which superstition continued to attach to such eminences, even in Christian ages. The use of the deasuil, among persons of Celtic descent, has been already noticed, even though those persons were Christians. The awful dun may therefore be supposed to have been suffered to retain its place till very late times. At length the eminence was removed, probably to enlarge the space of the market: its removal, however, did not suppress the use of the name; such is the force of habit and long usage, the place is still the market-hill. When the duns dedicated to gods were destroyed, the Christian cross was set up instead; so in markets a cross either stands or has stood in the place of the ancient dun, and has been placed there for purposes exactly the same. Notwithstanding the general overthrow of the duns of the Celtic gods, some in remote situations escaped without, or at least, with little, scath. One of these duns, called the Tomen y Bala, dedicated to the Celtic Beil, remains entire near the town of Bala in the county of Merioneth in North Wales. It stands at the extremity of a lake from which the river Dee issues, and receives from that circumstance its Welch name, which signifies the Hill of Egress. In the poetry of the Welch Bards the hill is called Bed-Tydain, that is, the resting-place or grave of Tydain, a personification of the sun.u At the opposite extremity of the lake rises a hill called Aren, from whose sides streams flow supplying the lake. The hill, like the bed, is sacred to Tydain, proving that the Tomen was a temple: for the Druids generally worshipped on sacred eminences in the vicinity of eminences still higher and held sacred. The word bed or beth signifies the place where the god t Davies' Rites of Druids, sect. iii. p. 193. u Tyd is a noun signifying, in Welch, that which continues; ain is a spread or extension. The name implies that which affords a regular supply of light. Tydain is Titan, a name often applied to the sun. G was buried. It will be shewn in some following pages, that it was customary, in raising these duns, to deposit some relic or symbol within the mound, indicative of the actual presence of the god: whence the name of bed or beth was given. That there must have been, in the ages of the Druids, many other mounds dedicated to Celtic gods, cannot be doubted; though, for reasons already given, no traces of them now remain. The evidences now stated prove, it is submitted, very decidedly that the Tomen y Bala was a temple of Tydain, or Beil, erected at what may be called the source or first appearance of the river called Deva or Dee, that is, divine, because it issues from the Deo or god. On this account all the Welch authorities represent it as a sacred stream, in ancient times adored by the inhabitants of the districts through which it flows, as the emblem of fertility and of the divine beneficence. A temple such as that of the god Tydain stood, as the poet of the Æneis states, at the destruction of the city, before one of the gates of Troy. The hero of the poet speaks of it in terms of the following purport: To those who quit the gates, a dun occurs, The Trojans were Celts: the religion intended in the preceding lines was that of the Druids: the ancient Ceres was none other than the Celtic goddess Ket, the Ceto of classical fable. This temple of Ceres was a mound or barrow, like the Tomen y Bala. The occurrence of these fanes or temples in ages and countries so different and distant, shews most clearly, that though now such structures are known only as places of interment, in former times the duns or barrows were truly and exclusively places of religious worship. * Eneis, ii. 713. From the form of the barrow the Trojans at the time of the siege had made two advances in the progress of sacred structures; they had constructed those inclosures which are called Druidic temples, and they had also altars inclosed within walls. A temple bearing all the characteristics of the Celtic temple was seen by the traveller Clarke, y within the once dominions of Troy, on Mount Gargarus. A spacious winding road leads up, according to the report, to the temple, through a track in which are many buildings of later times than the temple, proofs of the esteemed sanctity of the Mount through a succession of ages. Not far from the base of the highest summit of Gargarus rises an eminence now called Kushunlù tepe. The top of this tepè or taph is an oblong area about six yards long and two wide, shaded by a thick covering of venerable oaks, inclosed by a circle of upright stones. A space between these stones on the south may be regarded as the entrance. This structure is most assuredly Druidical, for it is on an eminence, but erected at the foot of a higher eminence, agreeably to the Celtic practice observable in many instances, and perhaps the general practice with the Celtic mystagogues. The oval form of the inclosures is the same as that of Stonehenge, and, like it, represents the mundane egg of the Druids. This temple is evidently an improvement of the earlier barrow of Ket, the ancient Ceres, was consequently of later date, and shews that the Celtic religion had been long established in the kingdom of king Priam. The domestic altar or temple of the king was an improvement of the barrow. It is thus described in the second Æneis: I' th' central court, 'neath ether's axle bare, The altar close o'erspreading. Its thick shade y Clarke, vol. iii. chap. 5. z Æneis, ii. 512. The great antiquarian knowledge of the poet affords an assurance of the correctness of his description, which shews that the altar shaded by the laurel, differed only from the taph of Kushunlù by being inclosed within the walls of the palace, forming a court differing only in dimension from other temples of ancient and the Indian pagodas of the present times, all which owe their origin to the simple raised altar of Adam and the Patriarchs. That these barrows or duns were places of interment in other countries beside Britain, may be shewn by the following instance recorded by the same poet: At base of mountain high Stood the vast barrow, all of earth upheaped, It is worthy of remark that the Roman uses the word bustum to designate the barrow of this ancient king of Laurens. Busti is a word by which the same barrows are known in the Sanscrit; a remarkable circumstance, which, with many other instances, shews that the use of these barrows was universal in ancient times, and that the same names by which they were known were used in countries separated from each other by vast distances. Authorities of classical antiquity shew, that at interment in these barrows it was the practice of the friends and family of the deceased to place the urn containing the ashes of the deceased, or the corpse, if not burned, in a cavity formed of stones regularly arranged, then to heap stones upon them, and afterwards to heap the earth upon them. Such was the order of the interment of Hector, the hero of Troy. The barrow thus formed for the interment of eminent persons often became the burial-place of others of his family. Astyanax, the infant son of Hector, having been cast headlong from the walls of Troy by Neoptolemus son of Achilles, was, at the earnest request of his mother Andromache, laid out upon the shield of his father and buried in the same tumbos or barrow.c Interment in the barrow, of an eminent person, appears to have been a desire commonly entertained by their family and descendants. Orestes, according to the authority of Euripides, most earnestly entreats his friend Pylades to bury the bodies of himself and his sister Electra in the barrow of his father Agamemnon. The bones and urns found in many barrows shew that this desire was commonly entertained by persons of all countries and nations, so long as barrows continued to be used for interment. The reason for this desire may be found in the persuasion that the barrow was a temple of the personage there first interred; and farther, that the spirits of the persons buried there might form a society as when resident on earth. That the spirits of the persons interred in the barrow made it the chief place of their abode after death, was a belief universal. The antiquity and confidence of this belief may be seen in the following passage in the Helena of Euripides, in which Menelaus thus addresses Theonoë the daughter of the antiquated god Proteus: Thus will I at thy father's barrow speak, O sire, that dwellest within this stony mound, No authority can be found in which this belief is more strongly affirmed than in the Erse poems of Ossian, which, however marred by foolish interpolations, teach what was believed universally to be true when they speak of the spirits constantly abiding, and sometimes speaking in shrill voices on the hill of burial. It was on this belief that men and animals, even utensils of various kinds, were buried in the Euripid. Troad. v. 1123. d Euripid. Orest. v. 1064. |