, where Christmas
is termed Yioletide. The Paschal festival of other
Irish adored fountains as divini-
ties, and his authority is confirmed
beyond a doubt by Adamnan.
" I have often inquired of your
tenants what they themselves
thought of their pilgrimages to the
wells of Kili-Aracht, Tubbar-
Brighde, Tubbar-Muire,
near El-
phin, Moor, near Castlereagh,
where multitudes annually assem-
bled to celebrate what they, in
their broken English, termed
Patterns (Patron's days), and, when
I pressed a very old man to state
what possible advantage he ex-
pected to derive from the singular
custom of frequenting in particular
such wells as were contiguous to
an old blasted oak or an upright
unhewn stone, and what the yet
more singular custom of sticking
rags on the branches of such trees
and spitting on them, his answer,
and the answer of the oldest men
was, that their ancestors always
did it, that it was a preservative
against the Geasa-Draoidecht, i.e.,
the sorcery of the Druids .
and so thoroughly persuaded were
they of the sanctity of these pagan
practices that they would travel
bareheaded and barefooted from
ten to twenty miles for the purpose
of crawling on their knees
round these wells and upright
stones and oak trees westward as
the sun travels, some three times,
some six, some nine, and so on, in
uneven numbers, until their volun-
tary penances were completely ful-
filled." Columbanus' Third Letter
on the Liberties of the Irish Church
or a Letter from the Rev. Charles
O'Conor, D.D., to bis brother,
Owen O'Conor, esq., pp. 82, 83,
vol. i.
8vo, London, 1810,
Dr. O'Connor adds, "A passage
in Hanway's travels (Lond., 1753,
vol. i., pp. 177 and 260) leads
directly to the oriental origin of
these druidical superstitions, ' We
arrived at a desolate Caravanserai
where we found nothing but
water. I observed (continued
Hanway), a tree with a number of
rags on the branches. These were
so many charms which passengers
coming to Ghilan had left "
there,'
Columbanus. ibid., p. 85.