Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions

Round Tozucr C^^eed, 267
Again— " I do deny that the Round Towers of Ireland
were fire receptacles,"— (but) " in honour of that sanctifying
principle
of nature, emanating, as was supposed, from the
Sun, under the denomination of Sol, Phoebus, Apollo,
Abad or Budh, &c. ;
and from the Moon, under the
epithets of Luna, Diana, Juno, Astarte, Venus, Babia or
Batsee, «&c."
Miss Stokes thought it was absurd to say, as the early
Welsh historian did, that Ireland had no stone buildings
before the eleventh
towers were of
century, and she maintained that the
the tenth century, being half strongholds,
half belfries. Her opinion is that Irish art is not from
Greece, but of purely native growth. Many Irish traditions
point to their Danish origin.
St. Bernard wrote that
the Archbishop of Armagh first built a stone house, and
was blamed for it by his Irish flock.
That they had great antiquity might be conjectured
from the fact, that the great battle between Tuaths and
Firbolgs was known as the Field of the Towers. Petrie
found the tradition
of their structure by Goban Saer, the
poet, or mason, a myth of very olden date.
Dudley's Syuibolism dilates on their geometric form and
phallic characteristics. A MS. says that "the use to
which our antient Irish put these towers was to imprison
penitents." Forlong deemed them phallic ;
and Bishop
Rothe, 1647, memorials of conquest. Kenrick's thought
of their Phoenician origin is combated on the ground of
there being none like them in
Palestine.
In 1605, a work appeared with this title, De antiquitate
Turriim Belanorum Pagana Kerriensi, et de architectura ?ion
caiupanilis Ecdesiastical' and containing many engravings
of Round Towers. An author of Lou vain, 1610,
esteemed them, says Margrave Jennings, the Rosicrucian,
" heathen Lithoi or obelisks, in the sense of all those