“D’Hine fine _Fo-mora_ dosomh de shaorbh a athor, agus do _Tuathabh Dadanann_ a mhathar”--that is, the father was of the race of the Fo-morians, and the mother a Tuath-de-danaan. Again, in the Seabright Collection, this genealogy is prosecuted further, and from it, General Vallancey translates some lines, which are by no means irrelevant, as follows, viz.: “Cuill, Ceacht, and Grian, were the children of little Touraine--and their descendants, Uar, Jurca, Jurcatha; and from Uar was descended _Brian_, who was named Touran; and many others not here enumerated.” But the history of those events having been destroyed by time, the degenerate _Pheeleas_, wishing to flatter the vanity of the existing powers, did not hesitate to ascribe to the _Scythian_, or _modern_ Irish, followers of Heber and Heremon, those brilliant features of primeval immortality which appertained exclusively to the Irish of another day--the Hyperborean or Iranian Irish! The Tuath-de-danaans having been proved the authors of the Round Towers, my ambition in the investigation is already attained. But since we are told, that this people had claimed possession of the island as inheritors of an antecedent and preoccupying eastern colony, it may be worth while to inquire whether we can discover any traces to connect those predecessors with any of these edifices. Without bestowing upon it, however, more consideration than what the exigency demands, I will briefly observe, that we are likely to find such in the history of the _Fo-moraice_, who are represented in our chronicles, _by the party who had ejected them_, under the obnoxious character of _monsters_ and _giants_.[444] It is high time to give up those abuses in the import of words. _Fo-moraic_ means literally the mariners of _Fo_, that is, of _Budh_: and their _religion_ being thus identified with that of the _Tuath-de-danaans_, what could be more natural than that they should have erected _temples_ of the same shape with theirs? This deduction will appear the more credible from the unanimity of all our historians, on the subject of this people having been perfect masters of _masonry_, as well as from the universally credited report in the days of Cambrensis, of some of the Towers being then visible beneath the inundation of Lough Neagh.[445] I confess I am one of those persons who give faith to this tradition; for even my experience of the vicissitudes of all things earthly has enabled me to say, in the words of the philosophic poet, that-- “Where once was solid land seas have I seen, And solid land where once deep seas have been, Shells far from seas, like quarries in the ground, As anchors have in mountain tops been found. Torrents have made a valley of a plain, High hills by floods transported to the main, Deep standing lakes sucked dry by thirsty sand, And on late thirsty earth now lakes do stand.” CHAPTER XXVII.