Ulster Folklore Part 8

What is here averred of the Tuatha de Danann may be true of other primitive races who may have survived long in Ireland. It is difficult to exterminate a people, and they could not be driven farther west.

It appears to me that in the traditions of the Ulster peasantry we see indications of a tall, savage people, and of various races of small men.

Some were in all probability veritable dwarfs, like those whose skeletons have been found in Switzerland, near Schaffhausen. Others may have been of the stature of the round-headed race described by Mr. John Gray, but in tradition they all--fairy, Grogach, Pecht, and Dane--appear as little people. In these tales we have not a clear outline--the picture is often blurred--but as we see the red-haired Danes carrying earth in their ap.r.o.ns to build the forts, the Pechts handing from one to another the large slabs to roof the souterrains, and the Grogachs herding cattle, we catch glimpses of the life of those who in long past ages inhabited Ireland.

FOOTNOTES:

[83] Reprinted from the _Antiquary_, August, 1913.

[84] "An Ancient Irish Parish, Past and Present."

[85] See Ulster Fairies, Danes, and Pechts, p. 27.

[86] Keating, "History of Ireland," book i., chap. viii.

(translation by P. W. Joyce, LL.D., M.R.I.A.). See _ante_, p. 60.

[87] See Traditions of Dwarf Races in Ireland and in Switzerland, pp. 50-52.

[88] "Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts," second edition, p. 123 note.

[89] A village about six miles from Ballycastle, where there is a round tower.

[90] It is referred to in the "Guide to Belfast and the Adjacent Counties," by the Belfast Naturalists' Field Club, 1874, pp.

205, 206; also by Borlase in "Dolmens of Ireland," vol. i., p. 371.

[91] A similar tale, but with more details, is related of Finn by William Carleton. It was first published in Chambers' _Edinburgh Journal_ in January, 1841, with the t.i.tle, "A Legend of Knockmary," and was reprinted in Carleton's collected works under the t.i.tle "A Legend of Knockmany." It is given by Mr. W. B. Yeates in his "Irish Fairy and Folk Tales." In Carleton's tale Finn's opponent is not Goll, but Cuchullin.

In the notes first published in Chambers' _Journal_ reference is, however, made to Scotch legends about Finn McCoul and Gaul, the son of Morni, whom I take to be the same as Goll. A version of the story is also given by Patrick Kennedy in "Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts," under the t.i.tle "Fann MacCuil and the Scotch Giant," pp.

179-181. This Scotch giant is named Far Rua, and the fort to which he journeys is in the bog of Allen.

[92] In Ireland "ditch" is used for an earth fence.

[93] Claive Solus was the name given to it by the old woman, who narrated the story, and she translated it "sword of light."

[94] See J. K. A. Musaus, "Volksmahrchen der Deutschen," edited by J. L. Klee (Leipzig, 1842); "Der geraubte Schleier," pp. 371-429.

[95] See "The Testimony of Tradition" (London, 1890, pp. 1-25), by Mr. David MacRitchie, F.S.A.Scot.; also by the same author, "The Aberdeen Kayak and its Congeners." Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, vol. xlvi. (1911-12), pp. 213-241. Mr.

MacRitchie believes that the magic sealskin was a Kayak.

[96] See p. 75.

[97] Fairy-haunted.

[98] This spearhead is in the possession of Mr. Robert Bell, a member of the Belfast Naturalists' Field Club, from whom I heard this narrative.

[99] "The Stone Age in North Britain and Ireland," by the Rev.

Frederick Smith, Appendix, p. 396.

[100] See _Journal of the Royal Anthropological Inst.i.tute_, vol. xli., 1911, p. 462.

[101] "Colour and Race," delivered before the Anthropological Inst.i.tute of Great Britain and Ireland, October 31, 1905.

[102] "Footprints of Vanished Races in Cornwall," by the Rev.

D. Gath Whitley, published in the _Journal of the Royal Inst.i.tution of Cornwall_, 1903, vol. xv., part ii., p. 283.

[103] "Celtic Folklore," vol. ii., chap. xii., pp. 668, 669.

[104] Treasurer to the Anthropological Inst.i.tute.

[105] Read before Section H of the British a.s.sociation at the Dublin Meeting, September, 1908, published in _Nature_, December 24, 1908, pp. 236-238.

[106] Published in _London Devonian Year-Book_, 1910.

[107] "History of Ireland," book i., chap. x.

[108] See "Annals of the Four Masters," vol. i., note at p.

24.

The Rev. William Hamilton, D.D.[109]

AN EARLY EXPONENT OF THE VOLCANIC ORIGIN OF THE GIANT'S CAUSEWAY

"Here, hapless Hamilton, lamented name!

To fire volcanic traced the curious frame, And, as his soul, by sportive fancy's aid, Up to the fount of time's long current strayed, Far round these rocks he saw fierce craters boil, And torrent lavas flood the riven soil: Saw vanquished Ocean from his bounds retire, And hailed the wonders of creative Fire."

DRUMMOND.

These lines are taken from a poem, "The Giant's Causeway," written in 1811, when the nature of the basaltic rocks was regarded as doubtful, and many held that their origin was to be traced to the action of water rather than fire. Hamilton is rightly brought forward as a champion of the volcanic theory. In his "Letters concerning the Northern Coast of Antrim," published towards the close of the eighteenth century, he adduces strong reasons to show that the Giant's Causeway is no isolated freak of Nature, but part of a vast lava field which covered Antrim and extended far beyond the Scottish islands. Nor does he confine his attention to geology, but fulfils the promise on the t.i.tle page, giving an account of the antiquities, manners, and customs of the country. To those who care to read of this part of the world before the days of railroads and electric tramways, when Portrush was a small fis.h.i.+ng village, and the lough which divides Antrim from Down bore the name of the ancient city of Carrickfergus, this old volume will possess many attractions. Three copies lie before me; two belong to editions published in the author's lifetime; the third was printed in Belfast in 1822, and contains a short memoir and a portrait of Dr. Hamilton. The latter is taken from one of those black silhouettes by which, before the art of photography was known, our grandfathers strove to preserve an image of those they loved. In this imperfect likeness we can see below the wig a ma.s.sive forehead, and features which betoken no small determination of character. We can well believe that we are gazing on the face of a scholar, a man of science, a divine, of one who believed that death, even in the tragic form in which it came to him, was but the laying aside of a perishable machine, the casting away of an instrument no longer able to perform its functions.

William Hamilton was born in December, 1757, in Londonderry, where the family had resided for nearly a century, his grandfather having been one of the defenders of the city during the famous siege. Little is known of his boyhood. Before he was fifteen he entered the University of Dublin, and after a distinguished career obtained a fellows.h.i.+p in 1779. It was while continuing his theological and literary studies that his attention was drawn to the new sciences of chemistry and mineralogy. We can imagine the ardent student attracting around him a band of kindred spirits, who, meeting on one evening of the week under the name of Palaeosophers, studied the Bible and ancient writings bearing on its interpretation, and the next, calling themselves Neosophers, discussed the phenomena of Nature, and the discoveries of Cavendish, or the views of Buffon and Descartes. Nor did his marriage in 1780 to Sarah Walker interrupt these pursuits.

Hamilton was one of the founders of the Royal Irish Academy, and dedicated his "Letters concerning the Coast of Antrim" to the Earl of Charlemont, the first president of that body. The book opens with an account of his visit to the Island of Raghery or Rathlin, where he was charmed with the primitive manners of the people and the friendly relations existing between them and their landlord. He examined the white cliffs, the dark basaltic columns, and the ruins of the old castle, where Robert Bruce is said to have made a gallant defence against his enemies. Here he found cinders embedded in the mortar, showing that the lime used in building the walls had been burnt with coal. This is adduced as a proof that the coal-beds near Fair Head had been known at an early period, possibly at a time anterior to the Danish incursions of the ninth and tenth centuries--a view confirmed by the discovery of an ancient gallery extending many hundred yards underground, and in which the remains of the tools and baskets of the prehistoric miners were found.

In a later letter a history is given of the Giant's Causeway, and of the various opinions which have been held regarding its origin. Beginning with the old tradition[110] that the stones had been cut and placed in position by the giant, Fin McCool or Fingal, when constructing a mighty mole to unite Ireland to Scotland, Hamilton alludes to the crude notions exhibited in some papers published in the early Transactions of the Royal Society. He criticizes severely "A True Prospect of the Giant's Causeway," printed in 1696 for the Dublin Society, showing how the imagination of the artist had planted luxuriant forest-trees on the wild bay of Port Noffer, and transformed basaltic rocks into comfortable dwelling-houses. The two beautiful paintings made by Mrs. Susanna Drury in 1740 are referred to in very different language, and anyone who has seen engravings of these will endorse his opinion, and feel that this lady has depicted, with almost photographic accuracy, the Causeway and the successive galleries of basaltic columns, which lend a weird and peculiar grandeur to the headlands of Bengore.

A large portion of Hamilton's work is occupied with a minute investigation of these headlands, and of the lofty promontory of Fair Head. A description is given of the jointed columns of the Causeway, whose surface presents a regular and compact pavement of polygon stones; we are told that this basaltic rock contains metallic iron, and that he has himself observed how, in the semicircular Bay of Bengore, the compa.s.s deviates greatly from its meridian, and each pillar or fragment of a pillar acts as a natural magnet. He also points out that columnar rocks are found in many parts of Antrim, and traces the basaltic plateau from the sh.o.r.es of Lough Foyle to the valley of the Lagan; nay more, he bids us extend our gaze, and remember "that whatever be the reasonings that fairly apply to the formation of the basaltes in our island, the same must be extended with little interruption over the mainland and western isles of Scotland, even to the frozen island of Iceland, where basaltic pillars are to be found in abundance, and where the flames of Hecla still continue to blaze."[111]

Hamilton argues, in opposition to the views of many of his contemporaries, that the vicinity of the Giant's Causeway to the sea has nothing whatever to do with the peculiar structure of its jointed columns, which he ascribes to their having been formed by the crystallization of a molten ma.s.s. The following are his words:

"Since, therefore, the basaltes and its attendant fossils[112] bear strong marks of the effects of fire, it does not seem unlikely that its pillars may have been formed by a process, exactly a.n.a.logous to what is commonly denominated crystallization by fusion.... For though during the moments of an eruption nothing but a wasteful scene of tumult and disorder be presented to our view, yet, when the fury of those flames and vapours, which have been struggling for a pa.s.sage, has abated, everything then returns to its original state of rest; and those various melted substances, which, but just before, were in the wildest state of chaos, will now subside and cool with a degree of regularity utterly unattainable in our laboratories."[113]

It is true that modern geologists would not apply the term "crystallization" to the process by which the basaltic columns have been formed, but all would agree that they have a.s.sumed their peculiar shape during the slow cooling of the molten lava of which they consist; thus Professor James Thomson[114] states that the division into prisms has arisen "by splitting, through shrinkage, of a very h.o.m.ogeneous ma.s.s in cooling."

It would be tedious to repeat the reasoning by which Hamilton, following in the steps of the French geologists, Desmarest and Faujas de St. Fond, establishes the volcanic origin of the basalt. It is true, he a.s.sumes the position of an impartial narrator, and brings forward at considerable length the objections which had been urged against this theory, but only to show that each one of them admits of a full and complete answer. Thus he states that the absence of volcanic cones does not embarra.s.s the advocates of the system: "According to them, the basaltes has been formed under the earth itself and within the bowels of those very mountains where it could never have been exposed to view until, by length of time or some violent shock of nature, the inc.u.mbent ma.s.s must have undergone a very considerable alteration, such as should go near to destroy every exterior volcanic feature. In support of this, it may be observed that the promontories of Antrim do yet bear very evident marks of some violent convulsion, which has left them standing in their present abrupt situation, and that the Island of Raghery and some of the western isles of Scotland do really appear like the surviving fragments of a country, great part of which might have been buried in the ocean."[115]

We thus see that Hamilton clearly perceived that great changes, sufficient to sweep away lofty mountains, had taken place since those old lava streams had flowed over the land. It is true that science has advanced since his day with gigantic strides. Some things which he regarded as doubtful have become certain, and others which he regarded as certain have become doubtful, yet I trust that the preceding extracts will show that his account of the basaltic rocks of Antrim may still be read with interest and profit.