Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions

The Sacixd Tara Hill. 259
"All these things being done in the sight of the King
between the magicians and Patrick, the King says to thenT,
' Cast your books into the water, and him whose books
shall escape uninjured we will adore.' Patrick answered, ' I
will do so.' And the magician said, ' I am unwilling to
come to the trial by water with that man, because he has
water as his god ' (alluding to baptism). The contest was
to be settled, therefore, by fire. A house was constructed
of boughs, half green and half dry. The magician went
into the green part, and Benin into the dry.
The fire came
and consumed the green, with the Druid, but the Christian
was not hurt."
Other stories connected with the preacher at Tara are
narrated elsewhere in the present work, and relate to a
period subsequent to the institution of the Ollamh Fodhia
college at Tara. But the modern school of Anglo-Israel
attach other ideas to that ancient seat of sanctity. Heber
of the bards is to them Hebrew. Tara is named from Terah.
Jeremiah fled thither after the siege of Jerusalem, carrying
away the treasures of the temple ; as, the ark, the sceptre of
David, the Urim and Thummim, and others. Some persons
at this day aff'ect to believe that in the Hill of Tara might
yet be found these memorials of Judaism, and hope to
recover thence David's harp, carried to Ireland by Jeremiah
and the Princess Scota, daughter of Pharaoh.
The Rev. F. R. A. Glover, M.A., has no doubt about Its
possession of the sacred stone; saying, "The Foundation
Pillar which the Jews regarded for six hundred years with
veneration, as Jacob's Pillow, in their temple on Araunah's
threshing-floor, and which, being lost in the
destruction of
their sanctuary, B.C. 588, has appeared in Ireland as the
precious Liag Phail, brought thither by Hebrew men in
ship of Dan, cir. 584."
The same authority elsewhere advances the
a
following—