Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions

150 Old IiHsk Religions.
The Bel-tor of Dartmoor, the Belenus of Gaul, the Beat
of the Gaedhil, the Bali of India, the Belns obelisk of
Pomona in Orkney, the Bealtien cake of Scotland, the
Bel-eg, priest or learned one of Brittany, the Punic Bal—
all take us outside of Ireland. But Camden declared the
cromlech on Sliabh Greine, hill of the sun, was to Beli.
As reported by J. J.
Thomas— "The Irish expression 'Bal
inhaith art '—May Bel be propitious to thee ! or Bal dhia
dJmit, the god Bal to you ! were
deemed complimentary
addresses to a stranger along the sequestered banks of the
Suir, in the South of Ireland, about twenty-two years
ago."
There can be no doubt about this Baal worship being
connected with Phallicism.
Devotion to generative powers
preceded, perhaps, that to the sun, as the main cause of
production in Nature ;
but the Baal development appeared
later on in the so-called march of civilization. An increased
fondness for ritual is generally taken for an
evidence of refinement.
This Phallic exponent has been conspicuous in the BalfargJia,
or Bud, of the Island of Muidhr, off the coast of
Sligo, represented as similar to the Mabody of Elephanta
in India, where the argha was an especial object of
worship, and which was seen by the writer, in Bombay, as
still an object of religious devotion. There was on the
Irish island a wall of large unmortared stones, some ten
feet high, and of a rude circular form, having a low
entrance. The Bud, or Linga, was surrounded by a
parapet wall.
Innis Murra, an islet about three miles from the Sligo
coast, has always been held sacred. In that, the area of
this Bal-fargha, or argha, of rough stone-work, is 180 feet
by 100, in its oval shape. To preserve its devotional
character, three Roman Catholic chapels have been erected