Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions

The Sacred Tara Hill. 261
handed round three times
fifty goblets, "which cups were
of gold or of silver all."
" In Meath," said Hollinshed, " is a hill called the Hill
of Taragh, wherein is a plaine twelve score long, which was
named the Kempe his Hall ; where the countrie had
their meetings and folkmotes at a place that was accounted
the high palace of the monarch.—The Irish hammer manie
fables in this forge, of Fin Mac Coile and his chieftains.
But doubtless the place seemeth to beare a show of an
ancient and famous monument."
When Widow Feelin, the guide,—wrinkled, freckled,
wasted, wizen, bent at an angle of 45 degrees,— hurried over
the ground with the weight of 75 years to show us the
wonders of Tara, she pointed out the " plaine twelve score
long," as the site of the far-famed Banqueting Hall. She
told us of the vessels of gold and silver, served by three
hundred butlers. She could show no stone remains, for
sure, the palace was of polished oak. She gloated over the
graves of fifty croppies (soldiers) ;
and, seating herself on
the turf, sang a long ballad of past glory, in which
0"Connell was duly remembered, and the Repeal meeting
on Tara Hill, at which she had been present. Looking
round upon nine counties, she mourned the loss of Erin's
pride, as an aged Fenian Druidess might have done. She
said that some persons wanted to search the grave-mounds
over Tara's departed heroes, but that she had roused the
villagers, who drove off the sacrilegious party. To her
patriotic ardour, the sanctity of Tara and its departed
Druids and Princes may be safely confided.
Mrs. Wilkes reads in the antiquity of Temora as the
Tcman of Edom, of Midian as the old name for Meath, of
Padan Aram, of Laban, of Levi now Lewes, of Danaans
from Dan, of Jacob's pillow Lia Fail, of the Irish genealogy
in the first of Chronicles, of the tablets of Druids being the