Page 28 - Demo

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Stephen Dunford: The Journey of The IrIsh
whose angry lips,
In their white foam, full often would inter Whole fleets of ships;
Crom was their day god, and their thunderer, Made morning and eclipse,
Bride was their queen of song, and unto her They prayed with fire-touched lips.
Great were their deeds, their passions, and their sports; With clay and stone
They piled on strath and shore those mystic forts,
Not yet over thrown
On cairn-crowned hills they held their council courts While youths alone,
With giant dogs, explored the elks’ resorts,
And brought them down.
That the Celts were not an uncivilised people, and that Ireland under Celtic rule, was not an uncivilised country should be clearly understood. The Celts were literary, artistic and scientific to a very high degree. A complex race who honoured their áes dána or learned classes, their filés or poets, their shanachies or historians, their ollamhs or teachers and their ascetic druids, as few, if any, other European people did at the time. In fact, their scholars, wise men, and artists, claimed equal reverence with their royal chiefs, and the beautifully wrought brooches and other ornaments of those days still extant and preserved in museums, show their advance in science, art, and also their elegance in dress.
Furthermore, their religion-sun worship-was of a high and refined order and their bachall, or wand-wielding druids, were not only literate, but were also accomplished as- tronomers; recorded by Plutarch ‘as a race of Magi living on an island near Britain.’ Coin- cidentally, some sources claim that Druidism may have sprung from Magism, a supposedly purer form of worship introduced to Ireland by the Phoenicans. And as Irish Druiditic rites manifested themselves principally in sun-worship, the name of Baal, which is retained in the Irish ‘Bealtaine’ also indicates its Phoenican origin, Baal being the venerated Phoenican luminary, their Ruler of the Universe. It is also remarkable that Grian which is the Irish or
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