Rude Stone Monuments in All Countries: Their Age and UsesFergusson, James
History
Rude Stone Monuments in All Countries: Their Age and Uses
Fergusson, James
Megalithic monuments
When we turn from these to the far more authentic annals of Tighernach,
who died 1088 A.D., we are met at once by his often quoted
dictum to the effect that "omnia Monumenta Scotorum usque Cimboeth
incerta erant."[224] It would have been more satisfactory if he could
have added that after that time they could be depended upon, but
this seems by no means to have been the case. As, however, Cimboeth
is reported to have founded Armagh, in the year 289 B.C.,
it gives us a limit beyond which we cannot certainly proceed without
danger and difficulty. We get on surer ground when we reach the reign
of Crimthann, who, according to Tighernach, died in the year of our
era 85, after a reign of 16 years.[225] The 'Four Masters,' it is true,
make him contemporary with Christ; but even Dr. O'Donovan is obliged
to confess that all these earlier reigns, after the Christian era,
are antedated to about the same extent.[226] Unfortunately for our
purpose, however, Tighernach's early annals are almost wholly devoted
to the chronicles of the kings of Emania or Armagh, and it is only
incidentally that he names the kings of Tara, which was the capital
both of the Firbolgs and Tuatha de Dananns, and he makes no allusion to
the battles of Moytura. Though our annalist, therefore, to a certain
extent deserts us here, there are incidental notices of the Daghda
and his friends in Irish manuscripts referring to other subjects,
which seem sufficient to settle the question. The best of these were
collected together for another purpose by Petrie, in his celebrated
work on the Round Towers, and, as they are easily accessible there, it
will not be necessary to quote them in extenso, but merely the passages
bearing directly on our subject.[227]
The first extract is from a very celebrated work known as the 'Leabhar
na l'Uidhre,' written apparently before 1106, which is given by the
'Four Masters' as the date of the author's death. Speaking of Cormac,
the son of Art and grandson of Conn of a Hundred Battles:--"Before his
death, which happened in 267, he told his people not to bury him at
Brugh, on the Boyne, where the kings of Tara, his predecessors, were
buried, because he did not adore stones and trees, and did not worship
the same god as those interred at Brugh, for he had faith," adds the
monkish chronicler, "in the one true God according to the law."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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